ABC of Internet Marketing

Since the Internet has many use and various form of medium and protocols, when I refer to Internet Marketing (as in the blog title) for the sake of this blog, it is in reference to Search Engine Optimization - which uses the Internet protocol of http (hyper text transfer protocol) - commonly referred to as the World Wide Web. Another popular Internet protocol used in Internet Marketing is the SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) - for blasting out emails. We're not going to get into the subject of email blasting in this article. Come back later for that...

The purpose of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is to help search engine rank your site on the first page of the search results. Someone looking for a web designer in las vegas might use that phrase to find a company - but another might use "las vegas webmaster" to find such a business - hopefully, they find us - WebSiteCenter.com - LOL. Internet Marketing using SEO is your best chance of getting NEW traffic thus possibly resulting in more online sales. I'm sure that we already know all of the benefits and meaning of "getting a bunch of real traffic" so we're not going to get any deeper than this. When we talk of traffic - we mean, actual people looking at your web site. A lot of Internet Marketing companies refer to traffic as "hits" and it is not hits at all it is "visits" that you have to focus on. So we all know the purpose of SEO - what you really need to know is HOW?

The ABC of Search Engine Optimization is (A) Site Structure, (B) Site Features, (C) Site Content.

A-Site Structure
Developing a web site is lot like building a house. You have to have a good DESIGN PLAN that is approved by the Federal, State, County and probably City Guidelines. Conforming to the guidelines and building standards assures EVERYONE that the house is safe towards its tenants, its visitors, its neighbors and are recognized by the entire community as part of the neighborhood. If you build your house and not follow any guidelines, no matter how safe, the community or law enforcement agencies will not let you occupy the house due to non-conformance to standards. Well, enough about houses now let's talk web design.

If you build your site without conforming to standards - seach engines cannot see your web site. The standards that we have to follow as webmasters is ICANN's subsidiary W3C.org. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the mother of all approved codes - HTML, CSS, Javascript, etc. It is important to note that your home (index) page have to be in HTML format for optimum results - index.html. You can ONLY optimize an HTML web page - nothing else! Anyone who says otherwise is only fooling themselves. HTML pages is the safest form of web format for search engines to read - this is why it is the approved STANDARD format. There are various web page formats to choose from - most commonly the file extensions .html, .htm, .asp, .php, and .cfm. In actuality, you can create your own file extension - but only you can see it. You can build your web pages using these OTHER file extensions but only HTML (and .htm) will be the only optimized search engine friendly pages.

Once we pass the web pages through W3C's code validator, then comes the review of search engine guidelines. We follow Google's webmaster guidelines for this. Why only Google's? Well, we've had plenty of experience on various search engine guidelines - we read most of them - then they came and went without leaving much of an impact. In our opinion, it is always best to start by concentrating on the top three search engine first which is Google, Yahoo and MSN. Google's webmaster guideline makes a lot of sense and "true in nature" within the digital environment. They laid out all of the aspects of their search engine and what we can do as webmasters to help prepare the web pages to work with their program.


B-Site Features
Now that "A" has been done above - you're now getting a ton of traffic...yipeeee! What do we do with this traffic? If this is an informational site - the most they can do is email you and inquire. If this is an ecommerce site - then they can buy something - and email you. How about it's an ecommerce site but it is also a community site or a classifieds or other fun stuff.

The site features is what will impress the visitors / users of the web site. The main reason to build a web site is to cater to your current customer base or upcoming customer base. In the case of a shopping web site - provide new arrivals on a regular basis - discount coupons, promotions, events, invites, forum, community sharing, etc. Give each customer a reason to keep coming back.

C-Site Content
Keep them coming back with unique and relevant content. If the content is "exclusively" yours, then they can only see the content on your web site. Once the site has been optimized - your primary job as a web site owner is to continue to pump unique and exclusive information - whether it may be text, videos, etc. It will not help you at all by simply visiting other interesting sites then copying their content and placing it on yours...search engines can detect this - and if you don't have permission to post their content on you're site you could get in trouble for copyright infringement and possibly charged with criminal offense.

To fully understand Site Content the way the Internet is suppose to work is to look at the Internet as a whole - and you're main objective is to contribute to that "whole" by adding something unique, useful and relevant in nature - content that came ONLY from you - whether it be in text, videos, audio or whatever will display or play on a browser.