There is a wealth of money to be made online, and all you need to do to start making money is create a strong presence on the web. With so much competition, it is essential to develop your own strategy to stand out amongst the masses. In order to do this, you will need to fully comprehend how the online marketing equation works, so let’s take a look.
The Basics Of Online Marketing
Before you can begin to make money online, you will first need to understand the basics of online marketing. Simply put, online marketing is the process of gaining users to your site, whether it is a social media platform like Facebook or a traditional website. Once you have a number of users, you can then monetize the site either through affiliate marketing, or possibly through display advertisements.
The two above-mentioned models are the most popular ones amongst online marketers, and both of these models can be used to make money from an entrepreneurial standpoint. However, you should note that in order to make money from an individual standpoint, you will have to use the PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising model. In PPC advertising, you will pay each time a user clicks on your ad. The upside is that this is one of the most efficient ways to gain online users. The downside is that you will need to fund your PPC account with your own money as there are no fees associated with PPC ads.
Attracting Users To Your Site
Now that you have an idea of what online marketing is and how it works, let’s discuss the various methods you can use to attract users to your site. If you are running a traditional site with no social media presence, then the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategy is a perfect fit. However, if you are using a social media platform to grow your audience, then you will need to use a combination of SEO and Social media marketing. The reason behind this is that the algorithm that governs the search results on social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter are all about engagement and sharing.
Either way, the key to attracting visitors to your site is through content creation. As a minimum, you should be creating blog posts that are at least 500 words long. These posts can either be about your industry, or they can be based on actual events or surprises that you have witnessed. By creating content that is both relevant and interesting, you will be able to attract and grow your audience on social media.
Monetizing Your Site
Once you have a sizeable audience on your site, then you can begin to monetize it. This can be done through affiliate marketing or through display advertisements. With affiliate marketing, you will assign marketing links to various companies and brands. Whenever a user clicks on one of these affiliate links, then the company providing the affiliate program will pay you for the click. This can be a very easy way to make money online and the competition is generally not that crazy since you are usually linking to well-known brands and companies. The downside of this model is that you need to find a company that will pay you for each click, which can be a tedious process.
With display advertisements, you will need to have a display ad on your site that is of a fairly high quality. The reason behind this is that the higher the quality of a display ad, the more likely a user will click on it. The downside to this method is that you will need to find a company that will pay you for every click or viewer, which can also be a tedious process.
The Role Of SEO In Generating Valuable Traffic
In some cases, a traditional website with no social media presence will do just fine in terms of gaining valuable traffic. However, if you decide to take the social media route, then you will need to fully utilize the various tools that are available to you through search engine optimization. The purpose of SEO is to ensure that your website appears near the top of the search results when a user searches for a particular keyword or phrase. To truly master SEO, you will need to fully understand the basic principles of search engine optimization, which we will now discuss.
On-Site SEO
On-site SEO (Content SEO) is pretty self-explanatory; it involves optimizing the content on your website for search engines. Content SEO is essentially about making sure that your content is relevant for a specific search query and that it is of a high quality. Your writing style, the headers you use, and the body copy all play a part in making sure that your content is relevant for a given search query. Take a look at this article as an example; you are now a bit more informed on the topic of online marketing.
To gain backlinks, or in other words, to authorize other websites and social media platforms to link to your website, you will need to create evergreen content. Evergreen content is content that is both unique and valuable, and it is designed to persist over time. Essentially, evergreen content is just content that will keep people coming back for more. The reason behind this is that evergreen content is usually engaging enough that users will want to come back for more, or in other words, keep coming back. The golden rule for creating evergreen content is that you should be constantly adding value to your content. The more you add, the more people will value what you have to offer. The goal here is to build a reservoir of valuable content that you can pull from whenever you need it.
Off-Site SEO
Off-site SEO (Link SEO) is pretty much the opposite of on-site SEO. With off-site SEO, you are looking to gain valuable backlinks, or in other words, to authorize other websites and social media platforms to link to your website. To do this, you will need to compete for the top spot on search engines with your targeted keywords. To make sure that your off-site SEO strategy is working, you will need to use tools like the Google Keyword tool or fancy new SEO tools that are available for free on the web. Once you are able to compare keyword stats from multiple engines, you can see which keywords are working and which ones you should drop before resuming your efforts. The key to off-site SEO is in making sure that your link structure is natural and that it is not dominated by paid links, or in other words, fake links. These unnatural links and paid links can detract from the trustworthiness of a website or brand, or in some cases, even get you banned by Google or another search engine outlet.