Beginning Your Online Marketing Journey

The World Wide Web as we know it, is now well over a decade old. That said, like many significant shifts in society driven by technology, many (if not most) businesses, have been slow to react to the opportunities and challenges it presents. If as a business owner, you already have some sort of online presence, and have started having conversations with your customers and potential market online, then congratulations. Congratulations for at least realising the importance of the World Wide Web, and congratulations for taking the initial step.

If on the other hand, you have not begun your online journey, do not worry too much, yet. There is no better time to get started than the present. In the decade and a half since the web went mainstream, a lot has changed. Many businesses made huge and expensive mistakes in the early days, and in many ways, technology has caught up with many of the ideas that early visionaries were hyping. In short, the future has arrived.

Today, the internet (particularly the web), is a more mature place, with more mature technologies, and greater social acceptance and penetration than it was just 5 years ago. The increasing maturity and size of the marketplace has also had the added bonus of allowing an industry of professionals to grow. Businesses looking to begin, or increase the effectiveness of their online strategies, will find the services of professionals in online marketing and in search engine optimization invaluable.

In the not too distant past, the web seemed to be just a place where any hotshot company with a really cool name, and run by teenagers, went public, raised (and spent) lots of money, before crashing and burning. Gone are those days. Instead, today you have businesses using the web like every other technological development before it; to add value and in some ways transform existing business relationships and practices. In the same way that the telephone transformed many businesses, and made it possible for many new kinds of business to exist, so is the impact of the world wide web today.

Irrespective of the extent of the impact of the web on your business though, a key common thread is search. The first stop for most people seeking information or a product, will be one of the major search engines. Developing a web strategy without putting Search at the heart of it, is a bit like winking at a pretty girl in the dark. You might know what you are doing, but if she doesn’t, then the whole exercise is pointless.

Anyone building a website will [eventually] have it indexed by all the major search engines. That however, is no guarantee that the site will ever appear in any search results. Indeed, it is just as important that your business site appear not just in any search results, but in the results that will deliver paying customers. This in short is the practice of SEO. Get it right, and your online forays will be very profitable. Ignore it, and well, keep winking at pretty girls in the dark.