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Search engine marketing

Search engine marketing (SEM) is a form of Internet marketing that involves the promotion of websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) primarily through paid advertising.[1] SEM may incorporate search engine optimization (SEO), which adjusts or rewrites website content and site architecture to achieve a higher ranking in search engine results pages to enhance pay per click (PPC) listings.[2] In 2007, U.S.

advertisers spent US $24.6 billion on Search engine marketing.[3] In Q2 2015, Google (73.7%) and the Yahoo/Bing (26.3%) partnership accounted for almost 100% of U.S.

search engine spend.[4] As of 2006, SEM was growing much faster than traditional advertising and even other channels of online marketing.[5] Managing search campaigns is either done directly with the SEM vendor or through an SEM tool provider.

It may also be self-serve or through an advertising agency.

As of October 2016, Google leads the global search engine market with a market share of 89.3%.

Bing comes second with a market share of 4.36%, Yahoo comes third with a market share of 3.3%, and Chinese search engine Baidu is fourth globally with a share of about 0.68%.[6] As the number of sites on the Web increased in the mid-to-late 1990s, search engines started appearing to help people find information quickly.

Search engines developed business models to finance their services, such as pay per click programs offered by Open Text[7] in 1996 and then Goto.com[8] in 1998.

Goto.com later changed its name[9] to Overture in 2001, was purchased by Yahoo! in 2003, and now offers paid search opportunities for advertisers through Yahoo! Search Marketing.

Google also began to offer advertisements on search results pages in 2000 through the Google AdWords program.

By 2007, pay-per-click programs proved to be primary moneymakers[10] for search engines.

In a market dominated by Google, in 2009 Yahoo! and Microsoft announced the intention to forge an alliance.

The Yahoo! & Microsoft Search Alliance eventually received approval from regulators in the US and Europe in February 2010.[11] Search engine optimization consultants expanded their offerings to help businesses learn about and use the advertising opportunities offered by search engines, and new agencies focusing primarily upon marketing and advertising through search engines emerged.

The term "Search engine marketing" was popularized by Danny Sullivan in 2001[12] to cover the spectrum of activities involved in performing SEO, managing paid listings at the search engines, submitting sites to directories, and developing online marketing strategies for businesses, organizations, and individuals.

Search engine marketing uses at least five methods and metrics to optimize websites.[citation needed] Search engine marketing is a way to create and edit a website so that search engines rank it higher than other pages.

It should be also focused on keyword marketing or pay-per-click advertising (PPC).

The technology enables advertisers to bid on specific keywords or phrases and ensures ads appear with the results of search engines.

With the development of this system, the price is growing under a high level of competition.

Many advertisers prefer to expand their activities, including increasing search engines and adding more keywords.

The more advertisers are willing to pay for clicks, the higher the ranking for advertising, which leads to higher traffic.[15] PPC comes at a cost.

The higher position is likely to cost $5 for a given keyword, and $4.50 for a third location.

A third advertiser earns 10% less than the top advertiser while reducing traffic by 50%.[15] Investors must consider their return on investment when engaging in PPC campaigns.

Buying traffic via PPC will deliver a positive ROI when the total cost-per-click for a single conversion remains below the profit margin.

That way the amount of money spent to generate revenue is below the actual revenue generated.[16] A positive ROI is the outcome.

There are many reasons explaining why advertisers choose the SEM strategy.

First, creating a SEM account is easy and can build traffic quickly based on the degree of competition.

The shopper who uses the search engine to find information tends to trust and focus on the links showed in the results pages.

However, a large number of online sellers do not buy search engine optimization to obtain higher ranking lists of search results but prefer paid links.

A growing number of online publishers are allowing search engines such as Google to crawl content on their pages and place relevant ads on it.[17] From an online seller's point of view, this is an extension of the payment settlement and an additional incentive to invest in paid advertising projects.

Therefore, it is virtually impossible for advertisers with limited budgets to maintain the highest rankings in the increasingly competitive search market.

Google's Search engine marketing is one of the western world's marketing leaders, while its Search engine marketing is its biggest source of profit.[18] Google's search engine providers are clearly ahead of the Yahoo and Bing network.

The display of unknown search results is free, while advertisers are willing to pay for each click of the ad in the sponsored search results.

Paid inclusion involves a search engine company charging fees for the inclusion of a website in their results pages.

Also known as sponsored listings, paid inclusion products are provided by most search engine companies either in the main results area or as a separately identified advertising area.

The fee structure is both a filter against superfluous submissions and a revenue generator.

Typically, the fee covers an annual subscription for one webpage, which will automatically be catalogued on a regular basis.

However, some companies are experimenting with non-subscription based fee structures where purchased listings are displayed permanently.

A per-click fee may also apply.

Each search engine is different.

Some sites allow only paid inclusion, although these have had little success.

More frequently, many search engines, like Yahoo!,[19] mix paid inclusion (per-page and per-click fee) with results from web crawling.

Others, like Google (and as of 2006, Ask.com[20][21]), do not let webmasters pay to be in their search engine listing (advertisements are shown separately and labeled as such).

Some detractors of paid inclusion allege that it causes searches to return results based more on the economic standing of the interests of a web site, and less on the relevancy of that site to end-users.

Often the line between pay per click advertising and paid inclusion is debatable.

Some have lobbied for any paid listings to be labeled as an advertisement, while defenders insist they are not actually ads since the webmasters do not control the content of the listing, its ranking, or even whether it is shown to any users.

Another advantage of paid inclusion is that it allows site owners to specify particular schedules for crawling pages.

In the general case, one has no control as to when their page will be crawled or added to a search engine index.

Paid inclusion proves to be particularly useful for cases where pages are dynamically generated and frequently modified.

Paid inclusion is a Search engine marketing method in itself, but also a tool of search engine optimization since experts and firms can test out different approaches to improving ranking and see the results often within a couple of days, instead of waiting weeks or months.

Knowledge gained this way can be used to optimize other web pages, without paying the search engine company.

SEM is the wider discipline that incorporates SEO.

SEM includes both paid search results (using tools like Google Adwords or Bing Ads, formerly known as Microsoft adCenter) and organic search results (SEO).

SEM uses paid advertising with AdWords or Bing Ads, pay per click (particularly beneficial for local providers as it enables potential consumers to contact a company directly with one click), article submissions, advertising and making sure SEO has been done.

A keyword analysis is performed for both SEO and SEM, but not necessarily at the same time.

SEM and SEO both need to be monitored and updated frequently to reflect evolving best practices.

In some contexts, the term SEM is used exclusively to mean pay per click advertising,[2] particularly in the commercial advertising and marketing communities which have a vested interest in this narrow definition.

Such usage excludes the wider search marketing community that is engaged in other forms of SEM such as search engine optimization and search retargeting.

Creating the link between SEO and PPC represents an integral part of the SEM concept.

Sometimes, especially when separate teams work on SEO and PPC and the efforts are not synced, positive results of aligning their strategies can be lost.

The aim of both SEO and PPC is maximizing the visibility in search and thus, their actions to achieve it should be centrally coordinated.

Both teams can benefit from setting shared goals and combined metrics, evaluating data together to determine future strategy or discuss which of the tools works better to get the traffic for selected keywords in the national and local search results.

Thanks to this, the search visibility can be increased along with optimizing both conversions and costs.[22] Another part of SEM is social media marketing (SMM).

SMM is a type of marketing that involves exploiting social media to influence consumers that one company’s products and/or services are valuable.[23] Some of the latest theoretical advances include Search engine marketing management (SEMM).

SEMM relates to activities including SEO but focuses on return on investment (ROI) management instead of relevant traffic building (as is the case of mainstream SEO).

SEMM also integrates organic SEO, trying to achieve top ranking without using paid means to achieve it, and pay per click SEO.

For example, some of the attention is placed on the web page layout design and how content and information is displayed to the website visitor.

SEO & SEM are two pillars of one marketing job and they both run side by side to produce much better results than focusing on only one pillar.

Paid search advertising has not been without controversy and the issue of how search engines present advertising on their search result pages has been the target of a series of studies and reports[24][25][26] by Consumer Reports WebWatch.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also issued a letter[27] in 2002 about the importance of disclosure of paid advertising on search engines, in response to a complaint from Commercial Alert, a consumer advocacy group with ties to Ralph Nader.

Another ethical controversy associated with search marketing has been the issue of trademark infringement.

The debate as to whether third parties should have the right to bid on their competitors' brand names has been underway for years.

In 2009 Google changed their policy, which formerly prohibited these tactics, allowing 3rd parties to bid on branded terms as long as their landing page in fact provides information on the trademarked term.[28] Though the policy has been changed this continues to be a source of heated debate.[29] On April 24, 2012, many started to see that Google has started to penalize companies that are buying links for the purpose of passing off the rank.

The Google Update was called Penguin.

Since then, there have been several different Penguin/Panda updates rolled out by Google.

SEM has, however, nothing to do with link buying and focuses on organic SEO and PPC management.

As of October 20, 2014, Google had released three official revisions of their Penguin Update.

In 2013, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals held in Lens.com, Inc.

v.

1-800 Contacts, Inc.

that online contact lens seller Lens.com did not commit trademark infringement when it purchased search advertisements using competitor 1-800 Contacts' federally registered 1800 CONTACTS trademark as a keyword.

In August 2016, the Federal Trade Commission filed an administrative complaint against 1-800 Contacts alleging, among other things, that its trademark enforcement practices in the Search engine marketing space have unreasonably restrained competition in violation of the FTC Act.

1-800 Contacts has denied all wrongdoing and appeared before an FTC administrative law judge in April 2017.[30] AdWords is recognized as a web-based advertising utensil since it adopts keywords that can deliver adverts explicitly to web users looking for information in respect to a certain product or service.

It is flexible and provides customizable options like Ad Extensions, access to non-search sites, leveraging the display network to help increase brand awareness.

The project hinges on cost per click (CPC) pricing where the maximum cost per day for the campaign can be chosen, thus the payment of the service only applies if the advert has been clicked.

SEM companies have embarked on AdWords projects as a way to publicize their SEM and SEO services.

One of the most successful approaches to the strategy of this project was to focus on making sure that PPC advertising funds were prudently invested.

Moreover, SEM companies have described AdWords as a practical tool for increasing a consumer’s investment earnings on Internet advertising.

The use of conversion tracking and Google Analytics tools was deemed to be practical for presenting to clients the performance of their canvas from click to conversion.

AdWords project has enabled SEM companies to train their clients on the utensil and delivers better performance to the canvass.

The assistance of AdWord canvass could contribute to the growth of web traffic for a number of its consumer’s websites, by as much as 250% in only nine months.[31] Another way Search engine marketing is managed is by contextual advertising.

Here marketers place ads on other sites or portals that carry information relevant to their products so that the ads jump into the circle of vision of browsers who are seeking information from those sites.

A successful SEM plan is the approach to capture the relationships amongst information searchers, businesses, and search engines.

Search engines were not important to some industries in the past, but over the past years the use of search engines for accessing information has become vital to increase business opportunities.[32] The use of SEM strategic tools for businesses such as tourism can attract potential consumers to view their products, but it could also pose various challenges.[33] These challenges could be the competition that companies face amongst their industry and other sources of information that could draw the attention of online consumers.[32] To assist the combat of challenges, the main objective for businesses applying SEM is to improve and maintain their ranking as high as possible on SERPs so that they can gain visibility.

Therefore, search engines are adjusting and developing algorithms and the shifting criteria by which web pages are ranked sequentially to combat against search engine misuse and spamming, and to supply the most relevant information to searchers.[32] This could enhance the relationship amongst information searchers, businesses, and search engines by understanding the strategies of marketing to attract business.

Moz (marketing software)

Moz is a software as a service (SaaS) company based in Seattle that sells inbound marketing and marketing analytics software subscriptions.

It was founded by Rand Fishkin and Gillian Muessig in 2004 as a consulting firm and shifted to SEO software development in 2008.

The company hosts a website that includes an online community of more than one million globally based digital marketers and marketing related tools.

Moz offers SEO tools that includes keyword research, link building, site audits, and page optimization insights in order to help companies to have a better view of the position they have on search engines and how to improve their ranking.

The company also developed the most commonly used algorithm to determine Domain Authority, which is a score between 1-100, that is often used by many SEO companies to estimate a website's overall viability with the search engines.

In 2004, Moz was founded by a son-and-mother team Rand Fishkin[2] and Gillian Muessig as 'SEOmoz'.[3] In September 2007, the company raised $1.1 million in Series A funding from Ignition Partners and Curious Office.[4] In 2012, it raised $18 million in funding from Foundry Group and Ignition Partners.[5][6] In June 2012, SEOmoz acquired Followerwonk, a tool for searching, filtering and managing Twitter bios with other Twitter management functions like analytics.[7] The terms were not disclosed, but SEOmoz said the acquisition was for somewhere between one and four million US dollars.[6] In December 2012, SEOmoz acquired GetListed for $3 million.[8] In May 2013, the company rebranded as 'Moz' and relaunched the website at Moz.com.[9] During the period 2008 to 2011, SEOmoz grew from $1.5 million to $11.4 million in revenue.[10] In January 2016, Moz secured a $10 million investment from the Foundry Group.[11] In January 2014, Rand Fishkin stepped down as the CEO of Moz.[12] The position was taken by Sarah Bird who was already the President and COO of the company.

In August 2016, Moz laid off 28% of their staff to double down on SEO and focus on earning profitable revenue.[citation needed] On February 27th 2018, Moz co-founder, Rand Fishkin, parted company with the business he started and made the announcement via his new company blog at "SparkToro"[13].

Fishkin is self quoted in the blog post saying, "On a scale of 0-10, where 0 is “fired and escorted out of the building by security” and 10 is “left entirely of his own accord on wonderful terms,” my departure is around a 4.

That makes today a hard one, cognitively and emotionally." Fishkin goes on to discuss his other plans for the future in the post which include a book and non-profit initiative for making conferences and events safer places for women.

This book appeared in the course of 2018[14].

In July, 2019 CEO Sarah Bird gave an interview to Nathan Latka at SaaS Database company GetLatka.com.

According to Bird, the company had 180 employees, over 34,000 paying customers, and more than $60M in annual revenues.[15] Moz has a series of tools in its SEO Toolbox, including Moz Keyword Explorer,[16] a keyword research tool that provides keyword suggestions, SEO competition, opportunity, SERP features, saved lists, and accurate search volume data.

MozPro provides SEO site crawl checkups, prioritized SEO fixes, rank tracking, competitor tracking, SERP feature tracking and more.

Open Site Explorer is a free SEO tool that provides link data such as spam analysis.[17] mozRank is an alternative to Google PageRank.[18][19] Moz also has a tool for researching popular search trends.[20] Moz offers an SEO browser tool called MozBar.[21] In August 2016 Moz announced that it was dropping the Followerwonk tool to focus more on SEO.[22] In 2018, Moz announced that it will replace Open Site Explorer with Link Explorer for beta version[23] When it raised funding in 2012, the CEO Rand Fishkin blogged about his personal opinions, doubts, and analyses as the company went through the process.[24][25] In September 2007, more than 400 readers posted opinions on Moz on the CEO's facial hair based on six photos he posted.

According to the New York Times, he arrived to a conference in Stockholm "unshaven and bristly" based on the crowd-sourced decision.[26] The organization's business model is largely based on inbound marketing.

85% of Moz's revenue comes from SaaS subscriptions.[27] Moz is the host of the annual digital marketing conference MozCon in Seattle every July.

MozCon is a three-day, one-track conference centered around SEO, Growth Marketing, Content Marketing, and more.

Digital marketing

Digital marketing is the component of marketing that utilizes internet and online based digital technologies such as desktop computers, mobile phones and other digital media and platforms to promote products and services.[1][2] Its development during the 1990s and 2000s, changed the way brands and businesses use technology for marketing.[3] As digital platforms became increasingly incorporated into marketing plans and everyday life,[4] and as people increasingly use digital devices instead of visiting physical shops,[5][6] Digital marketing campaigns have become prevalent, employing combinations of search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), content marketing, influencer marketing, content automation, campaign marketing, data-driven marketing, e-commerce marketing, social media marketing, social media optimization, e-mail direct marketing, display advertising, e–books, and optical disks and games have become commonplace.

Digital marketing extends to non-Internet channels that provide digital media, such as television, mobile phones (SMS and MMS), callback, and on-hold mobile ring tones.[7] The extension to non-Internet channels differentiates Digital marketing from online marketing.[8] The development of Digital marketing is inseparable from technology development.

One of the key points in the start of was in 1971, where Ray Tomlinson sent the very first email and his technology set the platform to allow people to send and receive files through different machines.[9] However, the more recognisable period as being the start of Digital marketing is 1990 as this was where the Archie search engine was created as an index for FTP sites.

In the 1980s, the storage capacity of computer was already big enough to store huge volumes of customer information.

Companies started choosing online techniques, such as database marketing, rather than limited list broker.[10] These kinds of databases allowed companies to track customers' information more effectively, thus transforming the relationship between buyer and seller.

However, the manual process was not as efficient.

In the 1990s, the term Digital marketing was first coined,.[11] With the debut of server/client architecture and the popularity of personal computers, the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications became a significant factor in marketing technology.[12] Fierce competition forced vendors to include more service into their software, for example, marketing, sales and service applications.

Marketers were also able to own huge online customer data by eCRM software after the Internet was born.

Companies could update the data of customer needs and obtain the priorities of their experience.

This led to the first clickable banner ad being going live in 1994, which was the "You Will" campaign by AT&T and over the first four months of it going live, 44% of all people who saw it clicked on the ad.[13][14] In the 2000s, with increasing numbers of Internet users and the birth of iPhone, customers began searching products and making decisions about their needs online first, instead of consulting a salesperson, which created a new problem for the marketing department of a company.[15] In addition, a survey in 2000 in the United Kingdom found that most retailers had not registered their own domain address.[16] These problems encouraged marketers to find new ways to integrate digital technology into market development.

In 2007, marketing automation was developed as a response to the ever evolving marketing climate.

Marketing automation is the process by which software is used to automate conventional marketing processes.[17] Marketing automation helped companies segment customers, launch multichannel marketing campaigns, and provide personalized information for customers.[17] However, the speed of its adaptability to consumer devices was not fast enough.

Digital marketing became more sophisticated in the 2000s and the 2010s, when[18][19] the proliferation of devices' capable of accessing digital media led to sudden growth.[20] Statistics produced in 2012 and 2013 showed that Digital marketing was still growing.[21][22] With the development of social media in the 2000s, such as LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, consumers became highly dependent on digital electronics in daily lives.

Therefore, they expected a seamless user experience across different channels for searching product's information.

The change of customer behavior improved the diversification of marketing technology.[23] Digital marketing is also referred to as 'online marketing', 'internet marketing' or 'web marketing'.

The term Digital marketing has grown in popularity over time.

In the USA online marketing is still a popular term.

In Italy, Digital marketing is referred to as web marketing.

Worldwide Digital marketing has become the most common term, especially after the year 2013.[24] Digital media growth was estimated at 4.5 trillion online ads served annually with digital media spend at 48% growth in 2010.[25] An increasing portion of advertising stems from businesses employing Online Behavioural Advertising (OBA) to tailor advertising for internet users, but OBA raises concern of consumer privacy and data protection.[20] To engage customers retailers have shifted from the linear marketing approach of one-way communication to a value exchange model of mutual dialogue and benefit-sharing between provider and consumer.[26] Exchanges are more non-linear, free flowing, and both one-to-many or one-on-one.[6] The spread of information and awareness can occur across numerous channels, such as the blogosphere, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, and a variety of other platforms.

Online communities and social networks allow individuals to easily create content and publicly publish their opinions, experiences, and thoughts and feelings about many topics and products, hyper-accelerating the diffusion of information.[27] The Nielsen Global Connected Commerce Survey conducted interviews in 26 countries to observe how consumers are using the Internet to make shopping decisions in stores and online.

Online shoppers are increasingly looking to purchase internationally, with over 50% in the study who purchased online in the last six months stating they bought from an overseas retailer.[28] Using an omni-channel strategy is becoming increasingly important for enterprises who must adapt to the changing expectations of consumers who want ever-more sophisticated offerings throughout the purchasing journey.

Omni-channel retailing involves analyzing consumer behavior from a broad perspective, and studying what influences buying habits.[29] Retailers are increasingly focusing on their online presence, including online shops that operate alongside existing store-based outlets.

The "endless aisle" within the retail space can lead consumers to purchase products online that fit their needs while retailers do not have to carry the inventory within the physical location of the store.

Solely Internet-based retailers are also entering the market; some are establishing corresponding store-based outlets to provide personal services, professional help, and tangible experiences with their products.[30] An omni-channel approach not only benefits consumers but also benefits business bottom line: Research suggests that customers spend more than double when purchasing through an omni-channel retailer as opposed to a single-channel retailer, and are often more loyal.

This could be due to the ease of purchase and the wider availability of products.[30] Customers are often researching online and then buying in stores and also browsing in stores and then searching for other options online.

Online customer research into products is particularly popular for higher-priced items as well as consumable goods like groceries and makeup.

Consumers are increasingly using the Internet to look up product information, compare prices, and search for deals and promotions.[26] There are a number of ways brands can use Digital marketing to benefit their marketing efforts.

The use of Digital marketing in the digital era not only allows for brands to market their products and services, but also allows for online customer support through 24/7 services to make customers feel supported and valued.

The use of social media interaction allows brands to receive both positive and negative feedback from their customers as well as determining what media platforms work well for them.

As such, Digital marketing has become an increased advantage for brands and businesses.

It is now common for consumers to post feedback online through social media sources, blogs and websites on their experience with a product or brand.[31] It has become increasingly popular for businesses to use and encourage these conversations through their social media channels to have direct contact with the customers and manage the feedback they receive appropriately.

Word of mouth communications and peer-to-peer dialogue often have a greater effect on customers, since they are not sent directly from the company and are therefore not planned.

Customers are more likely to trust other customers’ experiences.[27] Examples can be that social media users share food products and meal experiences highlighting certain brands and franchises.

This was noted in a study on Instagram, where researchers observed that adolescent Instagram users' posted images of food-related experiences within their social networks, providing free advertising for the products.[32] It is increasingly advantageous for companies to use social media platforms to connect with their customers and create these dialogues and discussions.

The potential reach of social media is indicated by the fact that in 2015, each month the Facebook app had more than 126 million average unique users and YouTube had over 97 million average unique users.[33] A key objective is engaging Digital marketing customers and allowing them to interact with the brand through servicing and delivery of digital media.

Information is easy to access at a fast rate through the use of digital communications.

Users with access to the Internet can use many digital mediums, such as Facebook, YouTube, Forums, and Email etc.

Through Digital communications it creates a multi-communication channel where information can be quickly shared around the world by anyone without any regard to who they are.[36] Social segregation plays no part through social mediums due to lack of face to face communication and information being wide spread instead to a selective audience.

This interactive nature allows consumers create conversation in which the targeted audience is able to ask questions about the brand and get familiar with it which traditional forms of Marketing may not offer.[37] By using Internet platforms, businesses can create competitive advantage through various means.

To reach the maximum potential of Digital marketing, firms use social media as its main tool to create a channel of information.

Through this a business can create a system in which they are able to pinpoint behavioral patterns of clients and feedback on their needs.[38] This means of content has shown to have a larger impingement on those who have a long-standing relationship with the firm and with consumers who are relatively active social media users.

Relative to this, creating a social media page will further increase relation quality between new consumers and existing consumers as well as consistent brand reinforcement therefore improving brand awareness resulting in a possible rise for consumers up the Brand Awareness Pyramid.[39] Although there may be inconstancy with product images;[40] maintaining a successful social media presence requires a business to be consistent in interactions through creating a two way feed of information; firms consider their content based on the feedback received through this channel, this is a result of the environment being dynamic due to the global nature of the internet.[37] Effective use of Digital marketing can result in relatively lowered costs in relation to traditional means of marketing; Lowered external service costs, advertising costs, promotion costs, processing costs, interface design costs and control costs.[40] Brand awareness has been proven to work with more effectiveness in countries that are high in uncertainty avoidance, also these countries that have uncertainty avoidance; social media marketing works effectively.

Yet brands must be careful not to be excessive on the use of this type of marketing, as well as solely relying on it as it may have implications that could negatively harness their image.

Brands that represent themselves in an anthropomorphizing manner are more likely to succeed in situations where a brand is marketing to this demographic.

"Since social media use can enhance the knowledge of the brand and thus decrease the uncertainty, it is possible that people with high uncertainty avoidance, such as the French, will particularly appreciate the high social media interaction with an anthropomorphized brand." Moreover, digital platform provides an ease to the brand and its customers to interact directly and exchange their motives virtually.[41] One of the major changes that occurred in traditional marketing was the "emergence of Digital marketing" (Patrutiu Baltes, Loredana, 2015), this led to the reinvention of marketing strategies in order to adapt to this major change in traditional marketing (Patrutiu Baltes, Loredana, 2015).

As Digital marketing is dependent on technology which is ever-evolving and fast-changing, the same features should be expected from Digital marketing developments and strategies.

This portion is an attempt to qualify or segregate the notable highlights existing and being used as of press time.[when?] To summarize, Pull Digital marketing is characterized by consumers actively seeking marketing content while Push Digital marketing occurs when marketers send messages without that content being actively sought by the recipients.

An important consideration today while deciding on a strategy is that the digital tools have democratized the promotional landscape.

The new digital era has enabled brands to selectively target their customers that may potentially be interested in their brand or based on previous browsing interests.

Businesses can now use social media to select the age range, location, gender and interests of whom they would like their targeted post to be seen by.

Furthermore, based on a customer's recent search history they can be ‘followed’ on the internet so they see advertisements from similar brands, products and services,[47] This allows businesses to target the specific customers that they know and feel will most benefit from their product or service, something that had limited capabilities up until the digital era.

Digital marketing activity is still growing across the world according to the headline global marketing index.

A study published in September 2018, found that global outlays on Digital marketing tactics are approaching $100 billion.[48] Digital media continues to rapidly grow; while the marketing budgets are expanding, traditional media is declining (World Economics, 2015).[49] Digital media helps brands reach consumers to engage with their product or service in a personalised way.

Five areas, which are outlined as current industry practices that are often ineffective are prioritizing clicks, balancing search and display, understanding mobiles, targeting, viewability, brand safety and invalid traffic, and cross-platform measurement (Whiteside, 2016).[50] Why these practices are ineffective and some ways around making these aspects effective are discussed surrounding the following points.

Prioritizing clicks refers to display click ads, although advantageous by being ‘simple, fast and inexpensive’ rates for display ads in 2016 is only 0.10 percent in the United States.

This means one in a thousand click ads are relevant therefore having little effect.

This displays that marketing companies should not just use click ads to evaluate the effectiveness of display advertisements (Whiteside, 2016).[50] Balancing search and display for digital display ads are important; marketers tend to look at the last search and attribute all of the effectiveness to this.

This, in turn, disregards other marketing efforts, which establish brand value within the consumers mind.

ComScore determined through drawing on data online, produced by over one hundred multichannel retailers that digital display marketing poses strengths when compared with or positioned alongside, paid search (Whiteside, 2016).[50] This is why it is advised that when someone clicks on a display ad the company opens a landing page, not its home page.

A landing page typically has something to draw the customer in to search beyond this page.

Things such as free offers that the consumer can obtain through giving the company contact information so that they can use retargeting communication strategies (Square2Marketing, 2012).[51] Commonly marketers see increased sales among people exposed to a search ad.

But the fact of how many people you can reach with a display campaign compared to a search campaign should be considered.

Multichannel retailers have an increased reach if the display is considered in synergy with search campaigns.

Overall both search and display aspects are valued as display campaigns build awareness for the brand so that more people are likely to click on these digital ads when running a search campaign (Whiteside, 2016).[50] Understanding Mobiles: Understanding mobile devices is a significant aspect of Digital marketing because smartphones and tablets are now responsible for 64% of the time US consumers are online (Whiteside, 2016).[50] Apps provide a big opportunity as well as challenge for the marketers because firstly the app needs to be downloaded and secondly the person needs to actually use it.

This may be difficult as ‘half the time spent on smartphone apps occurs on the individuals single most used app, and almost 85% of their time on the top four rated apps’ (Whiteside, 2016).[50] Mobile advertising can assist in achieving a variety of commercial objectives and it is effective due to taking over the entire screen, and voice or status is likely to be considered highly; although the message must not be seen or thought of as intrusive (Whiteside, 2016).[50] Disadvantages of digital media used on mobile devices also include limited creative capabilities, and reach.

Although there are many positive aspects including the users entitlement to select product information, digital media creating a flexible message platform and there is potential for direct selling (Belch & Belch, 2012).[52] Cross-platform measurement: The number of marketing channels continues to expand, as measurement practices are growing in complexity.

A cross-platform view must be used to unify audience measurement and media planning.

Market researchers need to understand how the Omni-channel affects consumer's behaviour, although when advertisements are on a consumer's device this does not get measured.

Significant aspects to cross-platform measurement involves deduplication and understanding that you have reached an incremental level with another platform, rather than delivering more impressions against people that have previously been reached (Whiteside, 2016).[50] An example is ‘ESPN and comScore partnered on Project Blueprint discovering the sports broadcaster achieved a 21% increase in unduplicated daily reach thanks to digital advertising’ (Whiteside, 2016).[50] Television and radio industries are the electronic media, which competes with digital and other technological advertising.

Yet television advertising is not directly competing with online digital advertising due to being able to cross platform with digital technology.

Radio also gains power through cross platforms, in online streaming content.

Television and radio continue to persuade and affect the audience, across multiple platforms (Fill, Hughes, & De Franceso, 2013).[53] Targeting, viewability, brand safety and invalid traffic: Targeting, viewability, brand safety and invalid traffic all are aspects used by marketers to help advocate digital advertising.

Cookies are a form of digital advertising, which are tracking tools within desktop devices; causing difficulty, with shortcomings including deletion by web browsers, the inability to sort between multiple users of a device, inaccurate estimates for unique visitors, overstating reach, understanding frequency, problems with ad servers, which cannot distinguish between when cookies have been deleted and when consumers have not previously been exposed to an ad.

Due to the inaccuracies influenced by cookies, demographics in the target market are low and vary (Whiteside, 2016).[50] Another element, which is affected within Digital marketing, is ‘viewabilty’ or whether the ad was actually seen by the consumer.

Many ads are not seen by a consumer and may never reach the right demographic segment.

Brand safety is another issue of whether or not the ad was produced in the context of being unethical or having offensive content.

Recognizing fraud when an ad is exposed is another challenge marketers face.

This relates to invalid traffic as premium sites are more effective at detecting fraudulent traffic, although non-premium sites are more so the problem (Whiteside, 2016).[50] Digital marketing Channels are systems based on the Internet that can create, accelerate, and transmit product value from producer to a consumer terminal, through digital networks.[54][55] Digital marketing is facilitated by multiple Digital marketing channels, As an advertiser one's core objective is to find channels which result in maximum two-way communication and a better overall ROI for the brand.

There are multiple Digital marketing channels available namely;[56] It is important for a firm to reach out to consumers and create a two-way communication model, as Digital marketing allows consumers to give back feed back to the firm on a community based site or straight directly to the firm via email.[30] Firms should seek this long term communication relationship by using multiple forms of channels and using promotional strategies related to their target consumer as well as word-of mouth marketing.[30] The ICC Code has integrated rules that apply to marketing communications using digital interactive media throughout the guidelines.

There is also an entirely updated section dealing with issues specific to digital interactive media techniques and platforms.

Code self-regulation on use of digital interactive media includes: Digital marketing planning is a term used in marketing management.

It describes the first stage of forming a Digital marketing strategy for the wider Digital marketing system.

The difference between digital and traditional marketing planning is that it uses digitally based communication tools and technology such as Social, Web, Mobile, Scannable Surface.[70][71] Nevertheless, both are aligned with the vision, the mission of the company and the overarching business strategy.[72] Using Dr Dave Chaffey's approach, the Digital marketing planning (DMP) has three main stages: Opportunity, Strategy and Action.

He suggests that any business looking to implement a successful Digital marketing strategy must structure their plan by looking at opportunity, strategy and action.

This generic strategic approach often has phases of situation review, goal setting, strategy formulation, resource allocation and monitoring.[72] To create an effective DMP, a business first needs to review the marketplace and set 'SMART' (Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant and Time-Bound) objectives.[73] They can set SMART objectives by reviewing the current benchmarks and key performance indicators (KPIs) of the company and competitors.

It is pertinent that the analytics used for the KPIs be customised to the type, objectives, mission and vision of the company.[74][75] Companies can scan for marketing and sales opportunities by reviewing their own outreach as well as influencer outreach.

This means they have competitive advantage because they are able to analyse their co-marketers influence and brand associations.[76] To cease opportunity, the firm should summarize their current customers' personas and purchase journey from this they are able to deduce their Digital marketing capability.

This means they need to form a clear picture of where they are currently and how many resources they can allocate for their Digital marketing strategy i.e.

labour, time etc.

By summarizing the purchase journey, they can also recognise gaps and growth for future marketing opportunities that will either meet objectives or propose new objectives and increase profit.

To create a planned digital strategy, the company must review their digital proposition (what you are offering to consumers) and communicate it using digital customer targeting techniques.

So, they must define online value proposition (OVP), this means the company must express clearly what they are offering customers online e.g.

brand positioning.

The company should also (re)select target market segments and personas and define digital targeting approaches.

After doing this effectively, it is important to review the marketing mix for online options.

The marketing mix comprises the 4Ps – Product, Price, Promotion and Place.[77][78] Some academics have added three additional elements to the traditional 4Ps of marketing Process, Place and Physical appearance making it 7Ps of marketing.[79] The third and final stage requires the firm to set a budget and management systems; these must be measurable touchpoints, such as audience reached across all digital platforms.

Furthermore, marketers must ensure the budget and management systems are integrating the paid, owned and earned media of the company.[80] The Action and final stage of planning also requires the company to set in place measurable content creation e.g.

oral, visual or written online media.[81] After confirming the Digital marketing plan, a scheduled format of digital communications (e.g.

Gantt Chart) should be encoded throughout the internal operations of the company.

This ensures that all platforms used fall in line and complement each other for the succeeding stages of Digital marketing strategy.

One way marketers can reach out to consumers, and understand their thought process is through what is called an empathy map.

An empathy map is a four step process.

The first step is through asking questions that the consumer would be thinking in their demographic.

The second step is to describe the feelings that the consumer may be having.

The third step is to think about what the consumer would say in their situation.

The final step is to imagine what the consumer will try to do based on the other three steps.

This map is so marketing teams can put themselves in their target demographics shoes.[82] Web Analytics are also a very important way to understand consumers.

They show the habits that people have online for each website.[83] One particular form of these analytics is predictive analytics which helps marketers figure out what route consumers are on.

This uses the information gathered from other analytics, and then creates different predictions of what people will do so that companies can strategize on what to do next, according to the peoples trends.[84] The "sharing economy" refers to an economic pattern that aims to obtain a resource that is not fully utilized.[87] Nowadays, the sharing economy has had an unimagined effect on many traditional elements including labor, industry, and distribution system.[87] This effect is not negligible that some industries are obviously under threat.[87][88] The sharing economy is influencing the traditional marketing channels by changing the nature of some specific concept including ownership, assets, and recruitment.[88] Digital marketing channels and traditional marketing channels are similar in function that the value of the product or service is passed from the original producer to the end user by a kind of supply chain.[89] Digital marketing channels, however, consist of internet systems that create, promote, and deliver products or services from producer to consumer through digital networks.[90] Increasing changes to marketing channels has been a significant contributor to the expansion and growth of the sharing economy.[90] Such changes to marketing channels has prompted unprecedented and historic growth.[90] In addition to this typical approach, the built-in control, efficiency and low cost of Digital marketing channels is an essential features in the application of sharing economy.[89] Digital marketing channels within the sharing economy are typically divided into three domains including, e-mail, social media, and search engine marketing or SEM.[90] Other emerging Digital marketing channels, particularly branded mobile apps, have excelled in the sharing economy.[90] Branded mobile apps are created specifically to initiate engagement between customers and the company.This engagement is typically facilitated through entertainment, information, or market transaction.[90]

Search engine optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of growing the quality and quantity of website traffic by increasing the visibility of a website or a web page to users of a web search engine.[1] SEO refers to the improvement of unpaid results (known as "natural" or "organic" results) and excludes direct traffic and the purchase of paid placement.

Additionally, it may target different kinds of searches, including image search, video search, academic search,[2] news search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.

Promoting a site to increase the number of backlinks, or inbound links, is another SEO tactic.

By May 2015, mobile search had surpassed desktop search.[3] As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work, the computer-programmed algorithms that dictate search engine behavior, what people search for, the actual search terms or keywords typed into search engines, and which search engines are preferred by their targeted audience.

SEO is performed because a website will receive more visitors from a search engine when website ranks are higher in the search engine results page (SERP).

These visitors can then be converted into customers.[4] SEO differs from local Search engine optimization in that the latter is focused on optimizing a business' online presence so that its web pages will be displayed by search engines when a user enters a local search for its products or services.

The former instead is more focused on national or international searches.

Webmasters and content providers began optimizing websites for search engines in the mid-1990s, as the first search engines were cataloging the early Web.

Initially, all webmasters only needed to submit the address of a page, or URL, to the various engines which would send a web crawler to crawl that page, extract links to other pages from it, and return information found on the page to be indexed.[5] The process involves a search engine spider downloading a page and storing it on the search engine's own server.

A second program, known as an indexer, extracts information about the page, such as the words it contains, where they are located, and any weight for specific words, as well as all links the page contains.

All of this information is then placed into a scheduler for crawling at a later date.

Website owners recognized the value of a high ranking and visibility in search engine results,[6] creating an opportunity for both white hat and black hat SEO practitioners.

According to industry analyst Danny Sullivan, the phrase "Search engine optimization" probably came into use in 1997.

Sullivan credits Bruce Clay as one of the first people to popularize the term.[7] On May 2, 2007,[8] Jason Gambert attempted to trademark the term SEO by convincing the Trademark Office in Arizona[9] that SEO is a "process" involving manipulation of keywords and not a "marketing service." Early versions of search algorithms relied on webmaster-provided information such as the keyword meta tag or index files in engines like ALIWEB.

Meta tags provide a guide to each page's content.

Using metadata to index pages was found to be less than reliable, however, because the webmaster's choice of keywords in the meta tag could potentially be an inaccurate representation of the site's actual content.

Inaccurate, incomplete, and inconsistent data in meta tags could and did cause pages to rank for irrelevant searches.[10][dubious – discuss] Web content providers also manipulated some attributes within the HTML source of a page in an attempt to rank well in search engines.[11] By 1997, search engine designers recognized that webmasters were making efforts to rank well in their search engine, and that some webmasters were even manipulating their rankings in search results by stuffing pages with excessive or irrelevant keywords.

Early search engines, such as Altavista and Infoseek, adjusted their algorithms to prevent webmasters from manipulating rankings.[12] By relying so much on factors such as keyword density which were exclusively within a webmaster's control, early search engines suffered from abuse and ranking manipulation.

To provide better results to their users, search engines had to adapt to ensure their results pages showed the most relevant search results, rather than unrelated pages stuffed with numerous keywords by unscrupulous webmasters.

This meant moving away from heavy reliance on term density to a more holistic process for scoring semantic signals.[13] Since the success and popularity of a search engine is determined by its ability to produce the most relevant results to any given search, poor quality or irrelevant search results could lead users to find other search sources.

Search engines responded by developing more complex ranking algorithms, taking into account additional factors that were more difficult for webmasters to manipulate.

In 2005, an annual conference, AIRWeb (Adversarial Information Retrieval on the Web), was created to bring together practitioners and researchers concerned with Search engine optimization and related topics.[14] Companies that employ overly aggressive techniques can get their client websites banned from the search results.

In 2005, the Wall Street Journal reported on a company, Traffic Power, which allegedly used high-risk techniques and failed to disclose those risks to its clients.[15] Wired magazine reported that the same company sued blogger and SEO Aaron Wall for writing about the ban.[16] Google's Matt Cutts later confirmed that Google did in fact ban Traffic Power and some of its clients.[17] Some search engines have also reached out to the SEO industry, and are frequent sponsors and guests at SEO conferences, webchats, and seminars.

Major search engines provide information and guidelines to help with website optimization.[18][19] Google has a Sitemaps program to help webmasters learn if Google is having any problems indexing their website and also provides data on Google traffic to the website.[20] Bing Webmaster Tools provides a way for webmasters to submit a sitemap and web feeds, allows users to determine the "crawl rate", and track the web pages index status.

In 2015, it was reported that Google was developing and promoting mobile search as a key feature within future products.

In response, many brands began to take a different approach to their Internet marketing strategies.[21] In 1998, two graduate students at Stanford University, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, developed "Backrub", a search engine that relied on a mathematical algorithm to rate the prominence of web pages.

The number calculated by the algorithm, PageRank, is a function of the quantity and strength of inbound links.[22] PageRank estimates the likelihood that a given page will be reached by a web user who randomly surfs the web, and follows links from one page to another.

In effect, this means that some links are stronger than others, as a higher PageRank page is more likely to be reached by the random web surfer.

Page and Brin founded Google in 1998.[23] Google attracted a loyal following among the growing number of Internet users, who liked its simple design.[24] Off-page factors (such as PageRank and hyperlink analysis) were considered as well as on-page factors (such as keyword frequency, meta tags, headings, links and site structure) to enable Google to avoid the kind of manipulation seen in search engines that only considered on-page factors for their rankings.

Although PageRank was more difficult to game, webmasters had already developed link building tools and schemes to influence the Inktomi search engine, and these methods proved similarly applicable to gaming PageRank.

Many sites focused on exchanging, buying, and selling links, often on a massive scale.

Some of these schemes, or link farms, involved the creation of thousands of sites for the sole purpose of link spamming.[25] By 2004, search engines had incorporated a wide range of undisclosed factors in their ranking algorithms to reduce the impact of link manipulation.

In June 2007, The New York Times' Saul Hansell stated Google ranks sites using more than 200 different signals.[26] The leading search engines, Google, Bing, and Yahoo, do not disclose the algorithms they use to rank pages.

Some SEO practitioners have studied different approaches to Search engine optimization, and have shared their personal opinions.[27] Patents related to search engines can provide information to better understand search engines.[28] In 2005, Google began personalizing search results for each user.

Depending on their history of previous searches, Google crafted results for logged in users.[29] In 2007, Google announced a campaign against paid links that transfer PageRank.[30] On June 15, 2009, Google disclosed that they had taken measures to mitigate the effects of PageRank sculpting by use of the nofollow attribute on links.

Matt Cutts, a well-known software engineer at Google, announced that Google Bot would no longer treat any nofollow links, in the same way, to prevent SEO service providers from using nofollow for PageRank sculpting.[31] As a result of this change the usage of nofollow led to evaporation of PageRank.

In order to avoid the above, SEO engineers developed alternative techniques that replace nofollowed tags with obfuscated JavaScript and thus permit PageRank sculpting.

Additionally several solutions have been suggested that include the usage of iframes, Flash and JavaScript.[32] In December 2009, Google announced it would be using the web search history of all its users in order to populate search results.[33] On June 8, 2010 a new web indexing system called Google Caffeine was announced.

Designed to allow users to find news results, forum posts and other content much sooner after publishing than before, Google caffeine was a change to the way Google updated its index in order to make things show up quicker on Google than before.

According to Carrie Grimes, the software engineer who announced Caffeine for Google, "Caffeine provides 50 percent fresher results for web searches than our last index..."[34] Google Instant, real-time-search, was introduced in late 2010 in an attempt to make search results more timely and relevant.

Historically site administrators have spent months or even years optimizing a website to increase search rankings.

With the growth in popularity of social media sites and blogs the leading engines made changes to their algorithms to allow fresh content to rank quickly within the search results.[35] In February 2011, Google announced the Panda update, which penalizes websites containing content duplicated from other websites and sources.

Historically websites have copied content from one another and benefited in search engine rankings by engaging in this practice.

However, Google implemented a new system which punishes sites whose content is not unique.[36] The 2012 Google Penguin attempted to penalize websites that used manipulative techniques to improve their rankings on the search engine.[37] Although Google Penguin has been presented as an algorithm aimed at fighting web spam, it really focuses on spammy links[38] by gauging the quality of the sites the links are coming from.

The 2013 Google Hummingbird update featured an algorithm change designed to improve Google's natural language processing and semantic understanding of web pages.

Hummingbird's language processing system falls under the newly recognized term of "conversational search" where the system pays more attention to each word in the query in order to better match the pages to the meaning of the query rather than a few words.[39] With regards to the changes made to Search engine optimization, for content publishers and writers, Hummingbird is intended to resolve issues by getting rid of irrelevant content and spam, allowing Google to produce high-quality content and rely on them to be 'trusted' authors.

In October 2019, Google announced they would start applying BERT models for english language search queries in the US.

Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) was another attempt by Google to improve their natural language processing but this time in order to better understand the search queries of their users.[40] In terms of Search engine optimization, BERT intended to connect users more easily to relevant content and increase the quality of traffic coming to websites that are ranking in the Search Engine Results Page.[41] The leading search engines, such as Google, Bing and Yahoo!, use crawlers to find pages for their algorithmic search results.

Pages that are linked from other search engine indexed pages do not need to be submitted because they are found automatically.

The Yahoo! Directory and DMOZ, two major directories which closed in 2014 and 2017 respectively, both required manual submission and human editorial review.[42] Google offers Google Search Console, for which an XML Sitemap feed can be created and submitted for free to ensure that all pages are found, especially pages that are not discoverable by automatically following links[43] in addition to their URL submission console.[44] Yahoo! formerly operated a paid submission service that guaranteed crawling for a cost per click;[45] however, this practice was discontinued in 2009.

Search engine crawlers may look at a number of different factors when crawling a site.

Not every page is indexed by the search engines.

The distance of pages from the root directory of a site may also be a factor in whether or not pages get crawled.[46] Today, most people are searching on Google using a mobile device.[47] In November 2016, Google announced a major change to the way crawling websites and started to make their index mobile-first, which means the mobile version of a given website becomes the starting point for what Google includes in their index.[48] In May 2019, Google updated the rendering engine of their crawler to be the latest version of Chromium (74 at the time of the announcement).

Google indicated that they would regularly update the Chromium rendering engine to the latest version.

[49] In December of 2019, Google began updating the User-Agent string of their crawler to reflect the latest Chrome version used by their rendering service.

The delay was to allow webmasters time to update their code that responded to particular bot User-Agent strings.

Google ran evaluations and felt confident the impact would be minor.

[50] To avoid undesirable content in the search indexes, webmasters can instruct spiders not to crawl certain files or directories through the standard robots.txt file in the root directory of the domain.

Additionally, a page can be explicitly excluded from a search engine's database by using a meta tag specific to robots (usually <meta name="robots" content="noindex"> ).

When a search engine visits a site, the robots.txt located in the root directory is the first file crawled.

The robots.txt file is then parsed and will instruct the robot as to which pages are not to be crawled.

As a search engine crawler may keep a cached copy of this file, it may on occasion crawl pages a webmaster does not wish crawled.

Pages typically prevented from being crawled include login specific pages such as shopping carts and user-specific content such as search results from internal searches.

In March 2007, Google warned webmasters that they should prevent indexing of internal search results because those pages are considered search spam.[51] A variety of methods can increase the prominence of a webpage within the search results.

Cross linking between pages of the same website to provide more links to important pages may improve its visibility.[52] Writing content that includes frequently searched keyword phrase, so as to be relevant to a wide variety of search queries will tend to increase traffic.[52] Updating content so as to keep search engines crawling back frequently can give additional weight to a site.

Adding relevant keywords to a web page's metadata, including the title tag and meta description, will tend to improve the relevancy of a site's search listings, thus increasing traffic.

URL canonicalization of web pages accessible via multiple URLs, using the canonical link element[53] or via 301 redirects can help make sure links to different versions of the URL all count towards the page's link popularity score.

SEO techniques can be classified into two broad categories: techniques that search engine companies recommend as part of good design ("white hat"), and those techniques of which search engines do not approve ("black hat").

The search engines attempt to minimize the effect of the latter, among them spamdexing.

Industry commentators have classified these methods, and the practitioners who employ them, as either white hat SEO, or black hat SEO.[54] White hats tend to produce results that last a long time, whereas black hats anticipate that their sites may eventually be banned either temporarily or permanently once the search engines discover what they are doing.[55] An SEO technique is considered white hat if it conforms to the search engines' guidelines and involves no deception.

As the search engine guidelines[18][19][56] are not written as a series of rules or commandments, this is an important distinction to note.

White hat SEO is not just about following guidelines but is about ensuring that the content a search engine indexes and subsequently ranks is the same content a user will see.

White hat advice is generally summed up as creating content for users, not for search engines, and then making that content easily accessible to the online "spider" algorithms, rather than attempting to trick the algorithm from its intended purpose.

White hat SEO is in many ways similar to web development that promotes accessibility,[57] although the two are not identical.

Black hat SEO attempts to improve rankings in ways that are disapproved of by the search engines, or involve deception.

One black hat technique uses hidden text, either as text colored similar to the background, in an invisible div, or positioned off screen.

Another method gives a different page depending on whether the page is being requested by a human visitor or a search engine, a technique known as cloaking.

Another category sometimes used is grey hat SEO.

This is in between black hat and white hat approaches, where the methods employed avoid the site being penalized but do not act in producing the best content for users.

Grey hat SEO is entirely focused on improving search engine rankings.

Search engines may penalize sites they discover using black or grey hat methods, either by reducing their rankings or eliminating their listings from their databases altogether.

Such penalties can be applied either automatically by the search engines' algorithms, or by a manual site review.

One example was the February 2006 Google removal of both BMW Germany and Ricoh Germany for use of deceptive practices.[58] Both companies, however, quickly apologized, fixed the offending pages, and were restored to Google's search engine results page.[59] SEO is not an appropriate strategy for every website, and other Internet marketing strategies can be more effective, such as paid advertising through pay per click (PPC) campaigns, depending on the site operator's goals.

Search engine marketing (SEM) is the practice of designing, running and optimizing search engine ad campaigns.[60] Its difference from SEO is most simply depicted as the difference between paid and unpaid priority ranking in search results.

Its purpose regards prominence more so than relevance; website developers should regard SEM with the utmost importance with consideration to visibility as most navigate to the primary listings of their search.[61] A successful Internet marketing campaign may also depend upon building high quality web pages to engage and persuade, setting up analytics programs to enable site owners to measure results, and improving a site's conversion rate.[62] In November 2015, Google released a full 160 page version of its Search Quality Rating Guidelines to the public,[63] which revealed a shift in their focus towards "usefulness" and mobile search.

In recent years the mobile market has exploded, overtaking the use of desktops, as shown in by StatCounter in October 2016 where they analyzed 2.5 million websites and found that 51.3% of the pages were loaded by a mobile device.[64] Google has been one of the companies that are utilizing the popularity of mobile usage by encouraging websites to use their Google Search Console, the Mobile-Friendly Test, which allows companies to measure up their website to the search engine results and how user-friendly it is.

SEO may generate an adequate return on investment.

However, search engines are not paid for organic search traffic, their algorithms change, and there are no guarantees of continued referrals.

Due to this lack of guarantees and certainty, a business that relies heavily on search engine traffic can suffer major losses if the search engines stop sending visitors.[65] Search engines can change their algorithms, impacting a website's placement, possibly resulting in a serious loss of traffic.

According to Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, in 2010, Google made over 500 algorithm changes – almost 1.5 per day.[66] It is considered a wise business practice for website operators to liberate themselves from dependence on search engine traffic.[67] In addition to accessibility in terms of web crawlers (addressed above), user web accessibility has become increasingly important for SEO.

Optimization techniques are highly tuned to the dominant search engines in the target market.

The search engines' market shares vary from market to market, as does competition.

In 2003, Danny Sullivan stated that Google represented about 75% of all searches.[68] In markets outside the United States, Google's share is often larger, and Google remains the dominant search engine worldwide as of 2007.[69] As of 2006, Google had an 85–90% market share in Germany.[70] While there were hundreds of SEO firms in the US at that time, there were only about five in Germany.[70] As of June 2008, the market share of Google in the UK was close to 90% according to Hitwise.[71] That market share is achieved in a number of countries.

As of 2009, there are only a few large markets where Google is not the leading search engine.

In most cases, when Google is not leading in a given market, it is lagging behind a local player.

The most notable example markets are China, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the Czech Republic where respectively Baidu, Yahoo! Japan, Naver, Yandex and Seznam are market leaders.

Successful search optimization for international markets may require professional translation of web pages, registration of a domain name with a top level domain in the target market, and web hosting that provides a local IP address.

Otherwise, the fundamental elements of search optimization are essentially the same, regardless of language.[70] On October 17, 2002, SearchKing filed suit in the United States District Court, Western District of Oklahoma, against the search engine Google.

SearchKing's claim was that Google's tactics to prevent spamdexing constituted a tortious interference with contractual relations.

On May 27, 2003, the court granted Google's motion to dismiss the complaint because SearchKing "failed to state a claim upon which relief may be granted."[72][73] In March 2006, KinderStart filed a lawsuit against Google over search engine rankings.

KinderStart's website was removed from Google's index prior to the lawsuit, and the amount of traffic to the site dropped by 70%.

On March 16, 2007, the United States District Court for the Northern District of California (San Jose Division) dismissed KinderStart's complaint without leave to amend, and partially granted Google's motion for Rule 11 sanctions against KinderStart's attorney, requiring him to pay part of Google's legal expenses.[74][75]

Inbound marketing

Inbound marketing is a technique for drawing customers to products and services via content marketing, social media marketing, search engine optimization and branding.[1] Inbound marketing improves customer experience and builds trust by offering potential customers information they value via company sponsored newsletters, blogs and entries on social media platforms.[citation needed] Compared with outbound marketing, inbound reverses the relationship between company and customer.

In fact, while outbound marketing pushes the product through various channels, Inbound marketing creates awareness, attracts new customers with channels like blogs, social media, etc.

Main charecteristics of Inbound marketing: Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of utilizing search engine best practices to improve the visibility of a website or a webpage by ranking higher in the search engine results ("SERPS") for keywords relevant to that particular website or webpage.

There are several ways to improve a website or webpage's visibility: Leading search engines use crawlers to find pages for their algorithmic search results.

It is important to ensure that these search engine crawlers (AKA spiders) can successfully crawl a website or webpage in its entirety to fully determine the relevance of that website or webpage for its targeted keywords.

Since some websites have millions of pages associated to them and that need to be indexed, the practice of Technical SEO will help improve a website's ability to get all of those pages indexed by a search engine and thereby improving their prospects of ranking within the search engine results pages.

Search engines utilize contextual relevance or semantic search to determine the relevancy of a website or webpage for a particular set of keywords.

Improving content quality from a readability and relevancy perspective will help sites increase their relevance for a set of keywords and therefore should increase their keyword rankings and visibility within the search engine results page.

Improving Credibility Search engines also determine relevancy based on internal and external links that are found across the internet.

These backlinks will help associate a website or webpage with a particular set of keywords and can help improve the relevancy of this website or webpage for a particular set of keywords.

Search engine marketing (SEM) is a form of web marketing which involves the promotion of websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results pages, principally through paid advertising.

SEM is strictly connected to SEO in regards to pay promotion and get found out in the first search page.[citation needed] There are some methods and metrics to optimize websites: Keyword research and analysis which ensure the site can be indexed in the search engine, finding the more frequently typed words; Presence which means how many times a web page is indexed by search engines and how many backlinks does it get; Back end tools such as Web analytic tools and HTML validators; Whois tools that reveal the owners of various websites and can provide information related to copyright and trademark.

SEM objective is to boost the visibility of a page, it can be done using the so-called "sponsorization".

With the term, "sponsorization" is intended a search engine company charging fees for the inclusion of a website in their results pages.

To work well, Inbound marketing needs a precise process that, if respected, provides a competitive advantage compared with outbound marketing.

The process is composed of four sequential steps: attract, convert, close, and "delight" in order to obtain more visitors on sites, to speed up conversions and finally increase the number of leads and prospects.

One of the most important differences between outbound and Inbound marketing is the fact that "if classical marketing is betting on those people, inbound is betting on that person".

it means that companies using Inbound marketing know better which are the people they are talking with.

They can do it through buyer personas.

The buyer personas are the identikit of our ideal customers.

Only through them can a company know which is their ideal target and which channels they have to use to reach it.[citation needed] "Attract" does not mean attracting random people; companies want to attract the right people at the right time with the right content.

Building a company on the buyer personas, one can define which are the beliefs, pains, hobbies, goals, etc.

of our customer and on their basis, one can create the right contents to attract visitors on one's blog, social, YouTube channel, etc.[citation needed] Evergreen content plays a crucial role in building organic traffic to websites or blogs.[citation needed] After attracting the visitor on their website, for example, a company will be ready to convert him/her into prospect gathering his/her contact information.

Emails are the most valuable information for an inbound marketer.

The inbound marketer wants to attract the right visitor, so they will exchange a tutorial video, an ebook or something valuable for the customer so he/she will be glad to give his/her e-mail in return.

Once the needed information is gathered, it is important to stay in contact with the prospects.

How are prospects transformed into customers? Some helpful tools are: Call-to-actions are very useful to let customer complete an action that we like.

With this powerful tool we can generate a positive cycle that generates value both for our customer and for us.

Generating useful contents and sending it periodically to our prospect we can create awareness but also build trust and make our close-customer be ready to buy something.

Customer-relationship management (CRM) systems track the various steps of customer acquisition.

Taking track of information regarding the customer, partner companies etc.

it is possible to deliver the right message at the right time to the right person.[citation needed] Smarketing is the mix of sales and marketing.

Generally in big companies, they are two separated units but in Inbound marketing, they are usually mixed to have complete and fully understandable information between the two areas.

With closed-loop reports also sales and marketing departments know which is the right time to close a deal with the customer and above all know if the customer is ready to be acquired.

Through the process of nurturing, companies make the customer ready to be acquired.

For example, if the visitor fills a form to download an ebook on a certain site, the company knows that their prospect is interested in the subject treated in the ebook.

After collecting this information, they are ready to "nurture" their future probable customer with a series of emails, videos etc.

connected with the subject he/she is interested in.[citation needed] After attracting the fan, converting him into prospect, and letting him buy something from the company, the company has to keep in touch with their customer, continuing providing good and valuable contents with the hope of doing some upselling.

Content marketing

Content marketing is a form of marketing focused on creating, publishing, and distributing content for a targeted audience online.[1] It is often used by businesses in order to: Content marketing attracts prospects and transforms prospects into customers by creating and sharing valuable free content.

Content marketing helps companies create sustainable brand loyalty, provides valuable information to consumers, and creates a willingness to purchase products from the company in the future.

This relatively new form of marketing does not involve direct sales.

Instead, it builds trust and rapport with the audience.[2] Unlike other forms of online marketing, Content marketing relies on anticipating and meeting an existing customer need for information, as opposed to creating demand for a new need.

As James O'Brien of Contently wrote on Mashable, "The idea central to Content marketing is that a brand must give something valuable to get something valuable in return.

Instead of the commercial, be the show.

Instead of the banner ad, be the feature story."[3] Content marketing requires continuous delivery of large amounts of content, preferably within a Content marketing strategy.[4] When businesses pursue Content marketing, the main focus should be the needs of the prospect or customer.

Once a business has identified the customer's need, information can be presented in a variety of formats, including news, video, white papers, e-books, infographics, email newsletters, case studies, podcasts, how-to guides, question and answer articles, photos, blogs, etc.[5] Most of these formats belong to the digital channel.

Digital Content marketing is a management process that uses electronic channels to identify, forecast, and satisfy the content requirements of a particular audience.

It must be consistently updated and added to in order to influence the behavior of customers.

Traditional marketers have long used content to disseminate information about a brand and build a brand's reputation.

Taking advantage of technological advances in transportation and communication, business owners started to apply Content marketing techniques in the late 19th century.

They also attempted to build connections with their customers.

For example: During the golden age of TV, between the 1940s and 1950s, advertising took over the media.

Companies focused on sales rather than connecting with the public.

There were few ventures into Content marketing and not many prominent campaigns.

During the baby boom era, Kellogg’s began selling sugary cereal to children.

With this change in business model came sociable animal mascots, lively animated commercials and the back of the cereal box as a form of targeted Content marketing.

Infographics were born in this era.

This represented a new approach to make a brand memorable with the audience.

In the 1990s, everything changed for marketers.

The arrival of computers and the Internet made websites and blogs flourish, and corporations found Content marketing opportunities through email.

E-commerce adaptations and digital distribution became the foundation of marketing strategy.

Internet also helped Content marketing become a mainstream form of marketing.

Traditional media such as newspapers, magazines, radio and TV started to lose their power in the marketplace.

Companies started to promote and sell their products digitally.[10] The phrase "Content marketing" was used as early as 1996,[11] when John F.

Oppedahl led a roundtable for journalists at the American Society for Newspaper Editors.

By the late 2000s, when social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube were born, online Content marketing was accessible, shareable and on-demand anytime worldwide.

By 2014, Forbes Magazine's website had written about the seven most popular ways companies use Content marketing.[14] In it, the columnist points out that by 2013, use of Content marketing had jumped across corporations from 60% a year or so before, to 93%[15] as part of their overall marketing strategy.

Despite the fact that 70% of organizations are creating more content, only 21% of marketers think they are successful at tracking return on investment.

Today, Content marketing has become a powerful model for marketers.

Storytelling is part of it, and they must convey the companies’ messages or goal to their desired audience without pushing them to just buy the product or service.

The rise of Content marketing has turned many traditional businesses into media publishing companies.[16] For example: The rise of Content marketing has also accelerated the growth of online platforms, such as YouTube, Yelp, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Pinterest, and more.

For example: Businesses actively curate their content on these platforms with hopes to expand their reach to new audiences.

Part of transitioning to a media publishing mindset requires a change in structure and process to create content at the speed of culture.

The old model you see on shows like Mad Men is too slow and cumbersome.

By the time an idea becomes an ad, it is out of date.

Marketers are increasingly co-locating insights, creative, production, legal approval, and placement to increase interaction and speed in producing and distributing content.

Marketing content production is transforming from an advertising agency model to a newsroom model.[23] Metrics to determine the success of Content marketing are often tied to the original goals of the campaign.

For example, for each of these goals, a content marketer may measure the different engagement and conversion metrics: Businesses focused on expanding their reach to more customers will want to pay attention to the increase in the volume of visitors, as well as the quality of those interactions.

Traditional measures of volume include the number of visitors to a page and number of emails collected, while time spent on page and click-through to other pages/ photos are good indicators for engagement.

Businesses want to measure the impact that their messages have on consumers.

Brand health refers to the positive or negative feedback that a company gets.

It also measures how important a brand is for consumers.

With this companies want to find out if brand reputation influences their customers to make a purchase.[24] Measures in this part comprise For businesses hoping to reach not only more - but also new - types of customers online, they should pay attention to the demographics of new visitors, as evidenced by cookies that can be installed, different sources of traffic, different online behaviors, and/or different buying habits of online visitors.

Businesses focused on increasing sales through Content marketing should look at traditional e-commerce metrics including click-through-rate from a product-page to check-out and completion rates at the check-out.

Altogether, these form a conversion funnel.

Moreover, to better understand customers' buying habits, they should look at other engagement metrics like time spent per page, number of product-page visits per user, and re-engagement.

Refers to companies that want to analyze whether their social media campaigns are generating commentary among consumers.

This helps them to come up with ways to improve their product and service.

This involves "high level of brand engagement and builds brand loyalty".[26] Examples: Digital Content marketing, which is a management process, uses digital products through different electronic channels to identify, forecast and satisfy the necessity of the customers.[27] It must be consistently maintained to preserve or change the behavior of customers.[citation needed] Examples: The supply chain of digital Content marketing mainly consists of commercial stakeholders and end-user stakeholders which represent content providers and distributors and customers separately.[34] In this process, distributors manage the interface between the publisher and the consumer, then distributors could identify the content that consumers need through external channels and implement marketing strategies.

For instance, Library and document supply agencies as intermediaries can deliver the digital content of e-books, and e-journal articles to the users according to their search results through the electronic channels.

Another example is when consumers pay for the acquisition of some MP3 downloads, search engines can be used to identify different music providers and smart agents can be used by consumers to search for multiple music provider sites.

In a word, the digital Content marketing process needs to be conducted at the business level and service experience level because when consumers are accessing digital content, their own experience depends on the complex network of relationships in the Content marketing channels such as websites and videos.

The consumers interact directly with distributors in the big supply chain through various digital products which have an important role in meeting the requirements of the consumers.

The design and user experience of these channels directly decides the success of digital Content marketing.[27] Electronic services refer to interactive network services.[35] In the electronic service, the interaction between the customer and the organizations mainly through the network technology, such as using E-mail, telephone, online chat windows for communication.

Electronic services are different from traditional services and they are not affected by distance restrictions and opening hours.

Digital Content marketing through electronic service is usually served together with other channels to achieve marketing purposes including face-to-face, postal, and other remote services.

Information companies provide different messages and documents to customers who use multiple search engines on different sites and set up access rights for business groups.

These are some channels of digital Content marketing.[27]

Conductor (company)

Conductor was founded in 2006 as a marketing services company, and launched its SaaS (Software as a Service) platform, Conductor Searchlight, in 2010.[1][2] The company’s primary product is Conductor Searchlight, a cloud-based SEO & Content Marketing platform.[3][4] Conductor also provides recommended actions for optimizing digital marketing metrics and increasing revenue.[citation needed] On March 6, 2018, it was announced that WeWork would acquire Conductor.[5][6][7][8] On December 12, 2019, it was announced that Conductor was spinning off from WeWork to form an independent employee-owned company, turning its 250+ current employees into co-founders.[9][10][11] In 2016, Conductor introduced Insight Stream, a technology that aggregates multiple marketing technologies such as Deepcrawl, Dragon Metrics, and Google Search Console into one stream.[12] It has since become a foundational part of Conductor’s software platform.[citation needed] Conductor’s charitable arm, the Conductor Foundation, offers free access to the company’s technology and support in the form of a yearly grant to mission-based organizations, with the goal of helping them improve their digital marketing activities.[13][14] Past and present beneficiaries include the 9/11 Memorial, March of Dimes, Teach for America, and the World Wildlife Foundation.[citation needed] Conductor was founded by Jeremy Duboys and Seth Besmertnik in New York City in 2006.[15][16] In 2012 the company ranked at number thirty-eight on the Inc.

500 list of US companies ranked by highest growth percentage, and received $20 million in financing.[17][18] Conductor has been ranked as a best place to work (small/medium-sized category) in the state of New York by the Crain organization for 8 years running.The company added an office in San Francisco in 2014.[19] In February 2015 Conductor raised $27 million in Series D round funding.[20] The CEO of the company is Seth Besmertnik.[21] In March 2018, WeWork announced it would be acquiring Conductor.

[22][23] On December 12, 2019, it was announced that Conductor was spinning off from WeWork to form an independent employee-owned company, turning its 250+ current employees into co-founders.[9][10][11]

SEMrush

SEMrush is a software as a service (SaaS) company based in Boston that sells online visibility and marketing analytics software subscriptions.[2][3][4][5] It was founded by Oleg Shchegolev and Dmitry Melnikov as a SEO tool and a browser extension before adopting the SaaS model.

The software can provide intelligence data including website traffic information, keywords, projected AdWords spend, site audits, topic research, lead generation, and other SEO-related data.[6][7][8] The company's customers include eBay, Quora, Booking.com, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and BNP Paribas.[9] Oleg Shchegolev and Dmitry Melnikov started off as SEO enthusiasts who were interested in industry developments and new technologies and wanted to build a tool that could identify market trends and best industry practices.[10] After sharing their first findings with friends and local influencers, more people were curious and started using it daily.

Through word of mouth, the tool started increasing in popularity and a community of influencers grew as a result.

The software was first launched as Seodigger before being launched as a Firefox extension and was subsequently renamed to SeoQuake Company in 2007[11] and eventually to SEMrush with more than 650 employees in offices in Boston, Philadelphia, Czech Republic, Cyprus, and Russia.

In 2016, it reached its milestone of 1,000,000 users with clients in more than 100 countries.[10] In April 2018, the company received $40m (USD) in a funding round co-led by venture capital firms Greycroft, e.ventures, and Siguler Guff, for expansion to various search platforms including to those owned by Amazon, Microsoft, and Baidu.[12][13] In 2019 SEMrush released a product called "Sellerly", which provides Amazon retailers the ability to split test product detail pages.[14] Also in 2019 the company released a tools called "Traffic Analytics API", which is used for gathering various online data.[15] According to Forbes, "the company increased its user base by 45% in 2019".[16]

Marketo

Marketo, Inc.

is an American software company, headquartered in San Mateo, California.

Marketo develops and sells marketing automation software for account-based marketing and other marketing services and products including SEO and content creation.[1][2] Marketo supports large enterprises to fast-growing small business across a variety of industries from technology to higher education .[2][3] In 2018, Marketo was purchased by Adobe Inc.[1][4] Phil Fernandez, Jon Miller, and David Morandi, all formerly of Epiphany.[5] sought to help chief marketing officers and their teams be able to demonstrate the return on investment for their marketing programs.

In 2006, they founded Marketo.

Marketo introduced its first product, Marketo Lead Management in 2008 followed by Marketo Sales Insight in 2009 and Marketo Revenue Cycle Analytics in 2010.

On April 2012, Marketo completed its first acquisition by acquiring Crowd Factory, which enabled the company to integrate social media marketing capabilities into its application suite.[6] On November 2012, Marketo introduced LaunchPoint, an app and services network for the “marketing nation” of technology partners and professional service providers.[7] By 2013, Marketo filed for initial public offering and went public on May 17, 2013.[8][9] In December 2013, Marketo acquires Insightera, an Israeli company specializing in website personalization, for $20 million in cash and stock.[10] On June 2016, Vista Equity Partners announced an agreement to acquire Marketo for approximately $1.79 billion, and the acquisition completed in August 2017.[11][12] Steve Lucas was named the new Chief Executive Officer of Marketo in October 2016.[13] In 2017, Marketo was named as a leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for CRM Lead Management for the sixth year in a row.[14] In August 2017 Marketo announced that it will move all of its marketing automation software onto Google Cloud Platform as part of a six-year alliance to integrate Google’s tools into Marketo’s products.[15] On September 20, 2018, Adobe Systems announced that it was buying Marketo for $4.75 billion.[16][17]

Marketing mix

The term 'Marketing mix' is a foundation model for businesses, historically centered around product, price, place, and promotion (also known as the "4 Ps").

The Marketing mix has been defined as the "set of marketing tools that the firm uses to pursue its marketing objectives in the target market".[1] Thus the Marketing mix refers to four broad levels of marketing decision: product, price, place, and promotion.[2] Marketing practice has been occurring for millennia, but marketing theory emerged in the early twentieth century.

The contemporary Marketing mix, or the 4 Ps, which has become the dominant framework for marketing management decisions, was first published in 1960.[3] In services marketing, an extended Marketing mix is used, typically comprising 7 Ps, made up of the original 4 Ps extended by process, people, and physical evidence.[4] Occasionally service marketers will refer to 8 Ps, comprising these 7 Ps plus performance.[5] In the 1990s, the model of 4 Cs' was introduced as a more customer-driven replacement of the 4 Ps.[6] There are two theories based on 4 Cs: Lauterborn's 4 Cs (consumer, cost, convenience, and communication), and Shimizu's 4 Cs (commodity, cost, channel, and communication).

Given the valuation of customers towards potential product attributes (in any category, e.g.

product, promotion, etc.) and the attributes of the products sold by other companies, the problem of selecting the attributes of a product to maximize the number of customers preferring it is a computationally intractable problem.[7] The correct arrangement of Marketing mix by enterprise marketing managers plays an important role in the success of a company's marketing:[8] The origins of the 4 Ps can be traced to the late 1940s.[9][10] The first known mention of a mix has been attributed to a Professor of Marketing at Harvard University, Prof.

James Culliton.[11] In 1948, Culliton published an article entitled, The Management of Marketing Costs[12] in which Culliton describes marketers as 'mixers of ingredients'.

Some years later, Culliton's colleague, Professor Neil Borden, published a retrospective article detailing the early history of the Marketing mix in which he claims that he was inspired by Culliton's idea of 'mixers', and credits himself with popularising the concept of the 'Marketing mix'.[13] According to Borden's account, he used the term, 'Marketing mix' consistently from the late 1940s.

For instance, he is known to have used the term 'Marketing mix' in his presidential address given to the American Marketing Association in 1953.[14] Although the idea of marketers as 'mixers of ingredients' caught on, marketers could not reach any real consensus about what elements should be included in the mix until the 1960s.[15] The 4 Ps, in its modern form, was first proposed in 1960 by E.

Jerome McCarthy; who presented them within a managerial approach that covered analysis, consumer behavior, market research, market segmentation, and planning.[16] Phillip Kotler, popularised this approach and helped spread the 4 Ps model.[17][1] McCarthy's 4 Ps have been widely adopted by both marketing academics and practitioners.[18] The prospect of extending the Marketing mix first took hold at the inaugural AMA Conference dedicated to Services Marketing in the early 1980s, and built on earlier theoretical works pointing to many important limitations of the 4 Ps model.[19] Taken collectively, the papers presented at that conference indicate that service marketers were thinking about a revision to the general Marketing mix based on an understanding that services were fundamentally different from products, and therefore required different tools and strategies.

In 1981, Booms and Bitner proposed a model of 7 Ps, comprising the original 4 Ps extended by process, people and physical evidence, as being more applicable for services marketing.[20] Since then there have been a number of different proposals for a service Marketing mix (with various numbers of Ps), most notably the 8 Ps, comprising the 7 Ps above extended by 'performance'[5].

The original Marketing mix, or 4 Ps, as originally proposed by marketer and academic E.

Jerome McCarthy, provides a framework for marketing decision-making.[6] McCarthy's Marketing mix has since become one of the most enduring and widely accepted frameworks in marketing.[21] Table 1: Brief Outline of 4 Ps[6] Products may be tangible (goods) or intangible (services, ideas or experiences).

Price may also refer to the sacrifice consumers are prepared to make to acquire a product (e.g.

time or effort).

Price is the only variable that has implications for revenue.

Price also includes considerations of customer perceived value.

Considers providing convenience for consumer.

May comprise elements such as: advertising, PR, direct marketing and sales promotion.

Product refers to what the business offers for sale and may include products or services.

Product decisions include the "quality, features, benefits, style, design, branding, packaging, services, warranties, guarantees, life cycles, investments and returns".[24] Price refers to decisions surrounding "list pricing, discount pricing, special offer pricing, credit payment or credit terms".

Price refers to the total cost to customer to acquire the product, and may involve both monetary and psychological costs such as the time and effort spent in acquisition.[24] Place is defined as the "direct or indirect channels to market, geographical distribution, territorial coverage, retail outlet, market location, catalogues, inventory, logistics and order fulfilment".

Place refers either to the physical location where a business carries out business or the distribution channels used to reach markets.

Place may refer to a retail outlet, but increasingly refers to virtual stores such as "a mail order catalogue, a telephone call centre or a website".[24] Promotion refers to "the marketing communication used to make the offer known to potential customers and persuade them to investigate it further".[24] Promotion elements include "advertising, public relations, direct selling and sales promotions." By the 1980s, a number of theorists were calling for an expanded and modified framework that would be more useful to service marketers.

The prospect of expanding or modifying the Marketing mix for services was a core discussion topic at the inaugural AMA Conference dedicated to Services Marketing in the early 1980s, and built on earlier theoretical works pointing to many important problems and limitations of the 4 Ps model.[19] Taken collectively, the papers presented at that conference indicate that service marketers were thinking about a revision to the general Marketing mix based on an understanding that services were fundamentally different from products, and therefore required different tools and strategies.

In 1981, Booms and Bitner proposed a model of 7 Ps, comprising the original 4 Ps plus process, people and physical evidence, as being more applicable for services marketing.[20][25] Table 2: Outline of the Modified and Expanded Marketing mix Service personnel who represent the company's values to customers.

Interactions between customers.

Interactions between employees and customers.[27] The space where customers and service personnel interact.

Tangible commodities (e.g.

equipment, furniture) that facilitate service performance.

Artifacts that remind customers of a service performance.[29] People are essential in the marketing of any product or service.

Personnel stand for the service.

In the professional, financial or hospitality service industry, people are not producers, but rather the products themselves.[30] When people are the product, they impact public perception of an organization as much as any tangible consumer goods.

From a marketing management perspective, it is important to ensure that employees represent the company in alignment with broader messaging strategies.[31] This is easier to ensure when people feel as though they have been treated fairly and earn wages sufficient to support their daily lives.

Process refers to a "set of activities that results in delivery of the product benefits".

A process could be a sequential order of tasks that an employee undertakes as a part of their job.

It can represent sequential steps taken by a number of various employees while attempting to complete a task.

Some people are responsible for managing multiple processes at once.

For example, a restaurant manager should monitor the performance of employees, ensuring that processes are followed.

They are also expected to supervise while customers are promptly greeted, seated, fed, and led out so that the next customer can begin this process.[31] Physical evidence refers to the non-human elements of the service encounter, including equipment, furniture and facilities.

It may also refer to the more abstract components of the environment in which the service encounter occurs including interior design, colour schemes and layout.

Some aspects of physical evidence provide lasting proof that the service has occurred, such as souvenirs, mementos, invoices and other livery of artifacts.[30] According to Booms and Bitner's framework, the physical evidence is "the service delivered and any tangible goods that facilitate the performance and communication of the service".[31] Physical evidence is important to customers because the tangible goods are evidence that the seller has (or has not) provided what the customer was expecting.

Robert F.

Lauterborn proposed a 4 Cs classification in 1990.[32] His classification is a more consumer-orientated version of the 4 Ps[33] that attempts to better fit the movement from mass marketing to niche marketing:[32] After Koichi Shimizu proposed a 4 Cs classification in 1973, it was expanded to the 7Cs Compass Model to provide a more complete picture of the nature of marketing in 1979.

The 7Cs Compass Model is a framework of co-marketing (commensal marketing or Symbiotic marketing).

Also the Co-creative marketing of a company and consumers are contained in the co-marketing.

Co-marketing (collaborate marketing) is a marketing practice where two companies cooperate with separate distribution channels, sometimes including profit sharing.

It is frequently confused with co-promotion.

Also commensal (symbiotic) marketing is a marketing on which both corporation and a corporation, a corporation and a consumer, country and a country, human and nature can live.[38][39][40][41][42] (C1) Corporation – The core of 4 Cs is corporation (company and non profit organization).

C-O-S (competitor, organization, stakeholder) within the corporation.

The company has to think of compliance and accountability as important.

The competition in the areas in which the company competes with other firms in its industry.

The 4 elements in the 7Cs Compass Model are: A formal approach to this customer-focused Marketing mix is known as 4 Cs (commodity, cost, channel, communication) in the 7 Cs Compass Model.

The 4 Cs model provides a demand/customer centric version alternative to the well-known 4 Ps supply side model (product, price, place, promotion) of marketing management.[43] The compass of consumers and circumstances (environment) are: EXIBIT:7Cs Compass model(1979) in Japan(Courtesy: © Koichi Shimizu, Japan) These can also be remembered by the cardinal directions marked on a compass.

The 7 Cs Compass Model is a framework in co-marketing (symbiotic marketing).

It has been criticized for being little more than the 4 Ps with different points of emphasis.

In particular, the 7 Cs inclusion of consumers in the Marketing mix is criticized, since they are a target of marketing, while the other elements of the Marketing mix are tactics.

The 7 Cs also include numerous strategies for product development, distribution, and pricing, while assuming that consumers want two-way communications with companies.

An alternative approach has been suggested in a book called 'Service 7' by Australian Author, Peter Bowman.

Bowman suggests a values based approach to service marketing activities.

Bowman suggests implementing seven service marketing principles which include value, business development, reputation, customer service and service design.

Service 7 has been widely distributed within Australia.

Digital Marketing mix is fundamentally the same as Marketing mix, which is an adaptation of Product, Price, Place and Promotion into digital marketing aspect.[44] Digital marketing can be commonly explained as 'Achieving marketing objectives through applying digital technologies'.[45] Product Thanks to the interaction and connection of the Internet, Product has been redefined as 'virtual product' in the digital marketing aspect, which is regarded as the combination of tangibility and intangibility.

Through the form of digital, a product can be directly sent from manufacturers to customers.[46] For example, customers could buy music in the form of an MP3 rather than buy it in the form of a physical CD.

As a result, when a company is making strategy for Internet marketing, it is necessary to understand how to vary their products in the online environment.

Here are some indications of adapt the product element on the Internet.[45] Price Price concerns about the pricing policies or pricing models from a company.

Due to the wide use of the Internet, many applications could be found in both consumer's and producer's perspective.

From consumers' side, the Internet enables people to make a comparison to real-time prices before they make a consumption decision, which is time-saving and effort-saving for the consumers.[47] As for the suppliers, they can adjust prices in the real-time and provide higher degree of price transparency with customers.

Besides, the Internet is more likely to ease the pressure on price because online-producers do not have to put budget on renting a physical store.[45] Hence, making new or adjusting pricing strategies is essential for the company that wants to enter the Internet market.

Pricing strategies and tactics see also: Pricing Place With the application of the Internet, place is playing an increasingly important role in promoting consumption since the Internet and the physical channels become virtual.[44] The major contribution from the Internet to the business is not only making it possible to selling products online, but also enabling companies to build relationships with customers.[48] Furthermore, since the convenience of navigating from one site to another, place from the digital marketing perspective is always linked with promotion, which means retailers often use third-party websites such as Google search engine to guide customers to visit their websites.[45] Promotion Promotion refers to selecting the target markets, locating and integrating various communication tools in the Marketing mix.

Unlike the traditional marketing communication tools, tools in digital marketing aim at engaging audiences by putting advertisements and content on the social media, including display ads, pay-per-click (PPC), search engine optimisation (SEO), influencers etc.[45] When creating online marketing campaigns, Chaffey and Smith suggested that they can be separated into six groups:[49] Automatically selecting the attributes of a product (in any category, i.e.

product, promotion, etc.) to maximize the number of customers preferring the resulting product is a computationally intractable problem.[7] Given some customer profiles (i.e., customers sharing some features such as e.g.

gender, age, income, etc.), the valuations they give to each potential product attribute (e.g.

females aged 35–45 give a 3 out of 5 valuation to "it is green"; males aged 25–35 give 4/5 to "it can be paid in installments"; etc.), the attributes of the products sold by the other producers, and the attributes each producer can give to its products, the problem of deciding the attributes of our product to maximize the number of customers who will prefer it is Poly-APX-complete.

This implies that, under the standard computational assumption, no efficient algorithm can guarantee that the ratio between the number of customers preferring the product returned by the algorithm and the number of customers that would prefer the actual optimal product will always reach some constant, for any constant.

Moreover, the problem of finding a strategy such that, for any strategy of the other producers, our product will always reach some minimum average number of customers over some period of time is an EXPTIME-complete problem, meaning that it cannot be efficiently solved.

However, heuristic (sub-optimal) solutions to these problems can be found by means of genetic algorithms, particle swarm optimization methods, or minimax algorithms.

Recruitment marketing

Recruitment marketing refers to the strategies and tactics an organization uses to find, attract, engage and nurture talent before they apply for a job, also called the pre-applicant phase of talent acquisition.

In simple terms, Recruitment marketing is the practice of promoting the value of working for an employer in order to recruit talent.

It is analogous in many ways to corporate marketing, and is extremely similar to employer branding except relates to trackable initiatives that drive awareness and conversion of applicants vs someone's impression of working at a company.

Of course others see employer branding as a subset of Recruitment marketing, in addition to extending the reach and exposure of career opportunities, building and nurturing candidate relationships through talent communities, and all management of messaging and advertising of talent acquisition efforts.

The focus involves initiating relationships with candidates prior to talent needs and beyond job openings by engaging them through the many touch points of the modern job search.

The goal of a Recruitment marketing strategy is to increase the number of qualified candidates in an organization's talent pipeline.

This strategy can be achieved through the use of Recruitment marketing software.

The recruiting stack can be a single solution[buzzword] or a collection of tools and processes that meet the needs of a given employer's recruiting goals.

This stack typically includes a modern ATS (iCIMS, Lever, Workable, GreenHouse, etc.), a dedicated Recruitment marketing platform (Phenom People, Talemetry, Symphony Talent, TMP Talentbrew, Smashfly, Avature, NextWave Hire, ViziRecruiter), and a host of point solutions[buzzword] to handle anything from social media (Buffer, Hootsuite) to ad buying (Nexcv, or handled through traditional demand side platforms or marketing agencies).

Bersin by Deloitte defines a talent pipeline as an organization's ongoing need to have a pool of talent that is readily available to fill positions at all levels of management (as well as other key positions) as the company grows.[1] In contrast, traditional recruitment is focused on the immediate need of filling a specific job requisition.

A Recruitment marketing strategy leverages the principles of inbound marketing and integrates employer value proposition[2] messaging across the employer brand, online job advertising (through job boards and aggregators like Indeed, Resume-Library SimplyHired, CareerBuilder, Monster, LinkedIn and more), SEO, mobile recruiting, landing pages, content marketing, career sites, social media marketing, employee referrals and email marketing to reach and engage potential candidates to opt into an employer's talent network.[3] Once in the CRM (candidate relationship management), the focus is building relationships and nurturing candidates through personalized content, alerts and calls-to-action to send them relevant information, as well as job openings.

By tracking, measuring and analyzing the effectiveness of recruiting efforts, Recruitment marketing is turning talent acquisition into a data-driven function that consistently and predictably drives more qualified leads into the hiring funnel.

Using an integrated recruiting stack solution[buzzword] fueled by business intelligence and data science, companies can now report on the entire hiring process including the effectiveness of their Recruitment marketing strategy and the value of their talent pipeline.

Business in all facets has largely turned "inbound" in the last decade—customers are finding their own paths to services, products and companies versus companies using ads to disruptively get in front of potential customers.

Inbound marketing has been the most successful marketing method for doing business in recent years because companies are creating value and interest for prospective customers, turning them into loyal and long-term advocates.

HubSpot notes that inbound marketers who measure ROI are more than 12 times more likely to be generating a greater year-over-year return.[4] Marketing teams have thus transformed and expanded, adding new positions like content strategist and digital analyst, and expertise in social media, SEO and demand generation.

The modern marketing team has key roles with specific knowledge in efforts that will attract more interested leads through broader channels, and more importantly, will nurture them into qualified prospects to deliver to sales.

To create differentiation and improve candidate engagement, recruiting is using marketing tactics with similar functions and strategies.

While there has always been an element of marketing in a good recruiting process, historically it has never been the core, and departments have been siloed between marketing and HR.[5] Now, however, the talent acquisition industry is seeing marketing and recruiting becoming intertwined, with Recruitment marketing emerging both as a distinct discipline and a core competency affecting every part of the talent acquisition cycle.

Increasingly, Recruitment marketing is becoming not only a practice but also a profession, with new job titles such as Recruitment marketing specialist, social recruiting strategist and talent brand manager.[6] Typically Recruitment marketing drives value in two major ways.

First is through driving awareness.

This can be through traditional job advertisements, that are more broadly distributed through paid placement on websites like Indeed.

This can also be done through advertising strategies that are both paid and organic, but more natural to the world of marketing such as social media advertising, SEO focused content, and even webinars.

More awareness leads to more candidates and further growth of a given company's talent pipeline.

The second main source of value is from increasing the rate at which job seekers apply for jobs, or conversion rates.

For example, if 5% of your career site visitors currently apply for a job, and you increase that number to 10% by having more compelling content on your careers site, then your Recruitment marketing efforts have resulted in double the amount of applicants you would have otherwise gotten.

The end results of these efforts should always be a decrease in time to fill, as well as cost per hire.

Netconcepts

Netconcepts was a web marketing and web development agency founded by Stephan Spencer and headquartered in Madison, Wisconsin.

Netconcepts specialized in SEO for Fortune 500 ecommerce companies and major media brands.

Netconcepts was acquired in January 2010 by Covario, which was then the nation's largest independent SEM (search engine marketing) and SEO (search engine optimization) solutions provider, offering both software and marketing services for paid and organic search management.[1][2] Covario was itself acquired in 2014 by Dentsu Aegis, a multinational media and digital marketing communications company.[3] In 1995, the web development company Internet Concepts LLC was founded by its president Stephan Spencer, eventually renaming itself to Netconcepts LLC.[4][5][6] In 2000, A New Zealand office, Netconcepts Ltd., was opened by Spencer in Browns Bay, Auckland and then later, Christchurch.

Netconcepts Ltd.

was the design and production arm of Netconcepts LLC, the office in Madison.[7] The majority of the over 50 staff wereemployed in the New Zealand office though some of the owners and key executives were based in Madison.[8] The company was featured in a case study by the New Zealand Government's Work-Life Balance Project.[9] Netconcepts had many large corporate American clients which totaled 70% of their client list, the other 30% were New Zealand-based clients.[10] In 2005, Netconcepts earned $5 million in revenue.[11] Some of the American clients included the Carter Center,[12] PartStore.com,[13] Verizon,[14] Van Dykes Taxidermy,[15] Countrywide Financial, Steve Spangler,[11] and Discovery Channel.

New Zealand clients include New Zealand Post and Prime Television.[16] Netconcepts China was founded in 2008 and continues to operate, with headquarters in Beijing and offices in Shanghai, Chengdu and Jinan.[17] Amazon China, Huawei and eBay are among their clients.[18] After acquiring Netconcepts LLC, Covario Inc.

phased out use of the Netconcepts brand name.[19] In 2003, Netconcepts released a report titled The State of Search Engine Cataloging, which showed 99 of the then Catalog Age 100 companies had not optimized their website for search engines.

The other company did not have a website.

Brian Klais, vice-president of their e-business sector, and Stephan Spencer said to Multi Channel Merchant: "the vast majority of sites analyzed had sizable chunks of their site inaccessible to search engine spiders, mostly due to search-engine-unfriendly dynamic URLs and navigation based on Java, JavaScript, or Flash."[20] Netconcepts released a white paper in 2006, detailing the aspect of long tail searches and the value of having them.

The white paper says that the amount of unbranded keyword traffic is about seven million searches a month.

A previous study showed that Google served up the most unbranded searches, 80.7%.[21] Netconcepts then went into detail about how to optimize a website for long tail searches, such as changing from dynamic to static URLs so a search engine can index the page easier, rewrite title tags, and copy optimization.[22]

Lead validation

Lead validation is the process by which sales leads generated by internet marketing campaigns are separated from other types of conversions.

Lead validation is crucial for effective internet marketing management; without it, companies can neither accurately evaluate the results of, nor efficiently improve, their SEO, PPC, display advertising, email, content marketing and social media campaigns.

Three other terms are particularly important to any discussion of Lead validation: In the examples cited above, the importance of Lead validation becomes clear: Without Lead validation, the PPC advertiser will assume it has received 200 leads (500 inquiries versus 300 validated leads) that do not, in fact, exist.

This serious flaw in analytics causes several marketing- and business-related problems.

Companies have several options for online lead generation, each having its own campaign structures, metrics and set of best practices.

The most important and typically most effective options are: Other types of non-sales lead inquiries include the following:

Website content writer

A Website content writer or web content writer is a person who specializes in providing relevant content for websites.

Every website has a specific target audience and requires the most relevant content to attract business.

Content should contain keywords (specific business-related terms, which internet users might use in order to search for services or products) aimed towards improving a website's SEO.

Generally, a Website content writer who has got this knowledge of SEO is also referred to as an SEO Content Writer.

Most story pieces are centered on marketing products or services, though this is not always the case.

Some websites are informational only and do not sell a product or service.

These websites are often news sites or blogs.

Informational sites educate the reader with complex information that is easy to understand and retain.

There is a growing demand for skilled web content writing on the Internet.

Quality content often translates into higher revenues for online businesses.

Website owners and managers depend on content writers to perform several major tasks: Website content writing aims for relevance and search-ability.

Relevance means that the website text should be useful and beneficial to readers.

Search-ability indicates usage of keywords to help search engines direct users to websites that meet their search criteria.

There are various ways through which websites come up with article writing, and one of them is outsourcing of the content writing.

However, it is riskier than other options, as not all writers can write content specific to the web.

Content can be written for various purposes in various forms.

The most popular forms of content writing are: The content in website differs based on the product or service it is used for.

Writing online is different from composing and constructing content for printed materials.

Web users tend to scan text instead of reading it closely, skipping what they perceive to be unnecessary information and hunting for what they regard as most relevant.

It is estimated that seventy-nine percent of users scan web content.

It is also reported that it takes twenty-five percent more time to scan content online compared to print content.[1] Web content writers must have the skills to insert paragraphs and headlines containing keywords for search engine optimization, as well as to make sure their composition is clear, to reach their target market.

They need to be skilled writers and good at engaging an audience as well as understanding the needs of web users.

Website content writing is frequently outsourced to external providers, such as individual web copywriters or for larger or more complex projects, a specialized digital marketing agency.

It shall be said that most of the content writers also spend time learning about digital marketing with more focus on Search Engine Optimization, Pay Per Click, Social Media Optimization etc.

so that they can develop right content which can help clients with marketing business easily.

Digital marketing agencies combine copy-writing services with a range of editorial and associated services, that may include brand positioning, message consulting, social media, SEO consulting, developmental and copy editing, proofreading, fact checking, layout, content syndication, and design.

Outsourcing allows businesses to focus on core competencies and to benefit from the specialized knowledge of professional copywriters and editors.

Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate's own marketing efforts.[1][2][3][4][5] The industry has four core players:[citation needed] The market has grown in complexity, resulting in the emergence of a secondary tier of players, including affiliate management agencies, super-affiliates, and specialized third party vendors.[citation needed] Affiliate marketing overlaps with other Internet marketing methods to some degree because affiliates often use regular advertising methods.

Those methods include organic search engine optimization (SEO), paid search engine marketing (PPC – Pay Per Click), e-mail marketing, content marketing, and (in some sense) display advertising.

On the other hand, affiliates sometimes use less orthodox techniques, such as publishing reviews of products or services offered by a partner.[citation needed] Affiliate marketing is commonly confused with referral marketing, as both forms of marketing use third parties to drive sales to the retailer.

The two forms of marketing are differentiated, however, in how they drive sales, where Affiliate marketing relies purely on financial motivations, while referral marketing relies more on trust and personal relationships.[citation needed] Affiliate marketing is frequently overlooked by advertisers.[6] While search engines, e-mail, and web site syndication capture much of the attention of online retailers, Affiliate marketing carries a much lower profile.

Still, affiliates continue to play a significant role in e-retailers' marketing strategies.[citation needed] The concept of revenue sharing—paying commission for referred business—predates Affiliate marketing and the Internet.

The translation of the revenue share principles to mainstream e-commerce happened in November 1994,[7] almost four years after the origination of the World Wide Web.

The concept of Affiliate marketing on the Internet was conceived of, put into practice and patented by William J.

Tobin, the founder of PC Flowers & Gifts.

Launched on the Prodigy Network in 1989, PC Flowers & Gifts remained on the service until 1996.

By 1993, PC Flowers & Gifts generated sales in excess of $6 million per year on the Prodigy service.

In 1998, PC Flowers and Gifts developed the business model of paying a commission on sales to the Prodigy Network.[8][9] In 1994, Tobin launched a beta version of PC Flowers & Gifts on the Internet in cooperation with IBM, who owned half of Prodigy.[10] By 1995 PC Flowers & Gifts had launched a commercial version of the website and had 2,600 Affiliate marketing partners on the World Wide Web.

Tobin applied for a patent on tracking and Affiliate marketing on January 22, 1996, and was issued U.S.

Patent number 6,141,666 on Oct 31, 2000.

Tobin also received Japanese Patent number 4021941 on Oct 5, 2007, and U.S.

Patent number 7,505,913 on Mar 17, 2009, for Affiliate marketing and tracking.[11] In July 1998 PC Flowers and Gifts merged with Fingerhut and Federated Department Stores.[12] In November 1994, CDNow launched its BuyWeb program.

CDNow had the idea that music-oriented websites could review or list albums on their pages that their visitors might be interested in purchasing.

These websites could also offer a link that would take visitors directly to CDNow to purchase the albums.

The idea for remote purchasing originally arose from conversations with music label Geffen Records in the fall of 1994.

The management at Geffen wanted to sell its artists' CD's directly from its website but did not want to implement this capability itself.

Geffen asked CDNow if it could design a program where CDNow would handle the order fulfillment.

Geffen realized that CDNow could link directly from the artist on its website to Geffen's website, bypassing the CDNow home page and going directly to an artist's music page.[13] Amazon.com (Amazon) launched its associate program in July 1996: Amazon associates could place banner or text links on their site for individual books, or link directly to the Amazon home page.[14] When visitors clicked on the associate's website to go to Amazon and purchase a book, the associate received a commission.

Amazon was not the first merchant to offer an affiliate program, but its program was the first to become widely known and serve as a model for subsequent programs.[15][16] In February 2000, Amazon announced that it had been granted a patent[17] on components of an affiliate program.

The patent application was submitted in June 1997, which predates most affiliate programs, but not PC Flowers & Gifts.com (October 1994), AutoWeb.com (October 1995), Kbkids.com/BrainPlay.com (January 1996), EPage (April 1996), and several others.[18] Affiliate marketing has grown quickly since its inception.

The e-commerce website, viewed as a marketing toy in the early days of the Internet, became an integrated part of the overall business plan and in some cases grew to a bigger business than the existing offline business.

According to one report, the total sales amount generated through affiliate networks in 2006 was £2.16 billion in the United Kingdom alone.

The estimates were £1.35 billion in sales in 2005.[19] MarketingSherpa's research team estimated that, in 2006, affiliates worldwide earned US$6.5 billion in bounty and commissions from a variety of sources in retail, personal finance, gaming and gambling, travel, telecom, education, publishing, and forms of lead generation other than contextual advertising programs.[20] In 2006, the most active sectors for Affiliate marketing were the adult gambling, retail industries and file-sharing services.[21]:149–150 The three sectors expected to experience the greatest growth are the mobile phone, finance, and travel sectors.[21] Soon after these sectors came the entertainment (particularly gaming) and Internet-related services (particularly broadband) sectors.

Also several of the affiliate solution providers expect to see increased interest from business-to-business marketers and advertisers in using Affiliate marketing as part of their mix.[21]:149–150 Websites and services based on Web 2.0 concepts—blogging and interactive online communities, for example—have impacted the Affiliate marketing world as well.

These platforms allow improved communication between merchants and affiliates.

Web 2.0 platforms have also opened Affiliate marketing channels to personal bloggers, writers, and independent website owners.

Contextual ads allow publishers with lower levels of web traffic to place affiliate ads on websites.[citation needed] Forms of new media have also diversified how companies, brands, and ad networks serve ads to visitors.

For instance, YouTube allows video-makers to embed advertisements through Google's affiliate network.[22][23] New developments have made it more difficult for unscrupulous affiliates to make money.

Emerging black sheep are detected and made known to the Affiliate marketing community with much greater speed and efficiency.[citation needed] Eighty percent of affiliate programs today use revenue sharing or pay per sale (PPS) as a compensation method, nineteen percent use cost per action (CPA), and the remaining programs use other methods such as cost per click (CPC) or cost per mille (CPM, cost per estimated 1000 views).[24] Within more mature markets, less than one percent of traditional Affiliate marketing programs today use cost per click and cost per mille.

However, these compensation methods are used heavily in display advertising and paid search.

Cost per mille requires only that the publisher make the advertising available on his or her website and display it to the page visitors in order to receive a commission.

Pay per click requires one additional step in the conversion process to generate revenue for the publisher: A visitor must not only be made aware of the advertisement but must also click on the advertisement to visit the advertiser's website.

Cost per click was more common in the early days of Affiliate marketing but has diminished in use over time due to click fraud issues very similar to the click fraud issues modern search engines are facing today.

Contextual advertising programs are not considered in the statistic pertaining to the diminished use of cost per click, as it is uncertain if contextual advertising can be considered Affiliate marketing.

While these models have diminished in mature e-commerce and online advertising markets they are still prevalent in some more nascent industries.

China is one example where Affiliate marketing does not overtly resemble the same model in the West.

With many affiliates being paid a flat "Cost Per Day" with some networks offering Cost Per Click or CPM.

In the case of cost per mille/click, the publisher is not concerned about whether a visitor is a member of the audience that the advertiser tries to attract and is able to convert because at this point the publisher has already earned his commission.

This leaves the greater, and, in case of cost per mille, the full risk and loss (if the visitor cannot be converted) to the advertiser.

Cost per action/sale methods require that referred visitors do more than visit the advertiser's website before the affiliate receives a commission.

The advertiser must convert that visitor first.

It is in the best interest of the affiliate to send the most closely targeted traffic to the advertiser as possible to increase the chance of a conversion.

The risk and loss are shared between the affiliate and the advertiser.

Affiliate marketing is also called "performance marketing", in reference to how sales employees are typically being compensated.

Such employees are typically paid a commission for each sale they close, and sometimes are paid performance incentives for exceeding objectives.[25] Affiliates are not employed by the advertiser whose products or services they promote, but the compensation models applied to Affiliate marketing are very similar to the ones used for people in the advertisers' internal sales department.

The phrase, "Affiliates are an extended sales force for your business", which is often used to explain Affiliate marketing, is not completely accurate.

The primary difference between the two is that affiliate marketers provide little if any influence on a possible prospect in the conversion process once that prospect is directed to the advertiser's website.

The sales team of the advertiser, however, does have the control and influence up to the point where the prospect either a) signs the contract, or b) completes the purchase.

Some advertisers offer multi-tier programs that distribute commission into a hierarchical referral network of sign-ups and sub-partners.

In practical terms, publisher "A" signs up to the program with an advertiser and gets rewarded for the agreed activity conducted by a referred visitor.

If publisher "A" attracts publishers "B" and "C" to sign up for the same program using his sign-up code, all future activities performed by publishers "B" and "C" will result in additional commission (at a lower rate) for publisher "A".

Two-tier programs exist in the minority of affiliate programs; most are simply one-tier.

Referral programs beyond two-tier resemble multi-level marketing (MLM) or network marketing but are different: Multi-level marketing (MLM) or network marketing associations tend to have more complex commission requirements/qualifications than standard affiliate programs.[citation needed] Merchants favor Affiliate marketing because in most cases it uses a "pay for performance" model, meaning that the merchant does not incur a marketing expense unless results are accrued (excluding any initial setup cost).[26] Some merchants run their own (in-house) affiliate programs using dedicated software, while others use third-party intermediaries to track traffic or sales that are referred from affiliates.

There are two different types of affiliate management methods used by merchants: standalone software or hosted services, typically called affiliate networks.

Payouts to affiliates or publishers can be made by the networks on behalf of the merchant, by the network, consolidated across all merchants where the publisher has a relationship with and earned commissions or directly by the merchant itself.

Uncontrolled affiliate programs aid rogue affiliates, who use spamming,[27] trademark infringement, false advertising, cookie stuffing, typosquatting,[28] and other unethical methods that have given Affiliate marketing a negative reputation.

Some merchants are using outsourced (affiliate) program management (OPM) companies, which are themselves often run by affiliate managers and network program managers.[29] OPM companies perform affiliate program management for the merchants as a service, similar to the role an advertising agencies serves in offline marketing.

Affiliate websites are often categorized by merchants (advertisers) and affiliate networks.

There are currently no industry-wide standards for the categorization.

The following types of websites are generic, yet are commonly understood and used by affiliate marketers.

Affiliate networks that already have several advertisers typically also have a large pool of publishers.

These publishers could be potentially recruited, and there is also an increased chance that publishers in the network apply to the program on their own, without the need for recruitment efforts by the advertiser.

Relevant websites that attract the same target audiences as the advertiser but without competing with it are potential affiliate partners as well.

Vendors or existing customers can also become recruits if doing so makes sense and does not violate any laws or regulations (such as with pyramid schemes).

Almost any website could be recruited as an affiliate publisher, but high traffic websites are more likely interested in (for their sake) low-risk cost per mille or medium-risk cost per click deals rather than higher-risk cost per action or revenue share deals.[30] There are three primary ways to locate affiliate programs for a target website: If the above locations do not yield information pertaining to affiliates, it may be the case that there exists a non-public affiliate program.

Utilizing one of the common website correlation methods may provide clues about the affiliate network.

The most definitive method for finding this information is to contact the website owner directly if a contact method can be located.

Since the emergence of Affiliate marketing, there has been little control over affiliate activity.

Unscrupulous affiliates have used spam, false advertising, forced clicks (to get tracking cookies set on users' computers), adware, and other methods to drive traffic to their sponsors.

Although many affiliate programs have terms of service that contain rules against spam, this marketing method has historically proven to attract abuse from spammers.

In the infancy of Affiliate marketing, many Internet users held negative opinions due to the tendency of affiliates to use spam to promote the programs in which they were enrolled.[31] As Affiliate marketing matured, many affiliate merchants have refined their terms and conditions to prohibit affiliates from spamming.

A browser extension is a plug-in that extends the functionality of a web browser.

Some extensions are authored using web technologies such as HTML, JavaScript, and CSS.

Most modern web browsers have a whole slew of third-party extensions available for download.

In recent years, there has been a constant rise in the number of malicious browser extensions flooding the web.

Malicious browser extensions will often appear to be legitimate as they seem to originate from vendor websites and come with glowing customer reviews.[32] In the case of Affiliate marketing, these malicious extensions are often used to redirect a user's browser to send fake clicks to websites that are supposedly part of legitimate Affiliate marketing programs.

Typically, users are completely unaware this is happening other than their browser performance slowing down.

Websites end up paying for fake traffic numbers, and users are unwitting participants in these ad schemes.

As search engines have become more prominent, some affiliate marketers have shifted from sending e-mail spam to creating automatically generated web pages that often contain product data feeds provided by merchants.

The goal of such web pages is to manipulate the relevancy or prominence of resources indexed by a search engine, also known as spamdexing.

Each page can be targeted to a different niche market through the use of specific keywords, with the result being a skewed form of search engine optimization.

Spam is the biggest threat to organic search engines, whose goal is to provide quality search results for keywords or phrases entered by their users.

Google's PageRank algorithm update ("BigDaddy") in February 2006—the final stage of Google's major update ("Jagger") that began in mid-summer 2005—specifically targeted spamdexing with great success.

This update thus enabled Google to remove a large amount of mostly computer-generated duplicate content from its index.[33] Websites consisting mostly of affiliate links have previously held a negative reputation for underdelivering quality content.

In 2005 there were active changes made by Google, where certain websites were labeled as "thin affiliates".[34] Such websites were either removed from Google's index or were relocated within the results page (i.e., moved from the top-most results to a lower position).

To avoid this categorization, affiliate marketer webmasters must create quality content on their websites that distinguishes their work from the work of spammers or banner farms, which only contain links leading to merchant sites.

Although it differs from spyware, adware often uses the same methods and technologies.

Merchants initially were uninformed about adware, what impact it had, and how it could damage their brands.

Affiliate marketers became aware of the issue much more quickly, especially because they noticed that adware often overwrites tracking cookies, thus resulting in a decline of commissions.

Affiliates not employing adware felt that it was stealing commission from them.

Adware often has no valuable purpose and rarely provides any useful content to the user, who is typically unaware that such software is installed on his/her computer.

Affiliates discussed the issues in Internet forums and began to organize their efforts.

They believed that the best way to address the problem was to discourage merchants from advertising via adware.

Merchants that were either indifferent to or supportive of adware were exposed by affiliates, thus damaging those merchants' reputations and tarnishing their Affiliate marketing efforts.

Many affiliates either terminated the use of such merchants or switched to a competitor's affiliate program.

Eventually, affiliate networks were also forced by merchants and affiliates to take a stand and ban certain adware publishers from their network.

The result was Code of Conduct by Commission Junction/beFree and Performics,[35] LinkShare's Anti-Predatory Advertising Addendum,[36] and ShareASale's complete ban of software applications as a medium for affiliates to promote advertiser offers.[37] Regardless of the progress made, adware continues to be an issue, as demonstrated by the class action lawsuit against ValueClick and its daughter company Commission Junction filed on April 20, 2007.[38] Affiliates were among the earliest adopters of pay per click advertising when the first pay-per-click search engines emerged during the end of the 1990s.

Later in 2000 Google launched its pay per click service, Google AdWords, which is responsible for the widespread use and acceptance of pay per click as an advertising channel.

An increasing number of merchants engaged in pay per click advertising, either directly or via a search marketing agency, and realized that this space was already occupied by their affiliates.

Although this situation alone created advertising channel conflicts and debates between advertisers and affiliates, the largest issue concerned affiliates bidding on advertisers names, brands, and trademarks.[39] Several advertisers began to adjust their affiliate program terms to prohibit their affiliates from bidding on those type of keywords.

Some advertisers, however, did and still do embrace this behavior, going so far as to allow, or even encourage, affiliates to bid on any term, including the advertiser's trademarks.

Bloggers and other publishers may not be aware of disclosure guidelines set forth by the FTC.

Guidelines affect celebrity endorsements, advertising language, and blogger compensation.[40] Affiliate marketing currently lacks industry standards for training and certification.

There are some training courses and seminars that result in certifications; however, the acceptance of such certifications is mostly due to the reputation of the individual or company issuing the certification.

Affiliate marketing is not commonly taught in universities, and only a few college instructors work with Internet marketers to introduce the subject to students majoring in marketing.[41] Education occurs most often in "real life" by becoming involved and learning the details as time progresses.

Although there are several books on the topic, some so-called "how-to" or "silver bullet" books instruct readers to manipulate holes in the Google algorithm, which can quickly become out of date,[41] or suggest strategies no longer endorsed or permitted by advertisers.[42] Outsourced Program Management companies typically combine formal and informal training, providing much of their training through group collaboration and brainstorming.

Such companies also try to send each marketing employee to the industry conference of their choice.[43] Other training resources used include online forums, weblogs, podcasts, video seminars, and specialty websites.

A code of conduct was released by affiliate networks Commission Junction/beFree and Performics in December 2002 to guide practices and adherence to ethical standards for online advertising.

In 2008 the state of New York passed a law asserting sales tax jurisdiction over Amazon.com sales to New York residents.

New York was aware of Amazon affiliates operating within the state.

In Quill Corp.

v.

North Dakota, the US Supreme Court ruled that the presence of independent sales representatives may allow a state to require sales tax collections.

New York determined that affiliates are such independent sales representatives.

The New York law became known as "Amazon's law" and was quickly emulated by other states.[44] While that was the first time states successfully addressed the internet tax gap, since 2018 states have been free to assert sales tax jurisdiction over sales to their residents regardless of the presence of retailer affiliates.[45] Many voucher code web sites use a click-to-reveal format, which requires the web site user to click to reveal the voucher code.

The action of clicking places the cookie on the website visitor's computer.

In the United Kingdom, the IAB Affiliate Council under chair Matt Bailey announced regulations[46] that stated that "Affiliates must not use a mechanism whereby users are encouraged to click to interact with content where it is unclear or confusing what the outcome will be."

Seo Taiji and Boys

Seo Taiji and Boys (Korean: 서태지와 아이들) was a South Korean music group active from 1992 to 1996.

Its three members Seo Taiji, Yang Hyun-suk, and Lee Juno experimented with many different genres of popular Western music.[1] Seo Taiji and Boys was highly successful and is credited with changing the South Korean music industry by pioneering the use of rap in Korean pop music and utilizing social critique, despite pressure from ethics and censorship committees.[2][3] The band won the Grand Prize at the Seoul Music Awards in both 1992 and 1993.[4] In April 1996, Billboard reported that the band's first three albums had each sold over 1.6 million copies, with the fourth nearing two million,[5] making all four some of the best-selling albums in South Korea.

After the breakup of the heavy metal band Sinawe in 1991, Seo Taiji switched gears and formed the group Seo Taiji and Boys with dancers and backing vocalists Yang Hyun-suk and Lee Juno.

Yang said he first met Seo when the musician came to him to learn how to dance.

"Blown away" by his music, Yang offered to join the group, and they later recruited Lee who was one of the top dancers in Korea and joined the group as a background dancer, despite being highly regarded in his own right, because the music "moved [his] heart."[6] Seo Taiji came across MIDI technology for the first time in South Korea in the early 1990s and started experimenting with different MIDI sounds to create a new type of music that had not been heard by the public.

He initially had no plans to debut as a dance/pop boy group, and Seo Taiji and Boys' mainstream success was a surprise.

The trio debuted on MBC's talent show on April 11, 1992 with their song "Nan Arayo" (난 알아요, "I Know") and got the lowest rating from the jury.[7] However, the song and their self-titled debut album became so successful that, according to MTV Iggy, "K-pop music would never be the same" again.[8] One of the first Korean rap songs,[9] "Nan Arayo" was a hugely successful hit;[10] its new jack swing-inspired beats, upbeat rap verses and pop-style choruses combined with a focus on new dance moves took Korean audiences by storm.[8][9] Influenced by the videos for Technotronic's Pump Up the Jam and Snap!'s The Power,[11] the music video for "Nan Arayo" features varying color saturation and chroma key editing, varying the angles of the dancers' bodies constantly.

The group sold over 1.5 million copies of the album within a month of its release,[11] and Seo Taiji and Boys won a Golden Disc Award for "Nan Arayo" in 1992.[12] Spin named "Nan Arayo" number 4 on their 2012 list of the 21 Greatest K-Pop Songs of All Time.[13] In 2015, Rolling Stone named it number 36 on its list of the 50 Greatest Boy Band Songs of All Time.[14] "Nan Arayo" is also recognized for establishing the popularity of rap in K-pop and hybridizing the Korean ballad style with rap, rock, and techno.[9] Their 1993 second album took a different turn.

Although remaining a mostly dance album, a few songs such as "Hayeoga" (하여가, 何如歌, "Anyway") combined elements of heavy metal and traditional Korean folk music through the use of the taepyeongso, a double-reed wind instrument, and melodic structure.[3] While there was controversy that the guitar solo in the middle of the song plagiarized Testament's "First Strike is Deadly," the guitarist for the solo, Lee Tae-Seop, mentioned in an interview[15][16] that the solo's arpeggios reinterpreted Scandinavian folk songs, which had no copyright.

"Hayeoga" earned them their second Golden Disc Award.[12] Moreover, while promoting the album, the group was banned from appearing on the national television channel KBS-TV because they wore earrings, ripped jeans and had dreadlocks, which ethics committees associated with reggae, resistance movements, and rejection of social norms (although their brightly dyed long hair in 1995 did not attract a similar ban).[3][17][18] This was the first of the numerous controversies regarding Seo Taiji and Boys.

The band's second album became the first 'double million sellers' album in Korean history.

The third album shifted to a more heavy metal and rock style.

Danceable tunes were nearly non-existent except "Balhaereul Kkumkkumyeo" (발해를 꿈꾸며, "Dreaming of Balhae"), an alternative rock song indicating a hope of reuniting North and South Korea, which earned the group its third Golden Disc Award.[12] Instead, songs such as the controversial "Kyoshil Idea" (교실 이데아, "Classroom Ideology") with death growl vocals, influenced by bands such as the Beastie Boys and Rage Against the Machine, by Ahn Heung-Chan of Crash took center stage.[19] "Kyoshil Idea" was extremely critical of the Korean education system and the pressure placed on youth to succeed academically, such as doing well on university entrance exams.[17] The song was banned from being played on TV and radio (but passed by ethics committees) for the censuring of the education system in its lyrics:Every morning you lead us into a tiny classroom by 7:30, forcing the same things into the 7 million heads of children around the country.

These dark, closed classrooms are swallowing us up.

My life is too precious to be wasted here.[3]Additionally, the band was accused of backmasking Satanic messages in "Kyoshil Idea." Although the mainstream news media later proved these accusations to be groundless, the moral panic proved difficult to eliminate entirely.[20] Not backing down, Seo Taiji and Boys' fourth album exploded with more controversial songs.

"Come Back Home" was a foray into gangsta rap, featuring a high-pitched nasal voice influenced by B-Real of Cypress Hill in "Insane in the Brain" and by House of Pain.[3] "Pilseung" (필승, 必勝, "Certain Victory") was also a hit with alternative rock sound and shouting voice reminiscent of House of Pain's "Jump Around." However, "Sidae Yugam" (시대유감, 時代遺憾, "Shame of the Times") was banned by the Public Performance Ethics Committee for having lyrics that criticized the government.[21] The version of the song included on the album is instrumental only, as a refusal by Seo to rewrite or remove the original three lines that the Ethics Committee demanded be changed (in bold):[3][17] Educated elders are walking down the street holding pretty dolls.

It seems that the day everyone has been secretly hoping for is coming today.

Lips stained black.

Gone is the era of honest people.

[...] I wish for a new world that'll overturn everything.

[...] I hope I can avenge the grudge in my heart.

Tonight![3]The backlash from the fans was immense, and the system of "pre-censorship" (사전심의제) was abolished in June 1996, partially as a result of this reaction.

An EP titled Sidae Yugam including the original version of the song was released a month after the system was abolished.

Seo Taiji and Boys retired from South Korea's popular music scene in January 1996 during its heyday.

Lee later stated that Seo made the decision to disband while recording their fourth album, much to the surprise of Yang and himself.[20] The band's announcement of retirement was a huge disappointment for millions of fans in Korea.

The compilation album Goodbye Best Album was released later that year.

Seo Taiji headed over to the United States soon after, while Lee Juno and Yang Hyun-suk established record labels right after their retirement.

Yang Hyun-suk was successful in founding YG Entertainment, one of the three biggest record companies in the country.[6] Seo Taiji returned to music two years later with a very successful solo career; he is now referred to as "the President of culture" in South Korea.[6] In 2007, all four of Seo Taiji and Boys' albums were included in Kyunghyang Shinmun's Top 100 Pop Albums, with their first ranking the highest at number 24.[22][23][24][25] In 2014, when asked about a possible Seo Taiji and Boys reunion, Seo revealed that the three members had talked about it often.

However, he said:The biggest obstacle is that in the past, we put on really beautiful performances, which fans remember, but if we get back together now, I worry we might disappoint, so I am not confident.

I lack more and more confidence as I get older.

I don't think I'd be able to dance as fiercely as I had in the past.[26]Prior to Seo Taiji and Boys, the Korean music industry was primarily influenced by American and Japanese folk music due to the colonial roots of South Korea.

This music dominated the Korean music industry until the country lifted the travel ban which was in place until 1988.

The lift of the ban allowed musical elements from foreign countries to become more accessible.

Consequently, in the 1990s Seo Taiji and Boys used MIDI technology to begin incorporating Western music elements such as rap, rock, and techno into his music.

Also, Seo Taiji and Boys began incorporating the English language into their music, a popular trend in South Korea, that resulted due to increased reliance on the United States for economic stability.[citation needed] By incorporating these musical elements with Korea’s ballad music, Seo Taiji and Boys provided the basis for the hybridization of Korea's music with that of the West, resulting in the foundation of modern K-pop.

This hybridization of music and foregrounding of dance movements was one of the fundamental reasons for the popularity of Korean pop music, especially among teenage and early 20s listeners, as it also promoted Korean pop music's ability to penetrate foreign markets in what has become known as the Korean Wave.[9] Doobo Shim, a researcher of Asian culture, credits Seo Taiji and Boys with creating the "distinctively Korean pop style" which became commonplace.[27] Moreover, the band was voted as the most crucial Korean cultural product in a survey conducted by the Samsung Economic Research Institute in 1997.[3] Seo Taiji and Boys acted as an instrument of change within Korea, challenging censorship laws as well as the television networks hegemony over the music market.

In 1995 the Korean Broadcasting Ethics Committee demanded that Seo Taiji and Boys change the lyrics for "Shidae Yugam." This incited protests and resulted in the abolishment of music pre-censorship in Korea.

Seo Taiji also did not have to rely on television networks due to the fact that he owned his own studio.

This autonomy allowed Seo to bring subcultures in Korea, such as heavy metal, to the forefront of popular culture and challenge pervasive social norms.[3] The band's independent success diminished the power of the television networks to dictate which artists appeared on shows, and gave rise to the influence of record labels and talent agencies.[27][28] Such companies led to the formation of bands such as H.O.T., Sechs Kies, Uptown, and Shinhwa.[27] Additionally, Seo Taiji and Boys' fashion contrasted sharply with the convention at the time.

The band members' style ranged from wearing tailored jackets and neat dress shirts to street fashion.

They incorporated traditional Korean folk costumes and Scottish kilts, showcasing a variety of cultures.

Seo Taiji and Boys pioneered the "snowboard look," which included dark sunglasses, ski hats, and large parkas.

Furthermore, the band members' wearing of dreadlocks in 1993 caused a reactionary ban of the band on national television.[3] Another aspect of Korean pop that Seo Taiji and Boys influenced was dance.

The band was the first to turn dance into a dominant feature in performance by including breakdancing routines.[3][29] Dancer Nam Hyun-joon cites Seo Taiji and Boys as a primary influence, and appeared in one of band member Lee Juno's music videos.[30] Celebrating the Seo Taiji and Boys' 25th anniversary project "TIME: TRAVELER",[31] the band BTS remade "Come Back Home" in 2017, reflecting a similar sentiment to the societal change that Seo argued for in his songs.

While maintaining the gangsta rap style, J-Hope raps: "I feel suffocated in my life.

What is blocking my life is my fear towards tomorrow," while RM adds, "Because we are still young, there's a decent future.

Now wipe those old tears and come back home." [32][33] While Seo's social critique of Korean culture was predated by songs of Kim Min-ki, who focused on political violence during the Fourth Republic of Korea under the leader Park Chung-hee, Seo's songs included more direct lyrics and maintained his musical identity by refusing to acquiesce to the pre-censorship policies of the time.[3] In fact, his artistry was unhampered by marketing and advertising campaigns, which may have contributed to the band's success.[3]

Eastline Marketing

Eastline Digital (formerly Eastline Marketing) is a digital marketing agency based in the Middle East.[1] It was one of the first companies in the MENA region to offer a full range of online marketing services such as social media marketing, paid search marketing (PSM), search engine optimization (SEO) and online advertising.[2] The agency was founded in 2006 by Marc Dfouni and Nemr Nicolas Badine.[3] Prior to Eastline’s establishment, Dfouni was the general manager of a web interactive agency in Canada.[4] Badine meanwhile designed multimedia systems used in live performances by artists such as U2, Paul McCartney and Madonna.[5] At the time of Eastline’s inception, the online marketing field was virtually nonexistent in the MENA region.[6][7] However, little by little, Internet use in the Middle East began growing considerably.

As a result of this, the agency started expanding its operations and working with clients based in Dubai, Qatar, Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia.[8] Eastline has developed campaigns for Middle Eastern and global brands such as Toyota, AZADEA Group, DHL, Kimberly-Clark, Bank Audi, Fransabank, Henkel, Avis, AXA Insurance, Marks & Spencer, JoueClub, and Waterfront City.[6] It also organized and implemented a holistic online strategy for the 2009 Beirut Marathon.[9] The agency has produced its own web platform named Sweepz, which allows clients to launch social media promotional campaigns.[10] Sweepz is the only platform that supports the Arabic language.[3] Dfouni and Badine were selected as high impact entrepreneurs by Endeavor (an NGO that supports entrepreneurs of emerging market countries) in 2011.[11] Dfouni was also selected as a Young Creative Entrepreneur by the British Council’s Creative Economy Programme.[4] According to Dfouni, the company’s main aim is to “become the leading digital marketing player in the Middle East by 2016”.[12] Eastline Digital has garnered two Webby awards for Best Green Site and also won the People’s Voice Award.[13] It was successful in 2010 at the Gemini Awards where it won the Best Original Program or Series Produced for Digital Media.

This award was given out by the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television for the website “Love Letters of the Future”, designed to raise public awareness of the 2009 Copenhagen Summit and environmental issues.[14] It was also a finalist at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival in 2010 and at the SXSW Awards.[2] In 2013, Eastline Digital's founders earned the Endeavor Advocate award at the 2013 Omidyar Network.[15]

Danny Sullivan (technologist)

Danny Sullivan is an American technologist, journalist,[1] and entrepreneur.

He was the Chief Content Officer at Third Door Media, and co-founded Search Engine Land, an industry publication that covers news and information about search engines, and search marketing, SEO and SEM topics.

Third Door Media also produces Marketing Land, a sister website that covers broader digital marketing topics including social media, display advertising, email marketing, analytics, mobile, and marketing technology.

Search Engine Land and Marketing Land are owned by Third Door Media, of which Danny Sullivan was partner and chief content officer.

He retired from his position as Chief Content Officer at Third Door Media in June 2017.

In October 2017, Sullivan announced he will be joining Google as an adviser at the search division of the company.

Danny is Google's public Search Liaison, who helps people better understand search and helps Google better hear public feedback.[2] Danny was one of the 50 marketing influencers, according to Entrepreneur, in 2015.[citation needed] Sullivan was born in 1965 and raised in California.

He graduated from the University of California, Irvine, and was a reporter for the Los Angeles Times and The Orange County Register.[3][4] Danny helped found Maximized Online with programmer Ken Spreitzer.

Later, he married Lorna Harris, and lived for several years in Chitterne, a small village in England.

They have two sons.[3] The family moved to Newport Beach, California.

Sullivan popularized the term Search Engine Marketing within an article he published on Search Engine Watch[5] although he does not take credit for coining the term.[6] Sullivan started Search Engine Watch in June 1997 after he posted research about search engines, called A Webmaster's Guide To Search Engines, in April 1996.

Search Engine Watch was a website with tips on how to get good search engine results.

Shortly after beginning in November that year, he sold it for an undisclosed amount to MecklerMedia (now Jupitermedia).

He stayed on to maintain the site, and be the editor-in-chief.

In 2006, it was sold to Incisive Media for $43 million.

Search Engine Watch was considered by Matt Cutts of Google as "must reading", and Tim Mayer of Yahoo! as the "most authoritative source on search".[3] He also staged the Search Engine Strategies conference six times each year, attracting 1,500 to 6,000 attendees each time.[3] On 29 August 2006, Sullivan announced he would be leaving Search Engine Watch on 30 November 2006.

He later came to an agreement with Jupitermedia to continue participating in SES through 2007.[7][8] Search Engine Land is a news website that covers search engine marketing and search engine optimization.

One of the well-known blogs which shares information about keyword research, trends in search marketing (SEM), paid search advertising (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) as well as analysis, advice, tips, tactics and how-to guides for search marketing.[9] It was founded in 2006 by Sullivan after he left Search Engine Watch.

Search Engine Land stories have been cited numerous times by other media outlets.[10][11][12]

Article marketing

Article marketing is a branch of content marketing.

It is a type of advertising in which companies write and distribute short articles to a range of outlets such as article banks, forums, and newsletter publishers.

Its main purpose is to gain a huge number of online audiences and boost the number of sales opportunities for products or services on websites.

Another main purpose of this kind of marketing is to build backlinks.

This type of marketing strategy can help marketers acquire new visitors and increase sales on their websites.

Article marketing is also one of the least costly ways to market a company.[1] There are many advantages of using Article marketing such as: While there are lots of advantages to using Article marketing, there are some downsides as well: Article marketing has been used by professionals for nearly as long as mass print has been available.

Business provides the content to a newspaper, possibly on a timely topic such as an article on tax audits during tax season, and the newspaper may use the article and include the business's name and contact information.

Newspapers and other traditional media have limited budgets for gathering content and these articles may be used in the business section of the newspaper.

Traditional Article marketing is advertising a company’s article through the use of magazines, newspapers and any print media.

(Daniels, 2013).

This way of marketing has been going on for a really long time but it is still very much useful and still in style to this day.

It still produces results in offline establishments.

The method of doing the traditional Article marketing is very straightforward.

The company will choose a print media business they want to work with and discuss the conditions of the article they want to produce.

Once the article has been written, the print media will then print and publish it.

Both companies will benefit from this project.

The print media company will have content to print and the business will gain exposure for their products and/or services.

(Ekanem, 2015).

Internet Article marketing is used to promote the authors' expertise of their market, products or services online via article directories.

Article directories with good web page ranks receive a lot of site visitors and may be considered authority sites by search engines, leading to high traffic.

These directories then give PageRank to the author's website and in addition send traffic from readers.

Articles and article directories attract search engines because of their rich content.

This practice may have been effective in the past, however, changes in Google's algorithms over the years have negated the benefits one would have received from this practice.

Both Google's Webmaster Guidelines and comments by Google's Head of Webspam, Matt Cutts discouraged, if not outright prohibit, the strategy of using article directory marketing as a means to build backlinks.[2][3] Business Owners, Marketers and Entrepreneurs attempt to maximize the results of an article advertising campaign by submitting their articles to a number of article directories.

However, most of the major search engines filter duplicate content to stop the identical content material from being returned multiple times in a search engine results page.

Some marketers attempt to circumvent this filter by creating a number of variations of an article, known as article spinning.

By doing this, one article can theoretically acquire site visitors from a number of article directories.

Most forms of search engine optimization and internet marketing require a domain, internet hosting plan, and promoting budget.

However, Article marketing makes use of article directories as a free host and receives traffic by way of organic searches due to the listing's search engine authority.

The primary goal behind Article marketing is to get search engine traffic to the article so that the author can strengthen their authority and influence within their field, while also leveraging that traffic for their own site(s).

The key to Article marketing is that the author should be providing value with their articles, not just promoting their site, products or services.

Article marketing has changed as companies have moved from targeting article directories such as Ezinearticles.com or eHow.com, to micro-targeting small audiences using Facebook and Twitter.[4] Article marketing used to have a much broader target audience but companies have switched to more finite groups of consumers.[5] The change happened because companies found that improving article quality and targeting a better audience was much more effective.[6] Part of this is due to the face that, as of March 2017 the internet has over 3.74 billion users.[7] Having such a massive market makes it hard to find the right customers, which caused companies using Article marketing to shrink their scope and search for smaller audiences.

Article marketing is used to advertise cheaply.

It is common for articles to get picked up by search engines, which allows for additional attention to a companies website.[8] Article marketing is also very easy to perform and a great first step for a new business, which makes it very popular among small businesses.[5] Article marketing has become so popular that many websites now have articles which teach easy steps on how to write your own marketing article to gain views from the public.[5] Gaining views and attention to a website is important because websites gaining more traffic have a higher chance of getting purchases from the website according to statistics.

Even if a website does not sell as many products on the website, the traffic a company gains will make the website more valuable.

This will result in other companies seeking to pay for use of the website space for advertisements because of the larger amount of traffic the website receives.

Article marketing has also moved into phone and tablet applications also known as apps.

App advertising is a very effective form of advertising, Milton Brown performed a study that people were twice as likely to purchase on their mobile phone when they see a Snapchat (a prominent phone app) advertisement.[9] He also found that 92% of campaigns saw clear results after advertising on Snapchat.[9] Because of this rising popularity of cheap/free advertisement on Apps companies have backlashed on Article marketing since it is flooding applications.[10] Facebook started banning Article marketing and other types of free advertisements in 2018 by increasing their prices and forcing free article evaluations to be stopped.[10]

Cannibalization (marketing)

In marketing strategy, cannibalization refers to a reduction in sales volume, sales revenue, or market share of one product as a result of the introduction of a new product by the same producer.

In e-commerce, some companies intentionally cannibalize their retail sales through lower prices on their online product offerings.

More consumers than usual may buy the discounted products, especially if they'd previously been anchored to the retail prices.

Even though their in-store sales might decline, the company may see overall gains.

Another example of cannibalization occurs when a retailer discounts a particular product.

The tendency of consumers is to buy the discounted product rather than competing products with higher prices.

When the promotion event is over and prices return to normal, however, the effect will tend to disappear.

This temporary change in consumer behavior can be described as cannibalization, though scholars do not normally use the phrase "cannibalization" to denote such a phenomenon.

In project evaluation, the estimated profit generated from the new product must be reduced by the earnings on the lost sales.

Another common case of cannibalization is when companies, particularly retail companies, open sites too close to each other, in effect, competing for the same customers.

The potential for cannibalization is often discussed[1] when considering companies with many outlets in an area, such as Starbucks or McDonald's.

Cannibalization is an important issue in marketing strategy when an organization aims to carry out brand extension.

Normally, when a brand extension is carried out from one sub-category (e.g.

Marlboro) to another sub-category (e.g.

Marlboro Light), there is an eventuality of a part of the former's sales being taken away by the latter.

However, if the strategic intent of such an extension is to capture a larger market of a different market segment notwithstanding the potential loss of sales in an existing segment, the move to launch the new product can be termed as "cannibalization strategy".

In India, where the passenger-car segment is going up dramatically since the turn of this century, Maruti-Suzuki's launch of Suzuki Alto in the same sub-category as Maruti 800, which was the leader of the small-car segment to counter the competition from Hyundai is seen to be a classic case of cannibalization strategy.

A company engaging in corporate cannibalism is effectively competing against itself.

There are two main reasons companies do this.

Firstly, the company wants to increase its market share and is taking a gamble that introducing the new product will harm other competitors more than the company itself.

Secondly, the company may believe that the new product will sell better than the first, or will sell to a different sort of buyer.

For example, a company may manufacture cars, and later begin manufacturing trucks.

While both products appeal to the same general market (drivers) one may fit an individual's needs better than the other.

However, corporate cannibalism often has negative effects: the car manufacturer's customer base may begin buying trucks instead of cars, resulting in good truck sales, but not increasing the company's market share.

There may even be a decrease.

This is also called market cannibalization.

Finally, cannibalization is also referenced in the search engine optimization (SEO) industry; it is known as keyword cannibalization.

Keyword cannibalization happens when multiple pages on a website specifically target the same content,[2] to the point where the search engine has a difficult time determining which page is most relevant for the search query, and thus might not necessarily promote the page one would want website visitors to see most.

Since the introduction of RankBrain into the algorithm during 2017, the issue of cannibal pages has become more prevalent, as Google is now using user interactions to decide what should rank highly (in addition to topical relevance), which has caused more fluctuation in the types of pages that rank for different types of queries [3].

While this may seem inherently negative, in the context of a carefully planned strategy, it can be effective, by ultimately growing the market, or better meeting consumer demands.

Cannibalization is a key consideration in product portfolio analysis.

For example, when Apple introduced the iPad, it took sales away from the original Macintosh, but ultimately led to an expanded market for consumer computing hardware.

To accurately determine the success of a new product it is important to understand the detriment its sales are having to older products in a company’s line up.

The danger is the new products are taking from old products made by the business instead of increasing market share by taking consumers from competing products made by different businesses.

A model was created in 2012 to gauge the change in sales.

It is Sales change for focal new model (at time t) = + change in demand for other models within same brand and category + change in demand for other brands within category + change in demand for other models within same brand in other categories + change in demand for other brands in other categories + primary demand (time is in weeks) (Van Heerde, Srinivasan, & Dekimpe, 2012).[4] This model needs to try and deal with three problems with accurately estimating the success of a new product.

Market volatility that means lots of new products entering and leaving the market making it harder to understand what specific product is affecting the market share.

Slowness of the market to react to new products that have been introduced, meaning that there has to be time scope allowing for seasonal changes and the consumers to act accordingly.

Correlated error structures may permeate the brand as not just one product will be effected so it is important to understand the scope of the commodity and see total impact.

The model tries to mitigate these areas of error that make older models less reliable.

There is also the danger in multi distribution channel cannibalization that it can lead to job insecurity and risk for the old channels when the new channels open up.

In the case of travel agencies; in the past nearly all travel groups relied on them as an intermediary for tourism, this meant face to face meetings to introduce the products or services that one group wishes to sell to the travelers.

In recent years with new technology the necessity of travel agencies has been declining, with people being able to connect to the businesses they need to travel directly and cheaper than going through the more conventional means (Buhalisa & Lawb, 2008).[5] Airlines and similar tourism focused companies instead push through marketing the populace towards using their website instead of booking with a tourism agency, this is because it’s cheaper to run and can be more convenient for the consumer.

So the update in technology has forced market cannibalization to cut the spending in certain business groups leading to job insecurity, decreased job satisfaction, job alienation and risk aversion (Díaza, Martín-Consuegraa, & Estebanc, 2015).[6] Cannibalization is a necessary evil in lot of cases.

As sales plateau and decline only to stabilize at a lower amount, it is important for business to innovate and experiment in order to create something new and cutting edge to maintain market share.

Strategic development is important for business and integral for moving forward.

Nitin Pangarkar said it is very important for businesses to maximize competitiveness with business strategy and cannibalization is part of this (Pangarkar, 2015).[7] Cannibalization of markets is competing with others success and self-cannibalization is competing with yourself.

As Steve Jobs said when he released the iPhone "If you don't cannibalize yourself, someone else will" (Isaacson, 2011).[8] Even though there are dangers with cannibalization it has been very successful at pushing business innovation forward and identifying stagnant areas of a business.

The diversion of sales from one product to another or from the same product to a different product can adversely effect the overall sales of a business.

Wendy Lomax theorized that using a brand name and leverage of current users of a brand to push them into using a new product can be a large risk (Lomax, 1996[9]).

This is due to the damaging nature which a failed product would have on the preexisting parent product.

As sales dropped from the new product after it is no longer pushed there is no guarantee that sales will stabilize to the old product that was sacrificed for the current item.

One of the unavoidable risks is to the established product but for self-cannibalization and growth this is essential.

Apple cannibalized their own sales of the iPad when the iPhone 6 was released in September 2014 (Apple Corporation, 2014).[10] According to a Forbes article, shipment of iPads was down 23% since the announcement of the iPhone 6.

This is due to the new product (the iPhone) being large enough to have a lot of the features of the iPad without being as large making the iPad outdated and irrelevant (Marko, 2015).[11] While the iPhone shipped massive amounts of product, the iPad never recovered to its previous sales plateau.

Overall, this is a positive effect as turnover of new products allows company to get old users to spend money and keeps their products current which is very important in technology related fields.

This is still an example of Apple betting sales of the old product to get higher sales on a new product in this case it was a success.

best affiliate marketing companies how to do affiliate marketing through them

Undoubtedly, you are going to find that affiliate marketing is a new buzz in the internet marketing world.

However, it is online as well as offline.

Hence, it is a part of the internet marketing business as well as offline manual marketing as well.

You will find that most of the affiliate marketing work is being done through these best affiliate marketing companies.

You need to learn how to do affiliate marketing through them.

how to choose the best digital marketing agency in 5 easy steps

It involves choosing out a digital marketing agency for you, it’s no mean accomplishment.

a lot of usually than not, several companies select a digital marketing agency over in-house marketing, just because it's arduous to maintain.

With AN abundance of latest marketing techniques popping up daily, it will be nigh-on, not possible for busy companies to remain on top of the newest trends, figure out the simplest ways that to use completely different platforms of digital marketing.�Any business is aware of you need to effectively market your brand and what you are doing so as to achieve success.

As more and more business is conducted online, and more potential customers search for products on the web, you need to have a solid digital marketing presence and strategy in place, especially if you are launching a new business.When it involves choosing out a digital marketing agency for you, it’s no mean accomplishment.

a lot of usually than not, several companies select a digital marketing agency over in-house marketing, just because it's arduous to maintain.

With AN abundance of latest marketing techniques popping up daily, it will be nigh-on, not possible for busy companies to remain on top of the newest trends, figure out the simplest ways that to use completely different platforms of digital marketing.�But once it involves choosing the correct marketing company, it is not a decision that should be taken gently – particularly if it's your 1st time.

Follow these seven steps to confirm you're choosing the proper digital marketing agency for you.�CHOOSING A DIGITAL MARKETING AGENCY IN 5 Easy Steps�STEP 1.�DETERMINE YOUR COMPANY’S MARKETING NEEDS When you begin looking for the simplest digital marketing companies, you need to prepare and ask yourself some questions, such as what do I would like to attain with an agency and the way a lot of am I willing to spend to attain this? Understanding exactly what you would like will help you to search out and narrow down exactly what you would like, instead of wasting your valuable time and resources.�Once you’ve determined your company’s needs – whether or not that be increasing your business’ presence on-line or redesigning your brand – you're able to start actively looking for the best digital marketing agency for you.�STEP 2.��FIND AN AGENCY THAT MEETS YOUR NEEDS You will be considering “how do I select an agency for me? first, assess the packages a company is offering – do they slot in line with what you want your business to achieve? this can be a very important question to have faith in as if their marketing strategy isn’t what you're looking for, the agency isn’t ‘The One’, no matter what proportion you'll like it.Additionally, value is additionally an element to think about.

Remember, it’s really not price spending associate arm and a leg on a digital marketing package that isn’t relevant to your wants.�STEP 3.��DO YOUR BACKGROUND ANALYSIS Before you progress forward within the process, it's essential that you just perform a thorough background analysis of the digital marketing agencies you have been investigating.

Do they follow what they preach? the main way you'll be able to find out whether or not an agency is right for you, is observing the results they’ve produced themselves.

For instance, if you’re planning on hiring an agency to hold out content marketing, however, do they run their own blog? If you’re considering hiring them for social media, however, do they handle their own social media – is it successful? constant goes for SEO; however, do they rank in search terms for his or her industry? Did you discover them on the first page of Google? If they don’t “practice what they preach”, they will not be able to win what they're promising or be capable of the services they offer.�In addition, another great way to understand whether or not a digital marketing company is that the best, is through recommendations.

raise your friends and family if they need anyone in mind, or if any friends-of-friends are within the know.

as an alternative, have faith in asking your professional network on LinkedIn, as there is also an admirer of your business WHO includes a specific suggestion for you.Reboot’s tip: Be additional careful if you're considering hiring a digital marketing agency from overseas.

Agencies abroad usually charge low costs, therefore you may think you’re obtaining a great deal, however, you'll need to deal with poor service.

to not mention the time distinction which can be an associate issue…�STEP 4.�ASK RIGHT QUESTIONS You may be thinking, what to ask a digital marketing agency? You will probably have a hundred and one different questions, but it is important to ensure you are asking the right questions.THIS IS FIVE QUESTIONS YOU SHOULD CONSIDER ASKING YOUR AGENCY:Can I see some campaign examples?Who will be completing the work?How long do you keep clients on average?What results can you promise me?�Can I see some campaign examples?�STEP 5.�SEND A ‘REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL (RFP) Once you have whittled down a selection of digital marketing agencies that you are happy to proceed with, get in touch with the company to express your interest.The next step is to send out a ‘request for proposal’ (RFP) to your select few agencies in order to help your decision to choose the best digital marketing agency.

An RFP allows you to collect information from various companies and select the company that best meets your criteria, both in regard to skill and budget.

This should create it clear that agency works best for your business, and that digital marketing contract you ought to be signing.�

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Learn the truth about Top Network Marketing Companies and enjoy this article.

internet marketing companies online marketing degree online marketing service

Internet Marketing Companies work solely towards getting their client�s product or services marketed online, and this is really becoming something that modern businesses can�t live without.� ONLINE MARKETING SERVICE Online Marketing Service, also referred to as Internet marketing service is about using the Internet as another channel to market your business or organization.

It�s about broadening your Web visibility, attracting qualified visitors to your website or getting interested people to email or call without even needing to come to your site.

When visitors do come, through on-site marketing efforts and strong features, you lead them to do what you want them to do: fill out a form, register for an event or make a purchase from you through the internet usage.

Some people would be eased to make their necessary work about their company by providing online worker from other place to make their job more easy to do.

Online Marketing Service builds, executes and measures direct response strategies using the Internet.

Some key areas that the company should consider to concentrate on are acquisition of specific information, retention of the data being given on the site, awareness of how the site should be handled, optimization of the site content and behavior, and conversion of details through a more useful resource to the users online.

Here are some of the processes that the company should consider in getting their online marketing more effective: 1.

Define Your Goal - work together with every member of your company to help clearly define exactly what it is you want to accomplish towards a more fruitful future using the online marketing service and how to set up goals which are important to the company.

2.

Develop the Plan � the company should develop strategic, effective and measurable direct response marketing plans designed to achieve the company goals.

Through the company's efforts of each member, a more suitable and easy way of conducting the plan can be performed.

3.

Execute the Plan - provide capable and experienced project management throughout the entire implementation process.

Each member of the company should be reliable, thorough, well-connected, and determined to make satisfied clients that are connected to the company.

With these at hand, satisfied clients are willing to cooperate and pay more for the efforts of the company.

4.

Measure the Results - No online marketing campaign is complete without measuring the results.

Internet marketing strategies take tracking and measuring of the clients website advertisements before implementation occurs.

This way, the company can measure their effectiveness to the clients as well as how better they know their company's effectiveness in the process.

With the good results that the company is displaying, more and more clients are willing to be with the company and won't have second thoughts of paying a good amount for a good service that the company offers.

Clients' satisfaction are very vital when it comes to consideration about the company's main goal.

ONLINE MARKETING DEGREE Online Marketing Degree generally refers to the degrees that are offered in the internet through advertisements and well-presented by different courses that are being offered by the colleges and universities throughout the globe.

It most likely want to prepare individuals in undertaking and managing the process of developing consumer audiences and moving products from producers to consumers by the use of the internet.

A more easy way to determine whether you're making the right decision in improving and pursuing your career as student is to continue studying and taking one of the major courses that the college or university offers.

Online Marketing Degree includes instruction in buyer behavior and dynamics, principle of marketing research, demand analysis, cost-volume and profit relationships, pricing theory, marketing campaign and strategic planning, market segments, advertising methods, sales operations and management, consumer relations, retailing, and applications to specific products and markets.

Many colleges and universities have come up with the idea of advertising their different online courses because through this, a more practical, faster and easier way of advertising through the web can be seen and noticed.

They will no longer have to make certain advertisements through television and radios just around their country but through online marketing service.

The degrees that they offer will be seen by anyone from anywhere around the globe by the use of the internet.

An effective way of advertising without the high costing.

A slight example on the online marketing degree is the Bachelor of Science in Business Administration � Marketing (B.S.B.A./MKT.) which puts working professionals on a clear path to lifelong learning and success.

Maximizing their career opportunities, making important contributions to the profession, reaching the potential�that define success.

Through a program that combines academic theory with practical application, and includes courses in Ethical Leadership and in Social Responsibility, the students will gain knowledge and experience in areas vital to business and society.

This concentration will help the students develop insights into an organization�s marketing effort by learning not only the traditional disciplines of alternate marketing channels, sales management, advertising and research, but also emerging marketing approaches related to consumer motivation, global customer management, customer relationship management, and marketing on the Internet.

Another example of an online marketing degree is the Master of Business Administration in Marketing (M.B.A./MKT.), it provides students with the ability to examine the relationship between marketing and corporate strategy and the tools necessary for developing and implementing strong marketing tactics throughout the companies in which they work.

Through a hands-on curriculum including case analyses, this specialization lays the practical groundwork necessary for students interested in strengthening or furthering their career as a marketing professional or decision maker.

INTERNET MARKETING COMPANIES Internet Marketing is a broad term that can include everything from pay-per-click management to a full-blown online marketing campaign that builds traffic and tracks site visitors to increase conversions from all mediums.

Internet Marketing can be thought as encompassing all of the following disciplines: search engine optimization, pay-per-click management, link building and affiliate marketing.

Internet Marketing Companies work solely towards getting their client�s product or services marketed online, and this is really becoming something that modern businesses can�t live without.

Obviously, an Internet marketing company can�t use the same techniques that a traditional advertising agency would use, such as television commercials and special promotions.

The things that an Internet marketing company can do are pretty amazing, though, because the costs are fairly low and the results can potentially reach a global audience.

The interactive nature of Internet marketing, which allows businesses to draw out an instant response from potential customers, is a unique quality of the medium.

Internet marketing companies can bring creative and technical aspects together, including design, development, advertising and sales.

Internet marketing methods include search engine optimization, pay per click management, display advertising, email marketing, interactive advertising, blog marketing, and viral marketing.

The services that an Internet marketing Company offers aren�t always something tangible that people can see, although things like banner ads and social media marketing (using sites like MySpace) are quite visible.

Things like search engine optimization and pay per click management are more intangible, but they help promote a website by placing it where people will see it when they are looking for that type of product or service.

Internet marketing companies grow and promote an organization using online media.

An Internet marketing company does not simply build a website or promote a website� They make that website visible to people who are likely to become real paying customers.

For some reasons, people are making easier ways of advertising their products and news through the Internet because of its lower cost and its effectiveness.

Consumers can see the products and massive orders and requests could be in any instant on line with the company which provides the products.

An online marketing campaign is necessary these days with the Internet become bigger and bigger by the day.

Therefore, it is crucial to hire an effective Internet marketing company to help your business achieve the online results you are looking for.

Since the advent of the World Wide Web, there have been many new evolutions to online marketing.

Thankfully, there are many Internet marketing companies that can show you the ropes about the industry so that you can capitalize with your online venture.

There is a wide variety of items that a quality Internet marketing company can provide to your business.

One of the main sources of online marketing is in search engine optimization, commonly referred to as SEO.

This process simply refers to the act of ensuring that your website appears in the top of the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN.

This is achieved by submitting articles and keyword phrases all over the Internet because the more links that your website has on the Net, the higher your search engine ranking will be.

Since most customers will choose to use the services of a company that is among the top ten in the search engines, SEO can work wonders for your online venture.

However, an Internet marketing company also has many other services that can benefit your business.

Many of these particular companies also provide website designing and graphic design help that will make your website much more appealing to the public.

If you search hard enough, you will be able to find a quality company that will produce your website from the ground up and then use SEO to ensure that your site gets the recognition it deserves.

businesses prefer and market their products and services through posters

There is little doubt that the UK has been in a grave economic times though still there's a few companies and organisations that have been doing really well despite our recession.

Marketing are sometimes one of the first cuts which companies whenever situations have been challenging and money is short and yet most companies who raise their marketing spend will improve their customer base and market share in the process.

Of course, concessions do have to be made from even the most gung-ho company regarding the financial constraints of the day but this can be done not by lowering their level of marketing ,instead by reducing the cost of the advertising.

which multi level marketing companies are creating buzz these days

Find out more about Multi Level Marketing Companies and see if this is right for you at this time.

Learn the truth about Multi Level Marketing Companies and enjoy this article.

invest in the top mlm companies

When considering starting a home-based business, the top MLM companies should be some of your first choices.

Names like Amway, Avon and Herbalife come immediately to mind when network marketing is mentioned.

Each of these companies has had thousands of distributors in their histories.

Chances are you know a few yourselves.

Each of these companies is still going strong and deserves a look.

But there are a few other top MLM companies that haven�t been around as long that should be considered.

mlm starting out tips what can you get from multi level marketing

Most people scoff at the idea of joining a multi level marketing company merely because they assume that all MLM companies are fraudulent firms that are out to get your money and nothing else.

While it�s certainly undeniable that there are indeed several unlawful multi level marketing companies out there, it�s equally true that there are also good and legitimate MLM companies existing as well.

All you have to do is choose the right one for you.

what can we expect from network marketing companies in 2010

Find out the truth about Network Marketing Companies in 2010 and see if they are right for you at this time.

Read our review of Network Marketing Companies in 2010 and enjoy the article.

top seo companies in india

Digital marketing is a growing business in India and the main component required for the marketing of any website is SEO content.

There are many SEO companies in India whose gaining popularity among the consumers.

Here we lised India based top SEO companies.It is competitive business and in current time there are many SEO companies in the business, as it is the demand of digital India.Malleable audience is the target of marketers because those catchy titles and headlines of product attract the consumers to buy the service and product.India is turning into digital markets which provide user essentials online.

So these are the two leading companies in SEO which satisfies the user with perfect information they are looking for.Search engine only show those content which answers the user questions directly and look more reliable.

For example if a user type “online groceries stores” in the Google search engine, it will show the best website for user.This shows that if we are trying to confuse the search engine by adding unreliable content on the website it will not feature our website in the search list.The main aim of the SEO companies is to provide the best and quality content, so that it looks more reliable and attract the search engine.We know about the top two SEO companies in India moving on to the other SEO companies in the list.Many SEO companies in India are using the Infographics because the plain texts make the user leave the site as they are exhausted reading along blog post.Adding images or Infographics make it attractive and stick the user to the site for longer period of time, so they can understand our services easily.Infographics are the image which describes the service in an easy and visualize manner, it makes the content readable and attractive.The aim of information graphics is to guide the user about the services which the company is offering.There are many companies who provide black hat SEO content which include the copy paste content, it is a great way to attract the search engine but makes your site easily remove from the list as search engine may know that the content is not original.White hat SEO involves the process of writing personalized original content to highlight the services and products of the website.The top SEO companies are those only who use white hat SEO that mean original content can only make a place in digital marketing there is no place for duplicate contents.This is one of the main aspects best SEO companies deals with, on page seo is make enhanced research for keywords, attractive content, and tile tags.Usage of keyword should be appropriate in the content not more than 7 to 8 times because then search engine ban your site for the overuse of keywords.Every SEO�Company�tries to provide an informational Meta description because it is a key factor in attracting search engine.The user also attracted to the sites whose Meta descriptions are clear and related to the searched subject.The content should be written in an interactive manner so that user can easily understand the services of the company.The off page SEO strategies deals with your bounce rate as how long the viewer stay on the page if the viewers just stay for short period of time that means the content is not beneficial for them or not providing any information about the service.�It mainly deals with the web page structure and accessibility to the users, it is important for any website to load faster and mobile friendly.Necessary for any website to interconnect the other pages of the website to the home page so that user can easily access all the information he wanted to explore in the site.Adding schema markup to your HTML page can grow your audience and make your website attractive in the search engine.It does not mean that if the website was created you can relax and the viewers will keep growing no it is not going to happen.While creating website for the customer you have to constantly update the website according to the latest features.As play store update the existing apps with new features you also have to the same with your content on the website.���The website may look attractive to the users so that they like to see what type of services and products this website is offering.�This does not mean only appearance of the website matters okay assume if the website is attractive and you enter the website but the content quality is low the user leave the site in a minute.The same follows for the content if website having a high quality content but the appearance is not attractive user never enter the website and the quality content is of no use then.Both the aspects whether it is content quality or design attract the audience.The links which we are adding in the webpage should be off good quality because site with higher back links rank in the first page of search engine.Make sure the quality of link you are providing is of good quality because bad quality or shorter back links results in poor website performance and low rate ranking.The links plays an important role in making the website works frequently if you add the other website links on the web page it will help you to create more traffic to your website.One of the main reasons that users are not visiting your site may be because of web pages low speed.

You may have seen that some websites takes longer time in loading the pages that irritates the user and he stop watching that page.So the quality of your web page should be high so that it cannot take much time in loading and loads the page quickly so that user can access easily.Writing for an Ecommerce company or website remembers that your content should highlight the product quality in detail.Because user wanted to know about the product and not about the website you should provide all the necessary details of the product whether it is product quality, quantity or any other aspect.It is important that your URL is working efficiently on the page block bad URL because they will harm your website and decreases the rank of your website.Always use hyphens on URL with small letters this shows that the URL is safe for the users.The cross link URL on your Social media increases the audience and also create more costumers to your brand or company.The growing demands of online shopping websites in India gave rise to digital marketing and now many big brands promoted their products on online websites.The online marketing gives a wide variety of options to the customers and we can easily buy products just sitting in our rooms it easy for the retailers and buyers to supply their product directly to the customers.Techpapa is a digital marketing company which offers many services like SEO content and web designing.

It is mainly focused on customer requirements and also the web designing process, it was useful in adding more traffic to the website.The SEO team of Techpapa consists of experienced and trained writers who fulfill all the demands of their clients.According to the customer needs the websites are designed by the team of trained web designers.

Because it is essential for any website to appear attractive to the customers so that they show some interest in your services or product.The web Design Techpapa offers to the customers is not merely artistic design but a way to increase more traffic to the websites.Contact details: 202, second floor c6, sector 7, Uttar Pradesh 201301, NoidaWeb address: http://www.techpapa.in/Email address: info@techpapa.inContact number: (+91) 7838700506, 1204519949, 1204519592.The services HCL provide are user friendly and focus on every essential need of the customers.

So that they can focus on the key aspects of the website and make the website according to the customer needs.HCL is a well known firm which makes a good impression on the customers by their quality of work.Another aspect of HCL that make it one of the top seo companies in india is that the visuals they offer to the consumers for their website are �appealing to the customers.It is a globally known company which also makes an impact to the Indian audience through providing great services.Contact details: HCL Technologies Ltd.Technology Hub, SEZPlot No.

3A, Sector 126Noida – 201304, India.Web address: https://www.hcltech.com/With multi-solution services deloitte offers digital marketing services to the customers from seo services to web designing.Deloitte know that nowadays user mainly uses smart phones that’s why they optimized for mobile users.It uses white hat SEO to write contents for the customers that means original contents are written for the costumer’s website.Contact details: Indiabulls Finance Centre Tower 3, 24th / 25th / 26th / 27th – 32nd Floor Senapati Bapat Marg, Elphinstone Road (West)�Mumbai, Maharashtra India, 400013Web address: https://www2.deloitte.com/in/en.htmlIt offers high quality and performance oriented content to the clients as it focus on the clients need and provide more traffic.It uses all the main seo aspects like on page seo, off page seo, technical seo and website audit.The detailed and high quality work is the main highlight of Indazo and customers are satisfied by the services and increased traffic.Contact details: third floor jyoti Cineplex mp nagar, zone 1 Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh India 462011.Web address: https://www.indazo.com/?utm_source=clutch.co&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=in-seo-firmsPage traffic not focuses on the ranking but believes in increased selling the service and product rates, because ranking is of no use if the selling of the product and service is still low.It offers Ecommerce SEO services to the customers and designed the web page and content in that manner so that it will help to increase the product sales.Many small and local businessmen use the page traffic services because they help in increasing their selling rates.Contact details: 15 F, Eros Corporate Tower Nehru Place New Delhi, Delhi - 110019Web address: https://www.pagetraffic.in/It offers a professional SEO services to the customers, the team of professionals to provide organic content to the customers for high ranking in the search engine.�Apply Google penalty recovery services like Google panda and Google penguin to immune the website from decreasing ranking on search engine.The other feature it uses is on page SEO which focuses on the content originality and quality also includes Meta description to enhance site performance in the search engine.Uses off page SEO to make link buildings it is mainly used to promote the website on social media and make it reach the wider audience.Contact details: info@indeedseo.comWeb address: https://www.indeedseo.com/?utm_source=clutch.co&utm_medium=referralThe seventh positioned SEO Company is Infosys which aim on the updating technology, Infosys known for its updated content and artistic and appealing web design.Infosys is best at providing user the services for SEO and web designing the headlines and titles they provide to the user are catchy and attractive.Catchy headline is one of the important aspects of SEO it makes the user to click on the link to read more.The aim of SEO is not to increase readership but to make growth in buyers so that they will buy our products or services.By giving those attractive headlines we grab their focus and make them read about the services and products we are offering.Always use insights to make sure that the customer visiting the site is satisfied by the information of the service and product.Contact details: Electronics City, Hosur Road Bangalore�560 100.�Web address: https://www.infosys.com/IBM provides digital marketing for the established companies who wanted to promote their services online.

It fulfills all the needs of the consumer and offers personalized website to the customers.These features make it popular and many established business companies make their personalized website through IBM.It offers a customer centric content and the Infographics tells user about the services provided by the company.Contact details: Sowmya Ramachandran: Media and Analyst Relations Manager, IBM IndiaWeb address: https://www.ibm.com/in-en

a case for market research do you really know what your customers think

Every quarter, Frank Lynn & Associates conducts a channel-marketing workshop for sales and marketing managers from many different types of companies.

Many--even large Fortune 1000 companies--do not use formal customer research as a strategic marketing tool.

search engine marketing or sem and seo to sem or not to sem websites in kelowna

� Search engine marketing is the fastest growing sector in online marketing, and more and more people and companies are looking to the web and how search engine rank impacts traffic.

Search Engine Marketing is so effective because companies are marketing to people who are actively looking for their products or services.

5 reasons why companies should get effective renewable energy marketing

Running a company that focuses on renewability and sustainability has no exception, especially when it comes to marketing.

The companies of tomorrow need to get into the market by estabilishing their name in the renewable industry.

That's where renewability marketing comes in.Anything that is consumable is marketable.

Those who are on top of the biz know how to sell all sorts of items and renewable energy is not an exception.To boost sales of these renewable energy companies, they really have to sell it.

It is not enough to say that renewable energy can sustain human life for future generation.

Not all are conscious of the future and what awaits the generations to come.

Going green really should sell everything they got!1.

Better education is better profitThe world's condition is already at its alerting stage.

More and more people are seeking alternative energy providers to sustain their daily living.

Renewable energy marketing is a perfect opportunity to increase the level of awareness of the people and make use of the chance to permeate the consumer's will to purchase.Since renewable energy does not come cheap consumer are doubtful in purchasing such equipments.

It is timely and tiring to constantly promote renewable energy and at the same time address environmental issues that can be solved with the use of renewable energy.

But be rest assured that efforts are not left in vain.2.

Positive renewable energy marketing is additional cookie pointsNo matter how much people doubt products, always remember that it is the same for almost every product in the market.

A good company would like to sell their product in accordance to how they would like the product is perceived by the market.

However, a better company would inform the consumers of how they could benefit from clean renewable energy.�3.

Proper marketing is favorable to the recommendation of expertsExperts are the best back-up for a renewable energy company.

People would listen better to experts using renewable energy rather than celebrities endorsing it without even vouching in for what they say.

Expert opinions matter, not only in marketing but in improving quality of renewable energy products simultaneously with sales.�4.

Total customer satisfaction should be met with a smileTo meet up with the expectations of consumers is practically what a renewable energy company should be focusing on.

It must continuously reinvent itself so that it would constantly offer something fresh to the public.It would build up company character and confidence in the long run.

To live up to expectations and to surpass it as a main objective would build a stronger renewable energy company.�5.

Renewable energy marketing can win the heart of the governmentThe government is one of the biggest consumers in the country to win the favor of the government means better investment, more jobs and of course a wider horizon for the company.

To end this, it is better to stay true to what a renewable energy company advocate, a better world.It is more than enough to say that the usage of renewable energy will sustain future generation.

However, no matter how noble the advocacy may be, without proper marketing, these innovations might be as won't gather much attention

the advantages of joining a multi level marketing company

Multi-level marketing companies are the trend today.

A lot of these companies have sprouted over the internet in the past few years.

While it is quite easy to understand the concept between these companies, there are some things that you have to know so you can decide favorably into joining a multi-level marketing company.�

how to identify rotten apples among network marketing companies

Network marketing companies may seem to be a dime in a dozen today, but that doesn�t mean you can just approach any one of them and expect yourself to be a millionaire in no time.

If you want to secure your financial future through network marketing, you need to be a part of company that�s trustworthy, reliable, and able to guide you all the way to success.

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Man has come a long way from the times of Stone Age to this modern and fast, age of internet and technology.

During the course of man's evolution a lot of discoveries and inventions were made, out of which the creation of modern computer technology and internet has brought a lot of change in the mundane lives of people all over the world.

The internet has connected all the different parts of the globe with one another.

It has actually made the world shrink in size! Today, everything and anything is readily available online.

Right from academic, banking, ticketing to shopping everything can be accessed by a mere click of the mouse button.Internet provides the new, faster, cheaper and advanced means of reaching to a larger audience.

Business houses all over the world now use internet to reach up to their global potential customers.

Because of the use of internet, they can now attract good business without being hassled to tour around the world to grab customers.

As there are endless growth prospects for any type of business online, so it is highly advisable to promote business online.

For promoting any business over the internet, one requires to hire the services of search engine optimization experts.

There are many reputed SEO marketing companies who can very easily handle all your SEO related needs.These SEO experts use various innovative strategies and techniques to improve the visibility of a website or webpage on the search results of the organic search engines.

Internet marketing is the most crucial aspect that any SEO marketing company has to deal with.

Internet marketing can be done in two different ways organic, algorithmic.

The main focus in the organic search engine marketing is to increase the webpage ranking.

The SEO experts achieve this by resorting to organized methods and techniques along with incorporating technical adaptations as well.

All this helps them to improve the PR of their client's website in the results of search engines.For any business to excel over the internet, it is imperative that its webpage or website acquires a higher PR status.

This enables better sales and increased in-flow of money.

The webpage must appear on the first three pages of the search results of the search engines.

Most internet visitors generally don't like to browse beyond the first three pages of the search engine results.

People tend to generally change the keywords after going through the search results of the first three pages.

It not merely important to attain higher PR, it is also extremely imperative to maintain this high PR status as well.

There is a very tough competition in the field of internet marketing, and the only way to sustain the webpage ranking is by providing the user with relevant and fresh information and services.The search engine optimization experts try to reach the top three pages in an algorithmic way.

SEO marketing companies create a website that not only looks appealing but also provides relevant and unique content as well.

They also try to ensure that the website is user friendly too.

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6 justified reasons hire digital marketing companies mumbai 1709958

If you are starting anew business of your own, you may wonder whether it is worth investing in digital marketing companies in Mumbai as it may seem an extra expense for a beginner.

Here we have listed out a few of the main reasons why you may regard it justified to hire such firms for your business needs: To Give Your Efforts a Proper Direction Today, no business can prosper without proper SEO and digital marketing backing.

There is no use putting random efforts.

If you wish to give a proper direction to your efforts, you must hire a digital marketing company for the same.

To Get Backing from a Well-Trained Team When you hire a company providing digital marketing services in Mumbai, you get the backing of a full-fledged team that includes a content writer, a graphic designer, a web developer and a social media marketing specialist.

To Communicate Digitally with Probable Clients Today, you get to connect to probable clients online if you use the right channels.

Many times, you are able to tap those clients who reside close to you but you have missed out personally.

This is a benefit you enjoy only when you have a digital marketing firm to support you.

To Compete with Start-ups There are many start-ups today that work simply on internet and technology.

You need to be equally well equipped if you wish to beat them in business.

Here again you will benefit in case you have the support of a digital marketing agency in Mumbai.

To Update Strategies.

The digital methods of marketing are quite different from the traditional retail business.

In the past, you could depend on the same strategies for a decade without being beaten.

Things have changed greatly today and digital marketing is much more competitive.

You need experts in the industry to help you with updated strategies at regular intervals of time.

To Enhance Business Profits Since most people today rely on their smartphones and tablets for all their needs, backing from a digital marketing team can help enhance business profits greatly.

You need experts to understand the user behaviour on phones and laptops.

They can then come up with business strategies to tap the consumer behaviour for better profits.

A good digital marketing team's support is thus extremely helpful in getting your business to the top.

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Nowadays, outsourcing has become one of the important parts of digital marketing and it is continuously growing day by day.

Digital marketing is an around the clock endeavor.

It can be no longer observe as a temporary trend but a well-recognized marketing technique that uncountable businesses are acceptingwith marvelous results along the way.

There are numerous benefits to hire the .

These are: 1.

Access the skills you need: One of the utmost benefits of hiring an innovative agency is that you can get the benefits of a complete team of planners, designers, writers and SEO experts who have a miscellaneous skills, information and experience.

This makes far more logic than either trying to do it by you or hiring a single marketer.Moreover, it will not be commercially possible to hire someone for a full or even part-time placement if you do not need his or her skills continually and regularly.

2.

It is cost effective: Research has found that businesses relying on marketing agencies to develop their strategies for them have a lesser cost per sales lead than those who either do their individual marketing or select to emphasis on alternative marketing strategies, such as outbound marketing.

Thus to hire a permanent employment, it is a better idea to outsource digital marketing professional all over the world.You will be able to convey your rates and relish complete control over your outgoings.

Various best digital marketing companies in India provide their services at affordable rates.

3.

Take advantage from qualified leads: An imaginative agency does not do cold calling; as an alternative, they concentrate on following your target audience in order to grow high-quality answers that are motivating and applicable.

If your hired agency has an expertise then it is a plus point that you will get a chance to work with different experiences and they also some innovative idea that will help to grow your business.

4.Gain New Perspectives: An in-house team is fundamentally limited to some skills, hence the reason their efforts will be better used by focused on core business operations.

However, it is also good ideas to outsource and get some fresh idea as well.

It helps to suggestsome external viewpoints, which can give precious insights into the newest developments in the marketplace.

It is also true that you had better know about your business but there is nothing erroneous with getting a second opinion from other skilled persons or agencies.

Moreover, you will get time to focus on other core areas of the work.

Moreover hiring agency wil be unbiased as compared t your internal team.

Thus, it is better for your business to get new ideas, strategy and genuine advices to improve your business.

5.

Gain Knowledge about the Latest Technology: A trustworthy agency will have access to various paid tools, software and analytical data, which are useful to grow your business to upsurgeefficiency, proficiency and presentation.

Additionally, you do not need to search about the related software on the internet.

6.Analytical reporting: The best advantage of hiringa digital marketing agency is their access to high-tech software.

Due to these software's, you will obtain regular reports displaying, where you are outshining in your advertising efforts, and where you need to improve.

In the nutshell, we can say that outsourcing plays important roles for small, medium and large business.It might still take some time to find the best Digital Marketing Companies in India for your specific needs, but the nominal financial commitment as compared to hiring a full time marketing employee unquestionably makes it worth the risk.

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