You’ve bought your domain name, designed your website, and filled it with content. As time goes by, it dawns on you that although your website looks great, you just aren’t getting the level of traffic you were expecting. You spend money on Google Ads and yet, it just isn’t leading people to your website.

Sound familiar? In the age of the internet, it is essential that you learn internet marketing so that your business can grow.

While marketing your website online can be tricky, it is not impossible.

The good news is that you don’t need to spend money on marketing classes or buy any fancy books. Just follow these tips and tricks to get started increasing traffic to your website!

Why Learn Internet Marketing?

Marketing online is different than traditional marketing. While online marketing still benefits from conventional marketing practices, it also incorporates elements that are unique to the online world.

Online marketing requires particular writing formats, keywords, links, and other considerations in order to effectively market to customers online.

Marketing online is essential for you to increase traffic to your website.

Select Your Target Market

Much like traditional marketing, it is important that you identify your target market. The target market is the specific group of people you are marketing your products and services to.

Before you can begin to enhance your website, you must clearly define who you are trying to attract. This can include their behaviors, age, gender, location, income level, marriage status, and interests. The more specific you are, the easier it will be to market to this group.

This way, you aren’t guessing who you expect to come to your website. This is also a good way to find out who your competition is.

Really understanding who will be visiting your website will help you to write and design your content.  Once you have defined your target market, you can begin to focus on Search Engine Optimization.

Search Engine Optimization

While paying for ads on Google and Bing may increase traffic to your website, they are not lasting solutions. What this means is that the moment you stop paying for these advertisements, your traffic will drop back down. That is why it important to consider SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

In short, Search Engine Optimization is the practice of using keywords to rank higher naturally on search engines. In other words, algorithms used by Google and Bing will rank your website based on your content (as well as other factors) which will affect how you rank on the search engine.

Since everybody wants to be on page one of Google, there is some tough competition to get there.

Think of it as prime real-estate. Everybody wants to be located on the main street in the center of town. That is going to increase the number of people who come to their store and in turn, increase the profits of that company.

Search engine optimization is very similar in the way that everyone is competing for the best location on internet main street. However, Google is the landlord and they are constantly moving you from place to place depending on how you run your website.

Google and Bing major search engines that make it possible for new customers to find your website naturally. While many website owners choose to pay for advertisements on Google and Bing, there is a way to make it so that your website ranks naturally on these search engines.

Online Marketing Tools

Using free tools such as Alexa by Amazon and Google Analytics are great ways to check how many visitors are checking out your site. Moreover, these tools make it possible to find out the behaviors and other preferences of your viewers.

All you have to do is set up accounts with these websites and they will begin to automatically collect data for your website. They are free to use and will give you data and insight necessary to improve your website. 

Google and other search engines use complex algorithms to rank websites. It is difficult to do this by intuition alone. Instead, equip yourself with tools that will make your job a lot easier.

For WordPress users, free tools such as Yoast SEO and All in One SEO Pack are excellent tools that will help you author content necessary to get your website pages to rank high on page one of Google.

Social Media Marketing

Social media has become a powerful tool for internet marketing. As user-friendly as it is, using social media to market your online store or blog can be more challenging than you might expect.

Depending on how familiar you are with social media already, you might have to spend some time observing user’s behavior before jumping in head-first.

Keep in mind that most people have a very short attention span. That means that if you post a long-winded paragraph about a new product or service, you will quickly get glossed over. Think quality over quantity.

Also, don’t assume that just because you put it out there, people will read it. Make your content interesting.

Once you have defined your target market, join Facebook groups and other online groups to find out what topics, issues, and products are important to them. This will help you gain a better understanding of your audience.

Perhaps the most important tip is that you should not to have 1,000 shares and likes overnight. Social media marketing is more of a long-term marketing strategy that if done well, can really pay off.

Email Marketing

Ever wonder why websites are always asking you for your email address? Well, it’s actually an effective marketing strategy that helps websites connect with their visitors.

Having an email list allows website owners to inform potential customers about upcoming product releases, discounts, and other information that they might find relevant.

A word of caution, don’t be a spammer. Potential customers are quick to send your well-crafted email straight to their spam folder where it will never see the light of day. Keep your emails short, not too frequent, and worth their time.

Like social media, using emails is a great way to stay in touch with your current, past, and potential customers.

Email tools like Mail Chimp help to streamline the email marketing process, making it easier for you to connect with your customers.

Conclusion

Learning how to market online is a long-term process. The more time you spend researching and trying, the more likely you will be to break through and increase traffic to your website.

We live in an age where internet marketing impacts our daily lives, whether we notice it or not. More importantly, for a website to be successful they must be using good internet marketing practices.

Using tools to help with Search Engine Optimization, social media, and email can help increase the number of people who come to your website.

While paying for ads online does work, it is always a better idea to try and rank naturally. That way you can be sure that your pages and content will remain on page one of Google for longer periods of time.

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