Online marketing is turning out to be a powerful marketing tool, and is overtaking conventional marketing strategies. But just like other marketing tools or strategies it has to be used properly for it to be effective. These are some of the essential tips for online marketing

Using Your Website

If you already have a website, then update it continuously. And, if you don't have one then it is high time you launched a website. Get a professional to help you out if you are not well versed in these things. Here are some basic guidelines to design a website.

- Make sure all the pages in the site have the same look
- As much as possible try to place the contents of your pages in a HTML table
- The main page is your storefront or your reception area. If this does not impress your visitors then they will go away and not come back again.
- Keep your navigations on the left, top, bottom or right side of each page
- Content is king. Make the information concise and complete

Search Engine Optimization

Once you have started marketing online it is not going to be effective unless you have visitors to your website. Visitors can come to your website in two ways. They can come directly by typing the address of your website on the address bar. This is good enough if people know about your website. What about people who don't know about it? They will come to you through a search engine. You have to be savvy with the techniques that are used to ensure that your website gets the top rankings in a search engine. This is because people tend to visit sites that are listed on the first page of a search. So, if you are not aware of the techniques then again it is a good idea to consult a professional. You can also do your research on the internet. There are lots of good articles available on the net on this topic.

Knowing about the various Marketing Strategies

There are a lot of ways to market on the internet. You can use your website of course but, how do you use it. You can use
- Email marketing - Basically email marketing involves sending emails or newsletters to existing or new customers.
- Starting an affiliate program - An affiliate program is an advertising program that make sure that the traffic is diverted to your website or the business is directed to you
- Placing ads- It can besetting up an automated Google sitemap, signing up for Google Ad words or you could post articles on an article distribution website
- Articles in marketing - Articles are a very powerful marketing tool. No business can hope to succeed on the internet without writing articles
- Press release - People are not going to notice your product unless they know something about it. Issuing a press release is a good idea.
- Blog marketing - A blog is basically a web log in a diary like format. Blogging can help in marketing your product.
- Podcasting, RSS feeds, seeding etc. are emerging technologies which are being used for internet marketing.

Knowing the Importance of Links
It is essential that the website achieves top rankings in major search engines like Google to attract a large customer base. There are many methods to do that and one among them is the use of links. Links are lines of text or graphic that connects a web page to another page or another portion of the same site OR to another site. You have to "click" on the links to go to the area specified in the link. The larger the number of links to your site, greater is the possibility of a higher ranking for your site. There are many kinds of links like inbound links, out bound links, reciprocal links etc.

Testing the Marketing Strategy
You should use tracking software to keep track of which ads, keywords, etc are brining you sales and which are not. Focus on the most effective methods, and keep testing - you can continually refine your marketing and improve your profitability with good testing.


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