Two Proven Strategies for Successfully Marketing
Your Online Business

For those launching an online business, the question of marketing strategy is often a difficult one to answer.  Internet entrepreneurs often have dreams beyond their meager marketing budgets.  Simply relying on Pay per Click advertising for all traffic may be financially out of reach.  For fragile startup companies, a more frugal and dual-sided approach to internet marketing that includes both PPC advertising and content optimization will result in the most traffic per advertising dollar.  Consider the following marketing strategies.

Startup Marketing Strategy 1:  Pay-Per-Click and Split Tests

Every pay per click campaign should include split testing for ad effectiveness.  Simply put, a split test is running multiple ads for the same keywords to determine which ad is most effective with viewers.  Use split testing as a tool to eliminate nonproductive ads, as well as to improve successful ads.  When searching for ideas for new ads, spend some time looking at and learning from the top ads for your keywords. 

A note about content networks:   In many cases, it is better to bid only on search engine results and not their related content networks, such as the Google content network.  Content network ads, are typically not as visible, and could potentially hurt the quality score of your ads due to lower click through rates.

Startup Marketing Strategy 2:  Keyword Optimization

Keyword optimization involves finding heavily searched phrases that are relevant to your business, but that are not highly competed for by others.  Software programs such as Adwords Analyzer or membership websites such as WordTracker.com are very helpful in determining search phrases.   After you have selected keywords, you can begin adding optimized content to your site.

Links are an important element of keyword optimization.  Search engines, including Google, implement page rank algorithms which evaluate link text to determine the relevancy, and ranking, of a page.  The words used in links to your site, known as anchor tags, help search engines determine what your site is about.  For example if you created a link to your website using the text “garage door openers,”  search engines are going to determine that your site is relevant to someone searching on “garage doors.”

It is important to select high-ranking sites when looking for places to post links to your site.  For quality search engine marketing, select well-known websites such as Associated Content, Squidoo, and Ezine Articles.  These sites allow you to submit articles with links to your site, and some will even pay you a small sum for your content.  When writing articles, remember to include keyword specific links to your pages.  Doing so will improve your search engine rankings. 

Search engines are becoming more and more sophisticated every day.  Incorporating both pay per click and organic search engine optimization into your marketing plan will improve the ranking of your website, and landing page hits.  Maintaining a balanced and steady approach to search engine marketing will provide quality and consistent results for even the smallest advertising budgets.