Online Advertising

The Role of SEO in Online Advertising

Online advertising is a relatively inexpensive way to reach a world-wide market of consumers. Advertisers can design campaigns with a specific demographic in mind and know that it will most likely generate revenue based on where an ad is place. In order to effectively advertise online, it is important that you understand certain basic principals of the net.

Because the Internet is based in text, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a critical component to online advertising and is involved in just about every online advertising campaign. SEO basically means that a web site is easy to find online through the use of search engine strategy. Good SEO and bad SEO strategy can mean the difference in millions of dollars for many companies.

The Basics

SEO is designed to increase web visitor counts by helping Web sites increase their page ranks by creating “relevance” for a particular Web site. Relevance is created based on the frequency and use of a set of keywords related to the business’s site and services.

When a Web site ranks high in search engines, the difference between a business actually getting business and being left by the wayside can be staggering. Therefore, it is critical to the success of an online business that SEO be employed in order to help increase a site’s page rank.

SEO strategies include tweaking site’s design to eliminate frames and Flash, writing keyword-rich copy and finding relevant directories that the site can be submitted to. SEOers use the science of search – through keywords and other tools - as it relates to marketing on the web. SEOers will succeed by identify a site’s competition and working to place a site in a ranking above the competition so that it appears first in search engine results. Understanding the online marketplace as it relates to SEO tactics is a critical component of online advertising.

Browser Beware

While SEO tactics can be helpful, there are some that are disreputable and can cause sites to get dropped from search engine results due to overly aggressive marketing schemes. One way to identify an SEO-backed site that may not be reputable is through unsolicited emails. Another is through baseless claims. Some sites will promise a website owner that they can guarantee rankings in search engine results, however, this is not the case and website owners will end up paying a fee for a service that larger and trusted search engines, such as Google, do not offer in the first place.

On behalf on a Web site owner, an SEOer may use a false redirects and send viewers to advertising sites rather than the site they were looking for, bypassing the website owners site altogether.

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