You’ve probably seen the terms SEO, PPC, Affiliate Marketing all over as you surf the web and are wondering what they mean!
First of all, the category for all 3 of these terms fall under online internet marketing. Webmasters, Consultants and business owners such as yourself employ one or all of these technical tactics to drive traffic to a website.
We’ve tried to digest the myriad of information out there to give you the following base definitions:
SEO - Search Engine Optimization
In essence, SEO is about developing, designing and populating your website to allow search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo to find and present your website when a search term is queried.
There are two main techniques regarding SEO:
- On Page SEO and
- Off Page SEO
On Page SEO refers to the changes made to the actual website and web pages of your website. These include but are not limited to: correct title tags for the page, unique meta description for each, useful page content, naming of images, use of headings to build a type of table of contents for each web page, website architecture and url structure, generating site maps, contact, about and privacy pages and relevant links between your pages (again this is not an all encompassing list!).
Off Page SEO refers to where and how other websites are linking to your website and web pages. The ‘where’ is important as Google considers that “birds of a feather flock together” and if you are associated with a garbage site than that could reflect poorly to Google; the ‘how’ other sites link to you is of paramount importance as the words they use as the link text tells Google that your site may be relevant as a search result, again for a term queried by a user.
Note, as we discuss in this website entities such as Google it may seem we are talking about a human being, but really it is the combination of the humans who work there and do manual reviews of particular sites along with the software they built (bots) that go out into the web and crawl all of the websites online today.
PPC - Pay Per Click
Unlike the SEO techniques described above, PPC is as the name suggests – website owners can bid on searched terms and create ads to be shown as a result. Every time your paid ad is shown in a search engine results page, the user can click on your ad and will be forwarded to the page you configured as a landing page for that ad. Prices can range from a few cents per ad clicked to many dollars per click of an ad. Use PPC can be a costly means to try and drive relevant traffic to your website – but a well executed and meticulously reviewed PPC strategy can garner impressive ROI for your business.
PPC vendors such as Google Adwords, Microsoft adCenter, and Yahoo’s Advertising Solutions are the main contenders for your PPC business.
The most prevalent and talked about paid for advertising network is Google’s
Google’s Adwords suggests that you can “Find customers with Google Adwords”
Microsoft’s adCenter as described on their site “Show ads on Bing. Display your product or service to as many as 78 million potential customers.”
& Yahoo’s Advertising Solutions describe themselves to be “easy and affordable for businesses to connect with customers who matter most to your business”
Recently Microsoft and Yahoo have joined their PPC forces to bring a united and comprehensive business solution to website owners and to ostensibly take a market share from Google’s Adwords stranglehold on the market.
Imagine having hundreds or even thousands of people selling your goods or services online on your behalf? Affiliate marketing is an avenue many ecommerce businesses are using to drive segments of consumers to their site that they may have previously neglected.
Amazon for instance has a network of millions of affiliate marketers selling one or many of the thousands of products that Amazon sells.
Local businesses that already cater to an international consumer base and who have a efficient fulfillment process should consider hiring an affiliate manager or consultant and putting together a strategy for getting developing an online/virtual sales force!
The are volumes of information about each of the above topics – but hopefully you now have a better idea as to what each of them mean and how one or all can help you market your website more effectively!
* Facebook Ads
This falls into the PPC camp like Google Adwords above, but I would be remiss not to mention it here. With millions of regional users in Facebook – an effective strategy for buying ads in Facebook can reap dividends for your business!
