In today’s market, it is becoming increasingly more affordable and profitable to employ internet marketing strategies in addition to, or in some cases, in lieu of, other options.  Before you choose an internet marketing agency, understanding the differences between SEO and SEM is important, so that you know what you should expect to receive with each service.

SEO, or search engine optimization, is the process by which your online content is made easily readable by search engines so that your content can be ranked and displayed to searchers when they enter a keyword or keyword phrase.  SEO prepares your online content, be it a blog, website or article, so that the search engine can understand the value of your content and thus determine its ranking.  SEO is more of a process than a strategy.  A strategy outlines a plan, while processes help to see that plan come into fruition.  It may be a goal to receive high rankings by a search engine.  Part of your strategy might be to optimize your online content…but the actual process of SEO involves many factors, including the balance of keywords we discussed yesterday.

SEM, or search engine marketing, is a collection of strategies designed to increase brand recognition and improve your virtual presence by strengthening it through the employ of various techniques that might include PPC (pay-per-click) campaigns, blog management campaigns or email marketing campaigns, to name a few.  Often times, these campaigns may incorporate some of the processes involved with SEO, but SEO and SEM are different.  The goal of search engine marketing is to drive traffic to your site through a variety of online marketing tools.

Understanding the differences between SEO and SEM is important; not only so that you know what you’re signing up for but also so that you can understand what sort of reports you should expect, so that you can monitor your progress.  An internet marketing agency not offering to report back to you is likely trying to scam you, so knowing what to expect is crucial to making the choice of which internet marketing agency you should work with.

You worked hard to start your business, and found a reliable and innovative internet marketing agency to handle all of your search engine optimization.  So why don’t you have a good ranking on the search engines?  Perhaps even more frustrating, your site doesn’t appear at all.  Is it something you did?  Is your product not filling a niche in the market?  Did your internet marketing agency screw up?  The answer is none of the above.  Chances are, since you’re still new in the neighborhood, your site hasn’t been indexed yet.

Search engines don’t index every day.  That task would be too enormous an undertaking.  While they’re usually not keen on informing everyone when they do index, they usually keep to a fairly regular schedule, but each search engine may index on a different schedule.  If you’re new, it can take months for your website to even show up in search results.  So how do you get traffic to your website if it’s not coming up in search results?

You implement additional internet marketing strategies.  Blogs, online video advertisements and pay-per-click campaigns will not only boost your online traffic, but these methods will bring you targeted traffic which is better than random traffic because those prospects might become customers.  Furthermore, these three methods will continue to increase your targeted traffic even after your website gets indexed by the search engines because they provide additional channels of communication.

What matters most though is patience.  You’re unlikely to receive tens of thousands of quality website visitors right away.  Don’t get discouraged; if you have a day that is particularly slow, try to analyze why it was a slow day so that you can avoid that particular catalyst for slow-downs in the future, but don’t let it get you down.  Start the next day anew, and keep working toward the following goals:

-Offer value to prospects and customers.  This is the best way to gain their loyalty and sales.  Value comes in many forms: information, product variety, product quality, customer service, etc…

-Provide them with relevant and interesting information.  This is the best way to keep their attention.

-Present them with a clean and intuitive interface.  This is the best way to make their experience on your website efficient and stress-free.

When you aim to please your customers and prospects, the rest falls into place.  They should always be your top motivation…if your budget takes their place, it’s possible that, in the future, you will lose sight of their needs, which in turn will lead to their losing interest in your company.

Affiliate marketing seems to be all the buzz lately, which is interesting as it’s not really all that new.  Even before the internet, businesses participated in affiliated marketing.  Maybe it wasn’t as successful as affiliate marketing on the internet because prospects didn’t have an instant method of contacting the affiliated business or viewing a catalog of their products or services.  Even so, affiliate marketing isn’t new to the internet.

What is affiliate marketing?  In the most basic sense of the word, it is when one company allows another company to advertise on their website (or in the case of pre-internet, at their store) for a product similar to their own, but that fits a certain niche.  For example, suppose our friendly candied apple seller wants to join in some affiliate marketing.  He might seek to work with a company that sells apples…not candied, but regular apples.  The products are related…in this sense, affiliated marketing is similar to organic link building, which we’ve discussed in the past.

So how do you get into affiliate marketing?  There are programs that will run your ads for you…Google Adwords is one of them.  Not only can you run your PPC campaigns through Google Adwords, but you can also create advertisements to run on other companies’ websites, that, in turn, participate in affiliate marketing.  One of the reasons this type of internet marketing is so popular today is that you don’t have to pay anything until an action takes place.  Unlike purchasing physical, limited advertisement space in a store or on a flier, the internet allows for website pages to be less confined, which means you don’t have to pay just to have your ad show up.  Like PPC Campaigns, affiliate marketing requires constant monitoring and management.  Working with an internet marketing agency can save you time and potential frustration.

What’s the difference between traffic and targeted traffic?  Traffic could be anyone randomly stumbling upon your website.  They might stick around long enough to read it, and they might be interested in buying.  However, to earn that person as a customer or even an interested prospect is like trying to win roulette; it’s a game of chance.  Wouldn’t it be a better bet to guide prospects to your website who are interested in your product or service?

Earning targeted traffic may seem easier said than done, but with a little bit of planning, you can enjoy the reality of website visitors who are actually looking for a company just like yours.  There are a few ways you can figure out what your targeted traffic needs; when you know what they need, you can point that need in your direction.

You can ask current customers about their needs and how your products or services fulfilled those needs.  You could put a survey up on your page or email them a few questions (if they’ve opted-in to emails).  You could run a Google AdWords campaign, which will show you which keywords and search strings people are using, and which of those result in clicks on your ad.  By comparing those figures with your sales figures, you can analyze which keywords are most successful.  How do you get those keywords?  With a little imagination, you can find the keywords searchers will enter to find your product or service.  There will be some obvious choices.  For example, our fictional friend, the candied apple seller, will want to use “apple(s),” “candied apple(s),” “caramel,” “caramel apple(s)” for some of his or her keywords.

So which one of those methods works best?  The answer is, any or all of them.  Of course if you’re new on the scene, you may have to wait to poll your current customer base.  Developing and managing these campaigns is time consuming; an internet marketing agency will help put your ideas together with the top knowledge and technology in the industry to bring you targeted traffic.  However, keywords and search strings aren’t the only ways to earn targeted traffic, so be sure to tune in next week for Targeted Traffic Part 2.