An Introduction to Marketing on the Internet - The Deity of Search
So you want to be on the Internet, huh? But it’s a big playing field, ya know? There’s all your competitors from all around the world that are on the internet, and there’s literally billions of individual websites. What makes you think that you can get any single person to go to your web site and buy your stuff?
Simple math. According to the World Internet Usage Statistics site, there are over 1.3 billion individuals using the internet. For an internet storefront, that’s a huge amount of potential customers. If you could capture even one tenth of a percent of those 1.3 billion people, you would have one hundred and thirty thousand people visiting your store. This is great news for small businesses! Why? Because one hundred and thirty thousand people visiting your online presence will likely result in far more business than you can handle!
So how do these thousands of people find your store? Well, I’ll give you a hint. Even all the way back in 2002 over 41% of internet users used search to find a product to purchase. That number has doubtlessly increased as we see the rise of googles dominance of the entire Internet.
Now, no one will deny that search is important, however many people like to go on and on about something called “Search Engine Optimization.” They bicker over usage of keywords that people will use to find their product, they attempt to create tables and magic charts which are tied to that hallowed yet oblique demi-deity the Google Page Rank.
Really, there is are several very simple key elements to making your website findable on the internet.
First and foremost is content accessibility. You need to make sure your content is readable in plain text so that when a search engine is looking through your site it can pick up on it’s own what the content is talking about. Why is this important? Because Google doesn’t care what you specifically think is important. It cares what other people think is important about your site. Therefore it cares what you’re showing on the page.
This is why your important content, your words you speak to potential customers is accessible on your site. If Google doesn’t know what you have available then it’s not gonna tell those 41+% of all internet users who use search where to find your site.
The second and still vitally important part to consider for your website is content relevancy. You can blather endlessly about your product and how amazing it is. As a matter of fact, I suggest this very thing. However, a 2007 emarketer survey shows that 60% of consumers trust people like themselves.
Now, what does this mean for you? You need people that are normal people telling other people how awesome your product is. And how do people do that? By writing about you! By friending you on social networking sites! By showing off their cool new toy to their best buddy over a 6 pack of mountain dew and a game of billiards. However an added benefit is they link to your site. If they link to your site, or a portion of your site, Google thinks “Woah! People like this guy! Maybe we should bump them up a bit in our search results!” The more links that are out there pointing to your web site the better! Keep in mind however, that Google, Yahoo, and MSN are all constantly on the lookout for spam links. So don’t buy your links. Work for them!
The single most effective way to promote your product to other people is to talk with them about it. Join a forum where your services would be needed and offer help and advice for people outside of just your product. Put a link to your product in the signature. Talk directly with your future customers as if they are your equals, and they will view you as someone who is like them. They won’t see the CEO of a company, they’ll see JoeRocket8, who helped them figure out how to balance their carburetors last month who happens to operate an online store selling HID lighting for motorcycles. You’ve just gained that much more importance in a community of thousands of individuals, some of whom will want or need your services in the future.
A third key part to being a successful search location is to keep your content updated. If you can, update your home page every single day. Use a blog or something similar so that every single time your website gets updated, you gain another page of content and you update your home page with something relevant and interesting to your potential customers.
Think about it. If you write a blog post where you speak naturally about the advantages to using bluetooth headsets, when people start searching for bluetooth headsets they’ll start finding you. Talk about your product! Be enthusiastic about it! Do it often! The more content you have on your site, even if it’s buried because it’s a year or two old, the more google and respective search engines will think you know what you’re talking about.
This is why sites like Wikipedia are the top result so often when you search for some factual bit of information. The content keeps getting updated.
Again, this is just a basic explanation for why search is so important. It gives some useful tips for improving your findability on the internet, and it serves to give you a launching point for planning your own internet marketing plan. I strongly recommend looking through other resources, such as The New Rules of Marketing and PR. No single source will be able to provide you with all the knowledge you will use when attempting to market your brand, product, or store on the Internet. If there’s anything I’ve learned about Internet marketing it’s that it’s constantly changing and that I never know enough!
—Zach
