At Last, A Plain English Guide to Internet Marketing

Have you ever been horrified and intimidated at the convoluted, jargon-reliant information about Internet marketing available on the Net?

Often it results in many companies becoming confused and therefore reluctant to put into practice what would be a valuable and simple business resource when understood and applied correctly.

Market Research consultant for Inteltab, Gordon Goodfellow, who is also an English literature graduate, decided it was time for a change. Part of this desire to make Internet marketing more accessible may be due to his past experience as a teacher.

"I was sick of all the gobbledegook that surrounds the Internet, even today," he explains.

"Marketing on the Net isn't rocket science and should not be presented as such. Everyone should have access to it. That's the beauty of it."

Having spent four years researching and assessing the best way of getting an effective message across on the Internet, he began to design a basic introduction to Internet marketing. The result of this hard work is Applied Web Marketing. AWM is a comprehensive beginner's guide to marketing on the Internet, covering everything from domain names to e-commerce and merchant accounts, and written in plain English. This is designed for the small business user and the home business user who does not want to spend a fortune on outside "experts".

The key to most of Internet marketing is search engine optimisation. The key to good search engine optimisation is keyword research. In other words, knowing which keywords or search terms people are using to find what they're looking for on the Internet. If keyword research is done properly then there is no doubt that you will get highly targeted visitors to your website. This is obviously the professional way of going about things. It is the antithesis to the "spam" approach (unsolicited commercial emails) which achieves extremely poor results and simply annoys anyone unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end.

But which search engine should you optimise for? The search engine of choice at the moment is Google. There are two good reasons for this. Firstly, Google is the most popular search engine on the Internet today. It is known for the quality and relevance of its search results, and so people trust it. Secondly, over the last couple of years Google has joined alliances with other search engines and directories. AOL and Netscape share Google's search findings, so you'll have similar search results on the AOL and Netscape databases. Other lesser databases also rely on Google, so that if you are well represented on Google, then you'll be well represented on over sixty per cent of Internet search facilities.

Yahoo, the world's most popular directory, has since launched its own search engine, which makes it now a main competitor to Google (in the past Yahoo took its own results from Google's database). You can still submit your site to Yahoo for free, but expect a listing to take several weeks.For a more immediate effect you may wish to explore Yahoo's alliance with Pay Per Click engine Overture.

Microsoft is also said to be developing its own search engine as part of its MSN sphere of influence. Expect this to be a major player as well.

You should also obtain a listing on the Open Directory Project (DMOZ.org) which is not much known about but very well respected in the search engine optimisation industry. The Open Directory does not use the normal search engine "spiders" or robot searchers; instead it uses over thirty thousand volunteer human editors who are ostensibly experts in their own fields. The theory behind this is that it ensures relevancy, accuracy and quality of all listings. A listing in DMOZ will therefore ensure a listing on Google and probably earn you an enhanced ranking there. Then all the others, like Yahoo, AOL, Netscape, MSN and the rest are bound to follow.

Optimisation is everything. The Applied Web Marketing website itself has the number one position on Google out of 1.47 million search results for the search term "applied web marketing".

After optimisation is the submission process. Perceived wisdom of the moment says it is best to submit manually. Manual submissions to dozens of search engines and directories can be very time-consuming, however. There are some good automated and semi-automated software packages available out there to do the submissions for you. But for the major players do find the time for manual submissions. Some search engines, for example Alta Vista, make it impossible for automated submission by software programs, because of individualised text codes that must be entered by hand at the start of the submission process, so you have to submit to Alta Vista manually as well. But that just takes about three minutes.

Don't bother with ads that say that they can "blast your web site to 500,000 search engines". There aren't that many search engines; there's only a few hundred in total, and only about a dozen of any major importance. You'll just pay your money and be very disappointed. Most of these so-called search engines are link farms, FFA or free-for-all sites, which nobody every looks at, and which are responsible chiefly for sending out spam. If you link to such web sites you risk being penalised by the bona fide search engines.

The next thing to have lots of is patience. A listing on Google should probably appear within a couple of weeks if you have optimised your pages roperly. Incidentally, if you have multiple pages on your web site, as is mostly the case, it is important only to submit the index or home page, and let Google's spider "Googlebot" to find and index the other pages itself using the links that you should have set up on your site.

The Applied Web Marketing guide has useful links to many resources, lots of them completely free, and to the submission pages of the major search engines and directories, making it a perfect site to begin your journey into the world of Internet marketing.

About The Author

Gordon Goodfellow has spent 20 years in the market research industry as a research manager and specwriter consultant. He now runs a thriving Internet marketing consultancy with clients all over the world. The main website, www.AppliedWebMarketing.com, is freely accessible.

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Google News Updated : Fri, 22 Aug 2008 00:13:38 GMT IAC Officially Breaks Up - Wall Street Journal Los Angeles Times IAC Officially Breaks Up Wall Street Journal - 55 minutes ago By DAVID BENOIT and KATHY SHWIFF IAC is left as a collection of more than 35 Internet companies -- including search engine Ask.com, dating site Match. IAC: And Then There Were Five Forbes Diller's IAC Split May Fail to Boost Investor Returns (Update2) Bloomberg The Associated Press - MarketWatch - FOXBusiness - CNNMoney.com all 280 news articles Publ.Date : Thu, 21 Aug 2008 23:17:40 GMT Marlins let one slip away in San Francisco - Sports Network The Associated Press Marlins let one slip away in San Francisco Sports Network - 39 minutes ago San Francisco, CA (Sports Network) - Marlins reliever Kevin Gregg's wild pitch in bottom of the ninth inning scored Emmanuel Burriss to send San Francisco past Florida, 4-3, in the finale of a three-game series. Giants walk off on Gregg's wild pitch MLB.com Giants beat Marlins on wild pitch in 9th inning The Associated Press San Jose Mercury News - Rotoworld.com - Akron Farm Report - Flamarlins.com all 81 news articles Publ.Date : Thu, 21 Aug 2008 23:33:45 GMT GM to Invest $500 Million To Build Chevy Cruze - Wall Street Journal Turkish Press GM to Invest $500 Million To Build Chevy Cruze Wall Street Journal - 3 hours ago By KATHY SHWIFF General Motors Corp. will spend more than $500 million in the US to build the Chevrolet Cruze, a next-generation compact car. GM announces $500M investment for small car The Associated Press GM to invest $500 million in small car plant MarketWatch Reuters - CNNMoney.com - CNET News - BloggingStocks all 266 news articles Publ.Date : Thu, 21 Aug 2008 21:10:12 GMT Microsoft's Photosynth wilts under pressure - Computerworld Washington Post Microsoft's Photosynth wilts under pressure Computerworld - 44 minutes ago By Gregg Keizer August 21, 2008 (Computerworld) Within hours of its launch, Microsoft Corp.'s new photo-stitching service went dark, overwhelmed by demand, the company said Thursday afternoon. New Microsoft photo site spends first day offline The Associated Press New Microsoft Tech Converts Photo Soup Into 3-D Image TechNewsWorld InformationWeek - PC Magazine - TG Daily - Christian Science Monitor all 323 news articles Publ.Date : Thu, 21 Aug 2008 23:28:59 GMT My Super Sweet 16: The Miley Cyrus Edition - E! Online E! Online My Super Sweet 16: The Miley Cyrus Edition E! Online - 3 hours ago Miley Cyrus is about to show up all those spoiled brats on My Super Sweet 16 who think they're cool being flown to their party by helicopter or when they're carried in like a princess by a group of hot dudes. Miley Cyrus to Celebrate Turning 16 at Disneyland People Magazine Miley Cyrus Sweet 16 KFSN Press-Enterprise - The Gossip Girls - United Press International - Best Syndication all 87 news articles Publ.Date : Thu, 21 Aug 2008 20:21:48 GMT Hillary Clinton's Staff Looking to Avoid Embarrassing Anti-Obama ... - FOXNews Times Online Hillary Clinton's Staff Looking to Avoid Embarrassing Anti-Obama ... FOXNews - 58 minutes ago Hillary Clinton's staff is trying to avoid an embarrassing anti-Obama demonstration by her supporters during the floor vote at next week's Democratic convention in Denver. Clinton Will Attend Fund-Raiser for Towns New York Times Clinton for VP? She Says Ask the Obama Campaign ABC News CNN Political Ticker - New York Times Blogs - Newsweek - U.S. News & World Report all 546 news articles Publ.Date : Thu, 21 Aug 2008 23:15:16 GMT UPDATE 1-Microsoft enlists Seinfeld for ad campaign--source - Reuters UPDATE 1-Microsoft enlists Seinfeld for ad campaign--source Reuters - 2 hours ago By Steve Gorman LOS ANGELES, Aug 21 (Reuters) - Comedian Jerry Seinfeld will star in a $300 million marketing campaign for Microsoft Corp aimed at burnishing the image of its computer operating system, a person familiar with the effort said on Thursday ... Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates to star in anti-Apple ads TG Daily Seinfeld to be pitchman for Microsoft The Associated Press Slashdot - Bizjournals.com - GameSHOUT - Ars Technica all 474 news articles Publ.Date : Thu, 21 Aug 2008 21:27:28 GMT RSS to HTML More Web Site Traffic

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