What do Internet Marketing Companies do?

Start of my campaign to help the world in regards to their Internet Marketing Questions.

I have been at this for a while now and my friends have only just started asking me what exactly do internet marketing companies do and why do you keep going on about how important they are?

My answer to this question is pretty simple really, the first objective of any good internet marketing company needs to be getting the right traffic to your website. It’s up to the company (or in my case me the account manager) to talk to the customer and find out what part of the business makes them the most money and pick the right keywords for that service/product. Then I would have to go away and find the best phrases that people type in.

This stage of the process is arguably the most important one. It is not just about finding words that are popular, it is about finding the right balance between search volume and competition. A phrase that thousands of people search for every month sounds great on paper, but if every major brand in the country is targeting it as well then ranking for it becomes a proper uphill battle. The real skill is in identifying those sweet spot phrases that get a decent number of searches but are not so competitive that smaller businesses have no chance of getting a look in. That takes time, experience and the right tools, and it is one of the things that separates a good internet marketing company from one that is just going through the motions.

Then it’s all hands on deck to get my client to the top of search engines for those phrases. More and more people use search engines to research and buy everything these days. Getting to the top of the results page does not happen overnight either and it is not just down to one single thing. It involves a combination of on-page work, making sure the content and structure of the website are sending the right signals, as well as off-page work like building quality backlinks and getting the site mentioned in the right places online. It is an ongoing process rather than a one off job.

Most people use the Google search engine and it is a part of everyone’s life now. For example, if you ask someone a question and they don’t know the answer they normally come back with the phrase “Google it”. That phrase alone says everything about how central Google has become to daily life. Whether you are looking for a local plumber, comparing car insurance or researching a big purchase, the journey almost always starts with a search engine. For businesses this means that if you are not showing up on Google, a huge chunk of your potential customers will never find you.

Having a website is no longer enough on its own either. In the early days of the internet just having a web presence gave you a real edge over competitors. Those days are well and truly gone. Pretty much every business has a website now so the competition online is fierce, and that is where internet marketing companies really come into their own. It is not about building a website and then leaving it to gather dust. It is about making sure that website actually does something for the business by bringing in the right kind of visitors.

There is also a lot more to internet marketing than just SEO. Social media, pay per click advertising, content marketing, email campaigns, all of these are part of the mix. But in my experience getting found on the search engines through organic SEO remains one of the most cost effective long term strategies for most businesses. Paid ads can get you to the top quickly enough but the moment you stop paying the visibility disappears with it. Organic rankings, built properly, can keep working for you for months or even years down the line.

That is why I talk about this stuff as much as I do. Once you see the difference that good internet marketing makes to a business, the phone calls it generates, the enquiries it brings in, it is hard not to get a bit enthusiastic about it.

This campaign and blog is here to help people who want to find answers to all the Internet Marketing Questions they may have. Whether you are completely new to all of this or you have already had a go at online marketing and cannot figure out why it is not working, hopefully this is the place for you.