After analyzing my business goals a few months ago I came to the realization that I had to choose where I would build my online business’ foundation and not just do a little of everything.

There are several ways to build a business and for optimum success we’ve got to think through the process - what is my market, where are the people who are in my market and how can I reach them?

Or how will they find me?

What will the main pillar of my business be?

The online community is definitely a large market place that you cannot ignore, especially if you have an internet business. There are thousands if not millions of consumers that you can tap in the internet.

At the same time, the internet also poses a quite different challenge. The easy access that internet provides also gives us much more competition than we would like. It is too crowded and congested.

Having a website is not enough to make our businesses profitable.

You have to expose your website. Make it known. It has to be visible. It has to be frequently targeted by consumers and surfers.

The biggest blunder I made when I first started marketing online was not grasping the sheer number of vistors I needed to be interested in my site and the amount of effort that was required to build that traffic to my website.

I had to ramp up my marketing efforts significantly.

There are two fundamental options available to us for online marketing, SEO and PPC. (There are others but these are the big ones.)

These two are probably the most desirable alternatives you can get for your internet business as strategy for search engine marketing.

1. SEO

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Some researches indicate that 60% - 70% of internet surfers and users actually resort to using the Google search engine to find and locate web sites and pages, for any topic they desire. SEO is the process taken to make sure that the internet uses will find your website when ranked among the top results of a search. This way you can make sure that you will be visible and can clearly stand out from the rest.

For effective search engine optimization, you will have to incorporate a well-thought out linking structure on your own internet site. You want to have pages on your site with links to other pages on your site (internal linking), and you need other sites on the internet to have links back to several pages on your own site (off page seo / backlinks).

In SEO, there is no need for you to pay for the clicks although it will require you to spend time doing research to get a favorable combination of ads and target audience. The SEO process is a long term one. It usually requires several months before you see the type of prominence and traffic you want, but once the goal is accomplished, you will definitely get a steady source of profit.

2. PPC

PPC means Pay Per Click. This is ‘pay for’ advertising on a search engine… the sponsored listings that you see whenever you make a search. If your ad is one of these sponsored listings you will be charged whenever a visitor or web surfer clicks on it.

The system is set up so there is a bidding process. Whoever is willing to pay the highest price per click will ne favored for the top listings in the search engine.

This kind of advertising is very closely correlated to traditional direct marketing - you can closely control your campaign - the target audience, the ad that audience sees and the cost of reaching that market.

Most of the providers of PPC advertising will allow you to specify the target market, either by topic, industry or geographical location. It is easy to check if your ad gets to be shown at all and if it is competitive with the others being shown.

Some final thoughts -

PPC lets you advertise to the whole of the online community. It is also relatively easy to set up.

At first glance, PPC advertising may seem very expensive. You could worry about someone (maybe an unscrupulous competitor) clicking on your ad multiple times in order to drive up your costs. The search engines expend considerable effort to identify fraudulent clicks. I have been re-imbursed before when fraud did occur.

You can also set a budget for a certain period. The moment your budget has been used up by the target number of clicks, your ads will no longer be displayed until the next period it is scheduled for display.

A big bonus of PPC is that you can adjust quickly to changes in market demands and trends.

In deciding which of the two strategies will work right for you, think of your goals and of your resources.

Evaluate according to your short term and long term plans. PPC is a great option for your short term market testing as well as building longterm.

Each method requires a different way of approaching business and one may be a better fit for you than the other. Do what will be the best match for your strengths and…

May you have much success.

Recommendations: I started my PPC journey and achieved early success using the training provided by Perry Marshall. Recently I have been learning and applying the Campaign Blasting method to test several markets. I recommend both resources for those inclined to PPC.