The Don’ts of Internet Marketing

If you’re just starting on your goal to start a small business online or make money blogging, then you’re luckier than you think. It’s true that online businesses and profit-driven blogging hasn’t just become a common way to earn money, but it’s also become a most competitive industry.

What works to your advantage, however, is the fact that there’s a lot of information now on how you can earn money from your site. Advice is all over the place, as are tutorials and instructional manuals on how you can put up your online store or start blogging for money.

One of the first things you’ll find out about making a profit online is that you have to draw up an effective internet marketing strategy. If you’re no stranger to blogging for profit, you would know by now that a good internet marketing strategy is indispensable when it comes to earning money from your site. What this basically means is that you have to create a good strategy that lets you promote your products or services through your site.

What a lot of neophytes are unaware of, however, is the fact that not all internet marketing strategies will work for their benefit. Some of the information about internet marketing is actually not credible, and can be more damaging to your online enterprise and your efforts to make money blogging. Are you also committing these internet marketing blunders? Read on to find out what you should NOT do if you want to launch a successful promotional campaign for your blog:

1. Building a website that’s great to look at – but takes ages to load:

It’s good to put effort into your blog’s appearance, to make it as attractive as possible to create a favorable impression on your visitors. What won’t work, however, is a blog design that takes forever to load on the screen, or a site that’s bogged down by too many high-end applications. After all, if your visitors feel that your site is always making them wait, they’re likely to stop coming back. Ultimately, a gorgeous site that takes too much time to load is just as bad as an ugly template. Both of them make your readers feel like you’re wasting their time, and they’ll just end up moving on to other blogs where they can get what they want in a few seconds.

2. Expending minimal effort at keyword research:

Most bloggers think that keyword research is all about just finding what the top keywords are, how many hits these keywords are pulling in from search engines, and which keywords in their niche can possibly turn a profit. Sure, these are all part of the whole package. But have you actually come up with a keyword research system that will really make your site earn money?

Don’t just stop at looking up keyword rankings and finding out how many people, on average, are using the search terms, “how to lose weight”. Instead, you should also watch the activity behind each keyword you put up strategically on your site: which keywords actually fetch you the most number of visits? Of these keywords, which ones actually end up with a sign-up or a sale? You should start a process for keyword research that’s more organized and more relevant in its thrust.

3. Scratching just the surface of your web stats:

Okay, so you already have Google Analytics tracking the activity on your site. It’s been running for a good while now, gathering a lot of useful data that you can use to boost your blog’s earnings. But are you really making the most out of your analytics tool? Most bloggers just look at how many people are going to their site, taking note of how much time their visitors are spending on which web page, et cetera. Yet these factors lie only on the surface, and aren’t enough to spur your blog towards greater profit.

A better course of action would be to trace the roots of your traffic and see where your visitors are coming from. Are they coming from search engines? Which keywords are bringing your visitors to your site? Maybe your e-mail campaign is hauling all your visitors in? Whatever it is, make sure that you know where your visitors are coming from so you know where your blog should go.

Take note, however, that an effective marketing campaign doesn’t ensure long-term success — not if your product isn’t up to par. Your best advertisement still lies in your product itself. No matter how good your promotional tactics are, a bad product will never sustain a profit for long. A good, reliable product will make its own waves when it’s introduced properly to its target market. Polish up your internet marketing strategy, and your site will soon yield the rewards that you would like it to.