This year 2009 has marked a substantial change in trend for advertising as it’s the 1stlong-established advertising processes to Online Marketing. A recent report from the Internet Advertising Bureau announced that spending on internet ads grew in the 1st quarter of 2009 by 4.6% to hit 1.7 billion, whereas advertising on television dropped to 1.6bn from last years 1.9bn for the same period. The same report mentioned the reasons for this move are quicker broadband speeds, more advanced online techniques and people just generally spending more time on the internet these days. Modern companies have needed to significantly restructure their advertising budgets to follow the consumers online. More measurable and accountable methods are also a great reason for selecting an Online Marketing campaign especially in today’s demanding marketplace. Television advertising is not the only traditional method to be hit by thismove to Online Marketing; classified adverts in print have also been falling, whilst their online equivalents have increased by ten percent.

As already stated the companies are purely following their potential audience in this. As more and more people have quicker broadband access to the internet and are becoming increasingly more intrepid in the online purchase scenario, so the advertising budgets must follow. The online demographic is also changing, with the average 16 to 24 year old spending twenty nine percent of their media time on the internet. The other factor that is so agreeable to modern companies is the measurability of Online Marketing. It’s so easy to keep track of precisely what results your advertising budget is delivering online as opposed to TV or print media advertising. This move to more internet advertising is also improving the digital technology industry as it promotes development and innovation. The trade advertising body for TV advertisers Thinkbox feels there is still room for both, stating that internet advertising is very much more compelling when linked together with a good TV advertising campaign.

So who are the winners in this scenario? Well although a lot of the advertising budgets are now being spent on paid for search methods, in which the search giant Google dominates, there is also a trend for the small to medium company turning to a respectable search engine optimization company to help them attain a presence on the internet. The key to being successful is making sure that optimum Search Engine Placementis achieved. With this in mind it is essential to choose a company that only uses ethical Online Marketing methods. This may at first sound rather daunting as there are plenty of SEO companies out there on the internet. Steer clear of any that say they can guarantee page 1 Search Engine Placement immediately as all of the ethical methods are quite intensive and take time and effort to effectuate. Also take a look at their own website, ask what keywords were used and check where they themselves appear, if they can’t optimise their own website they won’t be able to do it for yours.

There have been a lot of news stories lately about private wheel clamping businesses. One in particular mentioned a young man who had his car clamped outside his own dwelling. He had a parking permit but unfortunately it had fallen down from the windscreen so was not visible to the clampers, and even though he was able to display this to them he still was required to pay 300 pounds to have the clamp removed. The statement was made that the conduct of the clamping company were legal but were they ethical. This real life situation really helps explain the many methods used to promote websites on the internet by a SEO Company. They are called respectively Black Hat and White Hat optimisation.

The two names come from a reference to black and white American westerns, where the bad guy usually wore a black hat and the good guy wore a white one. Consequently Black Hat optimisation is the bad guy, it’s not necessarily illegal but it is unethical. Some examples of Black Hat Online Marketing are keyword stuffing, cloaking and doorway pages, all of these methods are used by Online Marketing businesses to get an instant financial return from the website and the fact that the site will usually end up being banned is of little significance. Keyword Stuffing involves placing recurring sequences of keywords in both the meta tags or actual content of the site. Cloaking is a system that is usually run by server side scripting and it presents a different version of a web page to a search engine spider than the one that is presented in the internet browser. This hidden web page will contain repetitions of keywords. Doorway pages work in a very similar way, but since most search engines now discover and remove from their listings any doorway pages they find, most doorway pages tend to just try and trick the searcher into clicking a link for redirection. As already mentioned all these methods will result in better Search Engine Placement in the short term, but will most certainly destroy a fine online reputation in the process.

The good guy is White Hat Online Marketing; this is the ethical way of promoting your web page and whilst Black Hat Online Marketing is mostly aimed at the search engines, White Hat Online Marketing considers the human audience. It is a long term system that follows closely the search engines rules and policies. Some examples of White Hat Online Marketing are keyword analysis, back linking, link building and writing content for human readers. All of these methods are more intensive and time consuming than their Black Hat equivalents. Keyword analysis involves interacting with a client to find out all you can about their business to put together a keyword list, then using the many search engine analytical tools deciding on the best to use for their site. Both back linking and link building build page ranking in a very similar way by linking a site to others offering very similar products or services. The system of writing content for human audiences it the most time consuming of all the White Hat systems and is definitely not used by the unethical Black Hat fraternity.

In the age of computers, a lot of the customary marketing methods have become almost obsolete and although these methods can still be useful to an extent, it would be fruitless to rely solely on these methods. In this day and age the key form of marketing is carried out is online. This can be described as the advertising of a product using the forum of the online community and the systems this gives. The use of Online Marketing has risen over the past ten years due to an increase in the use of the internet in the house. This rise in global, online, communication can be credited to the increasing desire for fast, effective, communication. Through the increase in the use of the internet, new marketing techniques were shaped, moving advertising from the “physical” to the “online”. This means that certain kinds of marketing techniques such as mail-shots have now been replaced with spam e-mails. As such I would argue that the “traditional” marketing techniques have not died; they have actually been replaced and have “developed.

It is through the growth and development of these marketing processes that we can start to see the pros and the cons in the marketing world. With any kind of promotion there is typically a price but with the online market this is massively reduced due to the fact that online products can be very cheap (many being free). In the technological era there are lots of different ways to use the internet but one of the main ways people would seem to use the internet is through the use of web-based search engines. This is the searching of an online database for particular websites via the use of search criteria. This is an successful way of finding websites that you do not necessarily know the URL address of, and allows the user of the search engine to identify new websites that contain the information that they are looking for. This “mass-use” of search engines means that they are ideal for marketing if used correctly. The best use of search engines for marketing is called Search Engine Placement. This is the advertising of your website by ensuring it is positioned at the beginning of the results list when appropriate criteria are entered into the search engine. Search Engine Placement is done by including keywords on your website and the keywords used when adding your website to the search engines database.

The placing of the keywords on your website is something that even though easy to do can be something that is done inefficiently (making it useless). This is where you might decide to use a company such as an Search Engine Optimization Company. SEO (Search engine optimisation) organisations are companies that have expert knowledge of the way in which search engines operate and how best to market a website using the engines. An SEO Company can help promote your business, not only assisting with decision on specific keywords but also through the usage of those keywords too. Hopefully the right placement of keywords on your website will increase the clients to the site, thus increasing business and in due course revenue.

But what are the best bits and problems of online marketing? Online marketing is simple and can be done by anybody but for fully effective marketing it would be sensible to bring someone in to help. This may seem like it defeats the principal of online marketing, in that it costs, but it is less costly than other forms of promotion.

How to get ahead in the Online Marketing game? This is a critical question with many answers that I will try and detail below.

It is a dog-eat-dog out there and nothing can appear more taxing and frightening than the online market; especially for those that are less than “tech-savvy”. In all reality it is reasonably simple to understand, and ultimately compete in, and by using some simple tricks of the trade you can increase your business notably. To begin one must first acknowledge that in this current age technology is at the forefront of the business world, with services such as the internet becoming more commonly used; to the extent where some businesses are run completely online. It is this increase in the use of technology that has formed the online market and therefore the need for Online Marketing. With this in mind it would be fruitless to stay stuck using the marketing techniques of old, without at least including new techniques specifically designed for use in the online market.

Such specific techniques include Search Engine Placement. This involves using concepts such as search engine optimisation to place a website higher on the lists of results for search engines. This technique is useful due to the way online trade is carried out (through websites) and the way in which customers find out about such businesses (via search engines). When looking for a certain kind of business customers will use a search engine to identify websites associated to their search-data. When using a search engine, customers will enter criteria and the search engine will find and list websites with certain keywords (placing the website with the most keywords first). Search Engine Placement is designed to help place a website higher on the search engine results list, so making the website for a business more noticeable and therefore ideally increasing the amount of customers (and thus profit). This is one of the key ways within which one can increase the business flow to their website as search engines have become some of the most used sites on the web. This is due to the fact that search engines facilitate further exploration into the World Wide Web and allow for discovery of new sites.

How can search engine placement be achieved successfully? One might just place keywords on the home page of their website and hope for the best but this very rarely works. It is through the careful planning of the specific keywords and the placement of said keywords that businesses flourish in the online market. One can optimise in the online business market through the use of and SEO Company. An SEO company is a company/business that deals specifically with the optimisation for websites for search engines. Such companies help with the choosing and placement of keywords to help the website get higher on the search engine results listings. This is typically done through article writing that is specifically tailored to the needs of the company. With many different things to oversee business owners will almost certainly not have the time to write these articles or even consider the online market in much detail and this is where an SEO Company can be used to help with such problems.

Big Organisations can most likely have their own dedicated specialists to improve the Search Engine Placement of their websites, but for small to medium organisations it can probably make good sense to appoint a dedicated SEO Company.

Choosing the right SEO Company can be both very cost effective and extremely profitable in the long term. It is very easy for a company to spend thousands of pounds of its Online Marketing budget on optimization and not see any appreciable benefit from the process. Some optimisers claim any improvement in Search Engine Placement to be a success no matter how modest. However what a website really needs is to be seen on page 1 of the search engine results. Most potential customers will only It is not unknown for a SEO Company to see the optimization process as a one-time exercise without the continuing support required to ensure that the service continues to pay dividends over the long term.

A reputable SEO Company should offer better value for money and will only employ ethical methods to improve the Search Engine Placement for a website on a search engine results page.

The basis of good ethical optimization is a careful analysis and use of keywords and phrases that a potential customer is likely to use on and around the company’s website. The SEO Company ought to agree the keywords to be supported with the business, as that list of keywords can be the basis of payments made by the business for its improved Search Engine Placement.

The optimiser may well be able to suggest further adjustments that will enhance the visibility of the client’s website to the search engines. They should also provide continuing support that will enhance the reputation of the business with the online community and the search engines through links from equally reputable websites and by written contributions to blogs and document banks.

The Search Engine Optimization Company should be able to provide consultants local to the client in order to be able to easily provide this continuing support.

How a SEO Company structures its charges could be the deciding factor. There could be a one-time large payment for the whole process. There could be fixed continuing support charges. There is additionally the charging structure used by some optimisers which consists of a moderate set-up fee to cover the primary analysis of the client’s site followed by modest payment by results. The charges being triggered when agreed search keywords reach the required page 1 Search Engine Placement. The success being proven with statistics provided by the search engines.

An unscrupulous SEO Company could use techniques that are considered unethical and that could result in the client’s website being actively banned by the search engines. The misleading results from the search engines caused by this sort of activity could also damage the reputation of the business with potential customers.

Employing an outside specialist consultant will bring in an expert with fresh eyes to look over the business’s website and suggest suitable enhancements to improve the Search Engine Placement. They will also be able to take the time to provide the continuing support needed to keep that improved position, and so augment the Online Marketing of the client.

In order to generate revenue, your website needs traffic. It has to be appropriate traffic though. There’s little point in a person visiting your website that sells office furniture when they’re trying to findvideo games! Such miss-directs result in a frustrated searcher, and nothing for your business except redundant traffic. There are a variety of Online Marketing strategies to get people to your site –customers that need exactly what your business is supplying. Pay-per-click, newsletters, publishing articles, joining forums, trading links with other sites, and, most crucially, a high search engine placement.

Search Engine Placement is a very imperativefactor in gaining good traffic for your website.Really, you could consider it as the most important factor. A page one ranking on any of the major search engines – Google, Yahoo, Bing- will do wonders for getting appropriate traffic to your site. In particular, Google, which has been acknowledhed as the most ‘powerful brand in the world.’ Just think – how many times do you yourself go past page one or two when searching on Google? Not many people make the effort. The majority will find something they’re searching for, or close enough to what they want, on page one of the search results. As you can picture, having your website on page one of the rankings will mean people start turning towards your business for service.

To help your website realizeachieve a good Search Engine Placement, you need to create your website in a way that makes it alluring to search engines. A good Search Engine Optimization Company will be able to help you manage this, by advantageously placing keywords on your site, and helping to raise the search engines confidence in your website. Search engines use ‘spiders’ to index your site, by taking into account the pages title, domain, keywords and meta tags, text on the page, and other things which are known only to the search engine developers themselves. One thing we are aware of that is incorporated that helps determine a sites position is the level of links to that site from alternative sites. The more links a site has coming into it, the higher the site will rank. Yet, it is also known that these links should be of value, and from reliable sources. Simply spamming links over websites will do nothing for your site as the search engine will register the links of being little to no value. A decent Search Engine Optimisation Company will be able to assist you in acquiring these links, without risking being penalised by the search engine and being taken off from their listings altogether.

In order to find such a company to assist with your business development you should first seek out recommendations. This is a little hard in this sector as the market is quite new and so often there will be no one you know who has used the package. If this is the case do some digging, of course the best place to start is on line. Try to look for businesses who speak the same language as you, if you are very into IT you will not struggle to do business with the boffins out there. If not look for an organisation who tailors their site to the business person rather than the IT wizz kid.