Internet Marketing: General

Internet marketing could have multiple aspects, which we try to explain and explore on this article. The different methods of Internet marketing include:

• Sponsored Listings with Google, Yahoo and MSN (Google Adwords, Overture)
• Directory listings (such as Yahoo Directory)
• Banner Ads
• Search Engine Optimization (free listings)

Sponsored Listings
Google, MSN, and Yahoo allow websites to advertise on their search results. A website owner simply agrees to pay a minimal amount of money each time an Internet surfer clicks on his or her website. There are many advantages and disadvantages to this kind of Internet Marketing.

The first advantage is that you can control the budget spent for Internet Marketing. You can put a cap on how much you want to spend on Internet marketing.

Another advantage is that sponsored listings have almost immediate results. Normally, within 48 hours after signing with the search engines, the dental website will be placed on the first page of these search engines.

The disadvantages are a few as well. For one thing, most Internet surfers ignore the sponsored listings and trust “free listings” more. Therefore, sponsored listings are not as an effective Internet marketing solution as Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is. On the other hand, many of you competitors can easily click on these sponsored listings costing you money without any real visitors to your website. This specially happens in competitive markets that price per click is significant. As studies by search engines show, about 50% of clicks on sponsored listings is initiated by website’s rivals.

Directory Listings
There are many directories on line that will place websites on their site for a fixed amount of money per year. Both Yahoo and MSN have directories that websites can place their links on them.

The advantages of directory listings are: first, your website will get a link from a highly valued website by other search engines. This link, will improve your website’s position on the search engines.

Second, many visitors to these sites look in their directories for websites they are looking for. It is very likely that your website will receive traffic from these directories as well. In our opinion, the annual fee for placing your website on these directories is well worth it.

Banner Ads
Banner ads refer to advertisements that are placed on the top (bottom, or side) of different websites and encourage site visitors to click on them and be directed to your website. The advantage of these ads is that they are graphical and attract attention when someone is looking at the page. From the marketing point of view, these ads are very effective and can drive a good number of Internet visitors.

The disadvantage of the banner ads is that the links are image links and not text links. Search engine “spiders” (“spiders” are software that “crawl,” read and rank your website and follow links on each site) sometimes cannot read and follow image links, therefore, the link you receive from a banner ad would have no effect on the ranking of your website. For “spiders” that can read your image ads, the disadvantage is that there is no “text link.” Meaning that the “spider” cannot associate the image link with your website’s keywords.

Another disadvantage of banner ads is their price. Banner ads are the most expensive form of advertisement on the Internet.

Search Engine Optimization
Of course, our specialty is Search Engine Optimization (SEO or Website Optimization). Search engines have developed very sophisticated software programs (spiders) that “crawl” the Internet and read all the sites they come across in order to rank them on their database for specific keywords. These “spiders” have numerous criteria in ranking your website, which are called algorithms. “Spider” algorithms vary from search engine to search engine, however, they all follow the same general rule: “highly related websites and most popular ones will be placed higher.” Our job is to make your website both “popular” as well as “relevant.”

To make your website relevant, we “optimize” it. Website optimization refers to changing the code of your website and inserting your keywords throughout the site’s content.

To make your website popular, we link to it from our network of clients as well as directories, etc.

To learn more about the techniques we utilize for search engine positioning, please click on this website optimization link.