| By :
Mark Etinger
New to internet marketing? You're probably wondering where to begin promoting your business online. Read on to explore three smart marketing techniques to brand your business and attract more customers. 1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) SEO is the process of improving a website's search engine rankings on Google, Bing, Yahoo!, and other sites through a variety of methods. Every SEO plan begins with keyword selection --choosing five to seven high-volume, attainable words and phrases to target throughout the campaign. There are two main categories of SEO: on site SEO and off site SEO. On site SEO enhances a website to improve its Google performance. This involves a variety of strategic changes, from customizing page URLs to optimizing meta information and on page content. Off page SEO, alternatively, promotes a website through the creation and modification of external content, including business blogging, articles, classified listings, directory postings and social profiles on services like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. SEO linking -- creating backlinks leading back to your site -- is another important part of the process. 2. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Unlike an SEO plan, PPC smart marketing focuses on sponsored advertisements on Google, Yahoo!, Bing, Facebook and other engines. As the name implies, PPC charges advertisers by the click, so you're only paying for the traffic your campaign is bringing to your site. Of course, clicks do not imply conversions. For a successful PPC smart marketing campaign, you have to create compelling ads that lead to relevant pages. This pleases search engines like Google, which reward such relevant pairings with increased quality scores. It also boosts your conversions, by showing people what they want -- and expect -- to see when they click on your ads. 3. Social Media Optimization (SMO) Although many SEO linking plans contain a social networking component, SMO is important enough to constitute its own smart marketing field. SMO concerns a variety of different services, including: -Facebook
-Twitter
-LinkedIn
-MySpace
-Digg
-Delicious
-StumbleUpon
-Reddit
-Yahoo!
-Squidoo And that's only the tip of the iceberg! Although it can improve a website's search engine performance, SMO is about more than SEO linking -- it's about reaching out to potential customers directly. In many cases, the most effective way to spread a message through a social network is to do so through a power user: a Twitter user with a lot of followers or a Facebook user with a lot of friends, for example. If you can get a power user to link to your website, blog, or a relevant social profile, the benefits can be astounding. Overall, it's important to remember that there's no ideal smart marketing plan, only a variety of techniques, some of which will be more helpful to your business than others.
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