It might come as a surprise to the reader that even with the large number of people using the internet, the number of people who go online is still increasing. Based on a study by Pew Research, using the internet constantly has increased by 5% within the last 3 years. With the way things are going, it is not surprising that digital marketing has actually floored offline marketing. But just what is digital marketing?
What is Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing is simply marketing and its only difference from traditional or offline marketing is that it is done online or on the internet. Digital marketing covers all marketing activities that use the internet or an electronic device. It is usually done by the company itself, a digital marketing agency or anyone who knows the tools of the trade.
There are various tools that comprise what is known as digital marketing and the reader might have already encountered some of these tools before. Digital marketing tactics include search engine optimization or SEO, content marketing, PPC or pay-per-click, social media marketing, affiliate marketing, marketing automation, native advertising, email marketing, inbound marketing and online PR. In order to be successful in the online world, it is no longer a question of whether or not these tools should be used but a question of who should be using them for online marketing, the company or a digital marketing agency.
What is SEO?
If you are an experienced and successful online marketer, you would probably vouch for the fact that SEO is the most important online marketing strategy. SEO or search engine optimization is the process of tweaking your website so that it will rank higher in the results pages of search engines. The logic behind the process is that the higher your rank is in search engines, the more visible you are or the better your website’s chances are of being found, visited, read and even earning money if you have a business site.
The usual channels that benefit from SEO are blogs, infographics and websites. There are 3 types of SEO, on page SEO, off page SEO and technical SEO. On page SEO is a kind of SEO that focuses on content that exists “on page” when you look at a website. This type of SEO involves keyword research for intent and search volume of keywords. Off page SEO focuses on events that happen “off page” and focuses on links or backlinks to the page. Technical SEO mainly focuses on the backend of your website such as how your pages are coded, structured data, image compression and code optimization.
What is Content Marketing?
Content marketing deals with the promotion as well as the creation of content assets for producing awareness, lead generation, traffic growth and of course, customers. Content marketing involves the strategic creation of blog posts, articles, e-books, whitepapers, infographics, videos, audio, reviews, guest posts, testimonials and feedback.
Usually, content marketing is not used as a standalone strategy. It is used in tandem with SEO or other digital marketing strategies. The basic rule in generating content however is that it should be relevant to the topic that you chose, of good quality and as much as possible raw and original. Sometimes the originality doesn’t really matter but how the content is worded and there are tools online such as plagiarism checkers that check if the article is not plagiarized as well as grammar and spell checkers for the content’s quality.
What is Social Media Marketing and PPC?
First of all, social media marketing and PPC are two different things but they are commonly used in tandem just like SEO and content marketing. It is not uncommon to find SEO combined with social media marketing and PPC as well. Social media marketing mainly involves the use of social media websites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram to increase the awareness of your brand, generate leads and drive traffic to your website.
Pay per click or PPC is more popularly known as ad marketing. This technique makes use of ads that visitors and online users can click on and whoever created the ads get paid for every click that the visitors make based on a certain price. Like social media marketing, paid ads could be used with SEO along with content marketing as part of digital marketing.
Conclusion
This article has only covered the most common strategies of digital marketing but there are a lot more out there if you are willing to learn. These are standard practices but as one goes along learning digital marketing, any marketer would realize that organic searches and natural growth of traffic is better, more sustainable and more rewarding in the long run than instant gratification. If you know the basics, it would be easy to conclude that digital marketing is not just the realm of a digital marketing agency.
About EDM
Excel Digital Marketing is an internet marketing firm providing website marketing & promotion across an array of industries. Our main goal is to assist clients in obtaining more online traffic, leads and ultimately sales. We achieve this goal by utilizing several internet channels such as content marketing, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and paid advertising.
Our main focus service areas are in the following cities: Arlington, Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, Houston & San Antonio at the present time. For more information please visit or main site located at: https://exceldigitalseo.com/