Introduction
Ever since internet made its ingress into the business world, business houses around the world, irrespective of their nature of business, have been trying hard to get maximum exposure through e-marketing. Moreover, it’s very crucial to keep on trying because success doesn’t come in the first try. One has to be patient and optimistic. Whenever people start e-marketing, they anticipate lot many things such as:
My business site will be on the top on all the major search engines.
My business will increase manifolds within no time.
Mine will be the top brand.
My website will have numerous visitors (future customers).
My site will be a preferred site for esteemed SEOs like Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc.
And so on…
But gradually when people see that in spite of their repeated efforts, they are not getting the desired results, they get disheartened and loose interest in the most popular and favored method of marketing i.e., e-marketing. And as such, they resort to the primitive methods of marketing. This is the biggest mistake that they do. Such people actually should put in more efforts and time on e-marketing. It might be that when they decide to quit, success is at the brink and needs a little more effort.
Having talked about the mindset, let us understand the various important aspects of e-marketing. Apart from different segments of e-marketing such as banner ads, key words, page design, etc., there are some common things that e-marketers should keep in mind such as; Regular updating of the site contents, even distribution of content on all the site pages, identification and incorporation of appealing keywords, site promotion, traffic analysis, site map, social networking, pay-per-click advertising, adding unique features to the site, making the site affable to search engines, and so on.
Banner Advertisements
Banner advertisements are such advertisements that are entrenched in different websites. “Banner ads provide direct traffic to your website as just one click of a mouse button gives them information on a company’s products and services” (Kamboj, 2008). Certain charges (like pay-per-click) are levied for this service, a percentage of which goes to the website owner where the banner advertisements are embedded.
In 1994, a company called Hotwired gave space (468 x 60 pixels) in its website to an advertisement of AT&T. “Many businesses adopt passive web strategies – building a web site and assuming that customers will automatically find it – but a strategically placed banner ad is a very cost effective and aggressive method of building brand awareness…” (Fletcher, 2011). Amongst the various benefits of banner ads following are the most popular:
Immense coverage: Due to the fact that there is no time zone or geographical limitation for internet, the coverage of banner advertisements is immense. Banner advertisements allow and assist the advertiser to have greater exposure and hence more business.
Specific clientele: Banner advertisements can be placed in the websites of companies who deal in similar products or those that attract more visitors. Only those people will visit their sites that are actually in need of the products. Hence the pay-per-click charges do not pinch the advertiser.
Ease of keeping track: the advertisers of banner ads can keep a track of the number of visitors through each site where they have placed their advertisements. This will help them in making the necessary changes with regard to the sites where they have to place advertisements.
Cost effective: Since the advertisers have to pay on a pay-per-click basis, there is no wastage of money because only such people will click their ads that are looking for their products.
Advantage over SEOs: In SEO search, people have to type in the name of a company to visit its website whereas, in banner advertisements, they simply have to click the banner. So it’s a lot easier for the customers to locate the company and on the company’s part also it’s beneficial.
Hassle free: Unlike in marketing through SEOs, in banner ads companies don’t have to make any mailing list or post articles to attract customers. They simply have to post their advertisements and wait for the outcome.
Keyword Selection
Keywords are building blocks or the foundation of any SEO. “When a person goes to a search engine like Google or others, they type in a word or phrase that they want information on. This is what we call a keyword” (West). The concept is very simple. Keywords are used by SEOs to identify and display the websites that are relevant to those keywords. So while incorporating keywords in their websites, companies should take great care in identifying them. More and better keywords bring websites on a higher ranking.
There should be a very close and relevant relation between the keywords and the products or services. If any particular SEO finds it difficult to relate the keywords to the content of the website or products or services, it will not include that company in the list of displayed sites. “In order to effectively match a business’s keywords to those that will be entered by the users, selecting keywords must take into consideration the variety of keywords under the same topic that could be utilized when searching for it” (Letstalkseo). The following points should be taken into consideration while posting keywords:
Relevant keywords: The keywords should be relevant to the content of your website. You should not think of keywords from your perspective only but the mindset of the users should also be considered. You should know what the users might think of while searching for your products or services.
Density of the keywords: You should try and include the keywords into the content of your website as much as possible. If the density of your keywords is more, there are greater chances of your website being on a higher ranking.
Placements of keywords: Likewise the density (quantity) of keywords in your website, the quality of the keywords also has great significance. By quality it is meant the places where the keywords are included. In SEOs like Yahoo, having keywords in the URL helps a lot. The domain name should be short and should have two to three keywords. Another crucial place for placing keywords is the page title. Unlike the domain name, the page title should be a little long with a better description of your business and more keywords. Finally, the headings of different paragraphs should also include your keywords.
Page Design
“If a search engine could understand the layout of a web page and identify the most important part of a web page, it could pay more attention to that section of the page when indexing content from the page” (Slawski, 2008). Page design also plays a vital role in the promotion of your website. “”To make your business website as effective as it can be, it should have landing pages specific to what a prospective customer is looking for” (Seodiva, 2011).
The landing page should be as attractive as possible and should contain most of the information. It is not possible to design a perfect landing page initially. But with the passage of time and the feedback and the track records, you should always keep on improving your landing pages. Gradually the traffic on your web pages will increase and you will experience an increase in your revenues.
Search engines usually segregate websites on the following basis:
The appearance and relevance of the content of the website pages is the primary criteria. By appearance it means the colour and size of the content. Relevance means the relevancy of the content with the keywords of the user.
The layout of the website pages is also an important aspect. Simply designed websites are easy to find by the SEOs rather than the complex ones.
SEOs search for a significant area on the web page that contains the main and relevant information or matter.
SEOs don’t pay much attention to the banner ads while searching for keywords in the content. The bottom of the page that may contain either the company information or the navigation bars is also not searched by the SEOs. Even the top of the page that may contain the company logo is neglected.
All the three aspects that we have discussed in this paper are very crucial and none should be neglected if success is desired.
References
Fletcher, J. (2011). Discover the advantages of website banner advertising. Web.
Kamboj, D. (2008). Benefits of banner ads. Web.
Letstalkseo. (n.d.). The importance of keyword selection. Web.
Seodiva. (2011). The importance of landing pages. Web.
Slawski, B. (2008).The importance of page layout in SEO. Web.
West, L. (n.d.). Importance of keywords – Wrong keywords means no traffic. Web.