Best Internet Marketing Strategies

By Steven Weber

It seems everyone wants to jump on the Internet money wagon. And the question they all are asking is this: What are the best Internet marketing strategies. It's a question with many answers. But in my opinion the single most important answer to the question is patience. Above all else, patience is an absolute requirement and will be one of the best Internet marketing strategies one can possess. The reason for this is that nothing comes easy in Internet marketing. It takes time to build a profitable presence on the web.

Patience Is a Virtue

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I recently gave advice to a friend who was developing an online business. In the course of one of our conversations I reminded him that it probably would be several months before he saw even one sale. This was after he had already spent countless hours building the site and preparing his business for orders. He seemed shocked I would say he may have to wait that long. But after further conversation, I helped him realize how important it was that patience was in his tool kit of the best Internet marketing strategies.

Although there are many ways of making money on the web, I will focus this discussion on the most common way which is selling goods or services. I will also assume you already have a sellable and potentially profitable product or service in mind and you have at least a basic knowledge of web design. This last assumption is the main stumbling block people have when wanting to start a web business. Simply put, it is a necessity to learn web design. Get a book, take a class, or get a friend's help in order to learn the necessary skills of web design.

Your Product's Name Is Crucial

Now we'll discuss the nuts of bolts of defining the best Internet marketing strategies. Assuming you are starting from scratch with a new product or service with a new web site, I'll first discuss the basic criteria which must be met. One of the best Internet marketing strategies is to have a product with a unique name. For example, you would prefer to sell a product named "SupremeBar" instead of "PowerBar". SupremeBar has only a handful of results in Google. PowerBar has 2.5 million. The trick is to find a niche product area which there is already a market for but has little competition yet in the search engines. It would be very difficult to start selling PowerBars on the Internet. There is way too much competition for that keyword, and would not be one of your best Internet marketing strategies.

Get Ranked!

Ok, so you have the perfect product with a relatively unique name. Now you must start creating the site. Google is the search engine of choice to be in. Over 65% of all searches on the Internet are through Google. Yahoo is number two and MSN is a distant third. I've found it is quite easy to get my brand new sites to be listed well in Yahoo and MSN, and those will send you some traffic. But one of the best Internet marketing strategies is to put all of one's efforts into getting listed high in Google. Just focus on that. If you do that, you will also show up well in MSN and Yahoo usually. And most of the time MSN and Yahoo will index your pages long before Google will.

Content Is King!

Remember, content is king on the Internet. Providing great content is one of the best Internet marketing strategies one can have. Google gives relevance to many things when deciding how high to rank your page. Relevant content, how many other sites link to you, how long the page has been indexed, etc. Since your site is brand new, the only thing you can offer the Google spider analyzing your site is content. You simply must create as much original content about your product as you can. Write pages about SupremeBar's nutritional content, its history, and its many uses as an energy bar, etc. Your first and core pages should be optimized on the keyword SupremeBar. The best Internet marketing strategies should be all about driving relevant traffic to you site. Searchers who find your site with a search of SupremeBar make up the absolute most relevant traffic. They are searching for what you sell!

No Spam Allowed

Remember, the content in your site MUST be original. Even though some sites may rank high with duplicated content, Google will tell you this is not a good thing and those sites risk being penalized. All the search engines consider this to be Spam. You should be able to copy and paste any paragraph on your site into an exact phrase match (using quotations) in a Google search and not find any other results but yours. Never ever copy someone else's content for your own. If you do, it will at some point come back to haunt you. Copied content is definitely not one of the best Internet Marketing strategies.

So now you have a great content and you need to create the page. My advice to you is to make the page as personal as possible. Your potential customers viewing the site must trust you. Without trust, you will not make any sales. The best Internet marketing strategies for the beginning web entrepreneur are to keep everything simple. You are probably not a pro at web design, but that is OK. Do not make the mistake of trying to make your site look fancy and super professional if you aren't an expert. It you try that, it will be obvious you are not and the site will look "cheesy". Just keep it simple and personal. People will trust either a simple, personal site or an expensive, high-tech looking site. They won't trust anything in between. Remember that point. It will be one of your best Internet marketing strategies!

Back To the Basics!

Use only basic HTML to build your site. Don't use Flash, layers, or fancy scripts. Not only does your code need to be clean for the spiders to read fast and easily, trying to be fancy will deter from the site. It's best to have a picture of yourself and talk about yourself, your family, your pets, etc. The best Internet marketing strategies should always include giving the viewers of your site confidence in you. People HAVE to feel comfortable with you before they will send you money!

Finally, the list of the best Internet marketing strategies has to include a discussion on the host and shopping cart used. You must have a reliable host. You must also have a payment method for your product. One can use PayPal and get a free shopping cart. It is fine at first and I suggest starting a new site with it. But after the sales start coming in, you will want a more robust shopping cart. Our most successful site was started with a Godaddy $3.95 per month hosting accounts using the Free PayPal shopping cart. Although the PayPal cart has limitations, it was an easy way to test our idea with little risk. Once the sales started coming in, we switched to a more advanced host and shopping cart with Yahoo.

Although I have only scratched the surface of describing for you the best Internet marketing strategies, you should have enough information here to be well on the road to success! Good Luck!

Article Source: EzineArticles.com/?expert=Steven_Weber