Website Promotion Beginner's Guides

PPC ads are the small links you find placed next to search engine results which offer a website that is related to what you are searching for. Also, there are PPC links on websites that are related to the content of the website.

If you've created a website, it's likely you've heard about SEO. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the act of molding your website to maximum compatibility with search engine crawlers, thereby increasing your chances of being on the first page — or even the top — of search listings. It's a highly competitive field with many people offering services as an SEO professional for hire, and there are entire firms of SEO professionals working for companies to keep their website at the top.

Social Media Marketing (SMM) is a phrase that should scare you if you have any sense. While it can be an immensely valuable (and profitable) advertising tool, it can also alienate entire demographics if handled improperly. As such, any SMM campaign should be carefully researched and planned before you make contact with anyone.

Affiliate advertising is an arrangement where one website pays another to display a link. It's like PPC advertising, except the arrangement is made on an individual basis with another website and there are different pricing models. Here is an example: a lawnmower sales website pays a blog about lawnmowers to display an advertisement, and for every lawnmower sold, the blog receives 5% of the profit. For the blog, that's an excellent deal because all they have to do is display the link.

For a much longer time than any of us have been alive, companies have been advertising through postal services. Once the Internet gained popularity, e-mail followed suit, and we've all been hammered by spam e-mail at one point or another. Most of the time, it's for a product or service you absolutely don't care for, and you wonder why they would even send you the e-mail! That's precisely the feeling you should remember when approaching any e-mail marketing campaign. You never want to spam, and you want to send your advertisements to an interested audience.