How to Start an Online Marketing Strategy

Getting started with an effective online marketing strategy is easy! Follow the steps below and you will be well on your way to boosting your brand and your reputation within the search engines.

You will uncover a world of online opportunities when you get started. And you'll soon learn what to do and what to avoid!

Submit free articles to websites

Another way of gaining quality "votes" for your website is to write articles and submit them to article directories. I recommend starting with Ezine and Goarticles. If your article is enticing, users will follow your links to your website.

Exchange links with websites in your industry

Once your search engine friendly website is up and running, then find other websites within your industry and ask them to put a link pointing to your website and do the same for them.

Each link to your website counts as a "vote" for your site. The more votes the better your chance at increasing your rankings. Make sure they are quality votes!

Invest in an email marketing campaign to boost communications

Send out eflyers, promotions and informational newsletters by employing a good email marketing strategy. Send out targeted campaigns and profile subscribers according to their various interests. Email is still the most popular form of communication, so why not use it to your advantage?!

Build a search engine friendly website

A search engine friendly website is a site that has been designed according to SEO (search engine optimization) standards.

In short, when it comes to SEO, content is key. Decide on keywords related to your industry and use them throughout your website.

If you would like images on your website, ensure you have optimized your images so the file size is smaller. Have a good balance of eye catching images and content. Don't design your entire website in flash - search engines can't read flash. Flash websites don't do anything for your rankings!

Search engines love HTML content. Every page in your website should target a different set of keywords, so when people type in these keywords you have a chance of being found in the search engines. Use these keywords in your meta tags. All of these guidelines are outlined in Google's webmaster tools.

Employ a legitimate SEO guru to give you some advice. There is an entire industry out there of black and white hat SEO website spammers! And nobody likes a black hat spammer. black hat!

Define a social marketing strategy – it's the online word of mouth!

Now that you have a website and you have started promoting yourself online, it's time to invest in a social marketing strategy! Major players within the social marketing arena include Facebook and Twitter.

You can publish your newsletters on Facebook and hold discussions about various topics. Twitter allows for to-the-point updates. There is also Digg It, Reddit and Myspace.

I recommend you start with Facebook and Twitter to get things off the ground. Remember, social networking is the online word of mouth!

Difficulty: Moderate