Internet Marketing Myths & Facts

The internet changes almost daily and along with it the way people use the internet. What is the best way to reach your audience? Does the internet really work for B2B or local marketing? This article is an "at a glance" look at the myths and facts of internet marketing.

Myth: Having Meta Keywords and Meta Description is all that’s needed to assure search engine placement.

Fact: It’s no longer sufficient to add a few META tags, submit your site and wait for top placement. Many search engines give only token attention to META tags in lieu of giving more weight to the actual content within the website. Optimization, positioning, content relevance, incoming links and much more go into a successfully promoted site.

Myth: Local businesses won’t benefit from rankings in the search engines.

Fact: 20% of US Internet users performed a local search in July alone of 2008 – That figure represents about 2.4 billion searches

Of the 49% of the internet population use the search feature, this is second only to email usage (August 2008).

Myth: Businesses don’t use the web to find other businesses. We won’t get any prospects from optimizing our B2B site.

Fact: US Based online B2B transactions will surpass $650 billion by 2008. This represents an annual growth rate of 52%. The internet serves, in many ways, as a “virtual tradeshow” of products and services available to businesses – especially in niche markets.

Myth: The traffic generated by search engines is not the type that purchases products or services.

Fact: Case studies have shown that search engine traffic is equal to or better than traffic from more expensive sources. In fact, studies have shown that people who research products and services online will spend and average of 30% more when the purchase is made.

Myth: Paying for an automated submission service is all you need to make sure that your site is picked up by all possible search tools.

Myth: Once I am in the search engines and traffic is coming to my site I’ll automatically make more sales.

Fact: It takes more than a well positioned website to make sales. It takes a site that is ready to receive traffic and direct visitors to the course of action you wan them to take with a compelling reason to take that action.

It’s all about converting visitors to customers.

Myth: What worked well for us one or two (or more) years ago will still work today.

Fact: The web continues to grow in dimension. Today’s internet marketing tools include more than search optimization. Also in the mix: podcasts, online social media, mobile web, website analysis and much, much more.

If you are still doing the same things and the number of orders, sales, leads etc. from your site has not increased (or has even decreased) that is an indication that the site has fallen behind.

If you want to know more about what really works for internet marketing, contact me today!