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  Online Marketing Whitepaper
 

Online Marketing Whitepaper

Introduction

The Imperfect World of Quantifying Website Traffic

Online Advertising Lingo

Necessities for Every Company with a Website

Paid Advertising

Leveraging the True Power of the Internet

Bootstrap Marketing Online

 

A Dated Introduction to Online Marketing*

*Note: This is the original version of a whitepaper that was authored in 2001 by iCondotta's founder and principal consultant, Stephan Aarstol. It's a useful primer, but dated - pre-Wikipedia (2001), pre-Google AdWords PPC (2002), way pre-YouTube (2005), you get the picture...

Search Engine Strategy

Volumes could be written on this topic. Keeping up with how search engines work and more importantly how to get listed prominently in them is a very complicated and dynamic topic. Dramatic changes occur from year to year.

In the early days of the web, aside from directories, it was all about spider-based search engines that based relevance on site content and Meta tags. Altavista-like engines were the most important engines, and page optimization was the way to achieve high rankings. Then paid per click search engines such as GoTo secured syndication deals with all the major portals and thus enabled sites to buy their way to the top, which can still be done, but it’s getting much more expensive. Almost simultaneously, link-analysis search engines such as Google showed up and quickly sidelined the old Altavista-types engines (Note: Altavista has changed and is more link-analysis based like Google today). With link-analysis engines, it’s more important who and how many sites link to your site rather than how you’ve optimized your page. In other words, today it’s much harder to fake it. The best way to get listed highly in the search engines is to have compelling content, make sure it’s visible to the engines (Dynamically generated pages can create problems), and focus on building inbound links.

As mentioned above, search engine technology constantly changes. Your marketing department can save some time by buying a subscription to the Search Engine Watch (www.searchenginewatch.com). Additionally, depending on your marketing budget, it may be well worth it to consider outsourcing the arduous Search Engine Marketing (SEM) process to a professional search engine marketing company. Be warned that the search engine optimization industry is a little bit like the Wild West.Anybody with a computer and Internet access can call themselves a search engine marketing company, and this is often the case. Choose wisely. It’s probably best to ask someone you trust who has dealt with this before.

Keep in mind that getting well indexed by the search engines is a long term marketing approach. Don’t expect to see results happen overnight, and maybe not even for several months. Nonetheless, financially, it’s well worth the trouble.

If you’re just looking to submit your site as is, here are the basics. You need to submit the URL for one or more of your web pages to the following search engines:

Google (http://www.google.com/addurl.html) – Submit only your homepage. Free submission.

Inktomi – (http://www.inktomi.com/products/web_search/submit.html) - $39/yr per URL.

All the Web – (http://www.alltheweb.com/add_url.php) - $35 for express submission.

Teoma – use AskJeeves (http://ask.ineedhits.com/) - $30 for express submission

Altavista – (http://addurl.altavista.com/addurl/new) - $39 for express submission.

Keyword Buys on Search Engines

If you want to assure your company gets a prominent presence on the major search engines, you’re best bet is to buy banner ads or text links that are targeted to particular keywords. Almost all search engines allow advertisers to purchase targeted keywords or phrases. By purchasing the keyword phrase “Medical Imaging” at Yahoo, your banner will come up every time a web user searches for the term “Medical Imaging” on Yahoo. Some search engines offer text links and some even allow you to purchase a good position in the actual search results. Even though these buys are well targeted for the most part, the effectiveness and pricing can vary dramatically from one search engine to the next. Like every other online media placement, picking sites and web pages with the right kind of traffic is more important than picking sites with the most traffic. Not only search engines sell keywords. It is becoming more and more common to see vertical portals that sell banners and text links targeted to keywords.

>> Link Building Strategy

Authored in 2001 by Stephan Aarstol
while Director of Business Development
at AuntMinnie.com