Internet Marketing: How To Do It Wrong

Internet marketing is vital to the success of a company in this day and age. I have no doubt that you’ve already read several articles about how important it is. But it’s not enough to just engage in Internet advertising. Like all forms of advertising, there are right ways to do it and wrong ways to do it. Are you guilty of any of these sins?

Search Engine Optimization And Content Quality

How one should approach the art of SEO won’t necessarily be the same way that someone else should approach it. Each company is different, so finding what you’re doing right and wrong requires some nuance. If you want tailored help for your company, you might be better working with an SEO consultant. But in general, there are mistakes that everyone should be avoiding, regardless of who they are or what their company does.

The dreaded phrase in this arena is black hat. Black hat SEO tactics are the unethical opponent of white hat SEO. Let’s ignore the antiquated ‘white is right’ implication in those names for a second and look at some black hat tactics.

A general rule of thumb is that if the technique increases the ranking of your page but provides no value to the user, then it’s probably black hat. Stuffing your desired keyword again and again into useless articles that aren’t helpful to anyone is one example. People searching for that term may come across your that website and get it a hit. But the content itself offers nothing to the user. They’ve only been brought here to provide a hit and look at the adverts on the website. Don’t be fooled by companies that boast about effective black hat SEO tactics. Do not work with them. Stay ethical or you could land into trouble with Google.

Your Website And Subscription Services

The quality of your website is crucial to how effective your Internet marketing is going to be. There are some very obvious factors that many companies fail when it comes to the website. If your website isn’t completely ready for use when your start your campaign, you’ve made a big mistake. So many companies begin Internet marketing before their website is 100% ready for public use. Let’s say a user sees something in a blog article linking to your website (with nice white hat SEO!) and goes to visit it. They’re suddenly confronted by a LAUNCHING SOON landing page. Congratulations! That potential customer is now going to click away and forget about your website entirely. Be prepared for the actual users before you start trying to get them!

Your website domain also needs to be something trustworthy, unique and memorable. While not too many pay attention to the URL when they’re actually on your website, it can affect you in other ways. Let’s say you want to send an email to a potential customer. It needs to be clear who that email is coming from. With this in mind, you should make sure your emails always come from your company’s business domain. Don’t send emails from Hotmail or Yahoo! People will just assume they’re spam.

Of course, you should only be emailing users with their consent. That doesn’t mean you should force a user to subscribe to emails to view your website! Many companies make this mistake. Don’t make it yourself.