What is online marketing? A complete guide for online visibility

In the world of today, almost half of the global population has an internet connection. This fact determined radical changes at a global level in terms of strategic thinking and the way businesses choose to position themselves on the market. Similarly, each day goes by, a new technological innovation revolutionizes our lives and increases our dependence of the great World Wide Web.

Mankind always had this inner desire to progress in order to make life easier. The benefits that the Internet offers us today, such as instant communication from any location of this planet, or easy and fast access to any information, were unimaginable just a few decades ago. Despite the huge progress of digital technology and its influence on the way we handle even our most basic daily activities, we find ourselves, as content consumers, overwhelmed by huge volume information that we encounter every day. If people in the past complained about not having too many options, today we find it difficult to choose and select what we need from the informational flood.

Luckily, search engines have evolved at the same time with the Internet, taking responsibility of giving the users a hand and guiding them to the content they are interested in. Therefore, on the Internet, the famous biblical phrase "Seek and you shall find" was never more true, but about those who want to be found by others? For the businesses that want to be visible on the Internet, a lot of "online superheroes" emerged, who call themselves "online marketing specialists" and make great promises, but who often fail to provide significant results.

It's obvious that online marketing is not as easy as it may sound. The reason why many online marketing "experts" still brag about their so-called skills in providing online visibility for businesses, is related to the mistery which formed around the most important player on the Internet: Google. The greatest search engine uses over 200 algorithms that are mostly unknown, so far.

 

So what is online marketing, essentially?

 

Even if the majority of Google's algorithms remain unknown, over the years, marketers learned, step by step, how to obtain visibility in the greatest search engine on the Internet. Visibility is the most valuable asset you could have on the Internet, because it is the foundation of any activity that involves promoting your products or services. And the most powerful instrument you can use in order to achieve this visibility and get the most traffic on your website was and it still is Search Engine Optimization, or simply, SEO.

The better you understand the basic principles of SEO and you keep up with the fast pace and frequent changes of this complex discipline, the better chances you'll have for your website to rank higher in Google.

When your website or your blog benefits of lots of traffic, you have the opportunity to test a wide variety of marketing tactics and sales techniques for your products and services. However, if you don't have many users visiting your website, the only way to attract traffic is with the help of expensive online advertising, and that is before you determine your products and services potential to be sold. Basically, you can choose the fast and costly path of online advertising in order to obtain visibility, but this doesn't guarantee you that your visitors will convert into customers, nor that you will have a ROI that will cover at least your initial investment in online ads. The main objectives of any business are to obtain conversions and the maximum ROI as possible. There is no business in the world that wants visibility for its own sake, its main goal being, in essence, to sell its products and/or services.

Achieving success on the Internet seems to be, at least at a first glance, paradoxical, because you need money to generate traffic, but you need traffic if you want to make money. Therefore, if you own an online business, don't make the same mistake as many marketers did along the years: don't rush to spend large amounts of money on anorganic methods of generating traffic, at least not before you make a careful estimation of conversion rates and before you test in detail the potential impact of your products and/or services on consumers.

 

"How do you earn Google's trust?" - that is the question

 

The biggest mistake that most marketers do when they want to obtain traffic and online visibility is the fact that they want maximum of results with minimum efforts, choosing the easiest and the shortest path to success. Obviously, in 99% of the cases, they fail. Today, the only efficient and reliable way to become a powerful brand on the Internet is online marketing, and the first thing you need to do when you make online marketing is earning Google's trust. And this is not an easy task, nor it can be done overnight. Think about a relationship you had with a real person. You started to trust that person by getting to know him/her better, didn't you? Therefore, if you own a website and you "just met" Google, there are slim chances he will trust you. If you want this to change, you need to make other websites that Google already trusts to recommend you. In online marketing, this practice is also known as "link building".

However, taking into consideration that in real life you cannot pay people to recommend you (for example, for a job), the only type of link building that Google accepts is the organic one, which happens in the following manner: a website that has quality content hosts a link which redirects to your website, which also needs to have quality content. This way, the "transfer of authority" takes place, and your website becomes more and more appreciated by Google. If you are a "new kid on the block" on the Internet, you need a solid link building strategy.

Therefore, if you want to really understand how online marketing works, you need to acknowledge the importance of making efforts in order to earn Google's trust. There are 3 essential "trust components" which, at their core, comprise all Google's algorithms. If you want your website to rank on the first page of results in Google, you need to align your online marketing strategy with all these 3 components of trust:

 

1) Your website's indexed age

 

Your website's indexed age is related to 2 factors:

i) the moment Google identified your website and indexed it

ii) the evolution of your website since the moment it was indexed until today

 

2) Authority

 

What is your website's or your web page's authority? Authority is a very important component of Google's trust, and it relies heavily on the quality and quantity of the backlinks that redirect to your web page and are hosted by websites that Google already trusts. Authority is a concept that is highly connected to off page SEO, which takes place outside your website, unlike on-page SEO, which is performed directly on your web page.

In order to determine if your website has a healthy backlink profile, it's important to answer to a series of questions. For example, how many high quality backlinks did your website earn since the moment it was indexed until now? Are those links organic and hosted on websites that have quality content which is relevant for the users, or are they spam links, achieved through link exchange or bought in large quantities on link directories or link farms? Do the vast majority of backlinks come from the same few sources or are they hosted by a wide variety of websites?

 

3) Content

 

Content was, is and will be the king of the Internet. Relevant, interesting and unique content that is appealing to the consumer, should be the foundation of every online marketing strategy. However, too often, online entrepreneurs don't follow this rule. The reason? High quality content involves a lot of effort and a high volume of work. But good things don't come easy, and whoever says that content is not that important, is not telling the truth. There is no successful online marketing strategy without high quality content.

But once you get used to focusing on offering your visitors relevant content, the results will soon become visible. There is no doubt that quality content has greater chances to be shared with other users, following a domino effect that can only provide benefits to your online business.

Therefore, if you want to earn Google's trust, you should avoid offering your users poor quality, inconsistent and irrelevant content. Also, don't forget that high quality and valuable content cannot be created overnight, and Google knows this quite well. If you try to "steal" content from other websites, Google will notice it and your website will not be rewarded with top positions in SERP.

 

What are the most important online marketing instruments?

  
 

1) SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

 

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization should be the major instrument of any online marketing strategy. Although it can be difficult to understand how it works, with the help of an experienced SEO agency, you will be able to gradually comprehend its fundamentals. Taking into consideration that Google uses more than 200 algorithms to rank the web pages in SERP, solid knowledge of SEO techniques and an efficient SEO strategy are essential if you want your business to be successful on the Internet. SEO is renowned for being the online marketing instrument that has the biggest ROI (Return on Investment). SEO involves long-term efforts and hard work, but it also provides long-term results.

Here are, briefly, the elements that your SEO strategy needs to focus on:

- keyword research and keyword strategy

- on page optimization: page loading speed, mobile optimization, SEO-friendly web design, 301 redirects for broken links and 404 error pages, meta tags optimization, image optimization, URL structure optimization, Heading HTML tags (H1, H2, H3, etc), high quality content creation and optimization for your web pages

- off page optimization: creating content that is destined to be published on other websites (press releases, blog articles), a healthy and solid backlink profile, content optimization for text, images or videos posted on social networks.

 

2) SEM (Search Engine Marketing)

 

Some specialists consider that SEO is included in SEM, while others talk about these two instruments separately. Considering that we talked about SEO a little bit earlier, we will further refer to SEM as to all the anorganic online marketing instruments that involve search engines.

SEM, or Search Engine Marketing, is the paid version of SEO in terms of the effects, but using different instruments. SEM implies promoting your website through online advertising, such as Google AdWords or other online advertising platforms, most of them being found on social networks like Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube, which is the second most important search engine in the world.

PPC, or Pay-Per-Click advertising is another popular SEM instrument, for which you have to pay a certain amount of money every time a user clicks on the ad you display. However, if you consider investing in PPC, it's important to evaluate and monitor you conversion rates in order to determine your ROI with accuracy.

SEM is an online marketing instrument that offers fast results for those who want their website to be displayed in the first positions in Google after certain keywords, but which requires a consistent budget. The price for a keyword can range between a few cents and 50 dollars or more, depending on the level of competition for that keyword. The main disadvantage of SEM instruments is that your website is visible only as long as you pay for your ads. Once you stop paying, your visibility disappears, too.

 

3) SMM (Social Media Marketing)

 

One of the most popular online marketing instrument at this hour is Social Media Marketing, which involves using social networks like Facebook, Instagram or Twitter to communicate and interact with the audience, mostly with the purpose of building brand awareness.

Building an audience that is loyal to your brand on Social Media platforms is a long term process. Here are some tips on how to raise a big number of followers and how can you interact efficiently with them:

Create your own voice: create a main and essential message and be consistent in sending it to your audience. Don't try to be something or someone else than who you are, otherwise your followers will not trust you. It's all about building trust and an efficient communication. Social Media marketing is one the most powerful instruments for raising brand awareness and earning loyalty from your customers.

Deliver value to your followers: No matter what products or services you wish to promote, in order to make a difference, always offer valuable, useful and relevant content to your audience. Whether you give them useful tips on a certain subject, you entertain them or challenge them to a contest with interesting prizes, always deliver value to your followers.

Be consistent: Keeping yourself visible on social media and not letting people forget you is also highly important. You need to find a balanced frequency for your posts: not too often, not too seldom. Remember: The eyes that are not seen, are forgotten.

 

4) Affiliate marketing

 

Affiliate marketing involves promoting other people's products and services, in return of a sales commission. The good part is that you don't need to invest in those products or services, but what you need to do, and here comes the hardest part, is to already have a significant online audience. In most cases, renowned bloggers use affiliate marketing to promote different products and services in their own articles.

 

5) Email marketing

 

Email marketing is one of the oldest online marketing instruments, but it continues to be highly efficient, especially for the online stores that don't manage to convert users into customers when they first visit their websites. Most e-mail marketing campaigns are automated with the help of retargeting software which, depending on the browsing behavior of the users, sends them personalized messages via e-mail with the main purpose of convincing them to return to their website and make a purchase decision regarding a product or service.

 

6) Content Marketing

 

Despite the fact that content marketing is, basically, a part of an SEO strategy, it can also be treated as a separate instrument, especially if we analyze the content more from a marketing perspective and less from an SEO point of view.

For example, video marketing is a method of obtaining online visibility which became very popular in the last years, especially on YouTube. Offering tutorials or useful information to users that follow your YouTube channel, you can make your brand notorious and obtain more leads, especially if you drop a backlink to your website in the video's description.