The online marketing world is changing as I write this article but there are several basic principles that remain. Good SEO basics, title tags, image optimization, meta descriptions
clean programming, on page and off page optimization, and great fresh keyword rich content which must be refreshed continuously .

A lesson, I learned the hard way was to invest both our time and our resources in platforms and applications that we directly own. We own our website and our blog (I trust you have a blog domain and its self hosted) therefore, we can control what and how we want to make changes. We can add content, images; videos take down pages that are under performing add rich content, optimize and tweak to maximize our SEO efforts. The idea is that we control the process and the platform. We are not hostage to platforms or third parties that for either business or whatever reasons decide that this platform will no longer be available.

Our website is still the most important marketing piece in our marketing toolbox. Our website is not going away it is evolving in processes and in development.

I will address web development at another time, the concept here is simple, invest your resources in resources you own. Here is an example, Blogger, a Google application, decided it no longer would allow self hosted blogs not hosted on their servers(no reason for you to waste your time if your blog is not self hosted). The take away is you devote time and resources and that can be taken away from you at any time. Imagine Facebook with all of its growth and excitement, if it decides to change its game plan, where will that leave you? What about all the time you have devoted? One thing is certain online, there is no certainty and commercial sites are there for one reason to make money! FaceBook, Twitter, Google, and Yahoo watch them, listen, follow them see what’s important to their business, how they are evolving and reinventing themselves. What are the prominent trends, who are the key players and what has been their history and participation with important business decisions? Over time trends will appear tendencies that will guide us towards where the online marketing environment is moving.

Online marketing holds many of the same traits and methods as offline marketing the game has moved from holding something in our hands to scrolling on a computer where we have immediate access to everything at anytime.
The single best defense is to be extremely cautious and do your homework before committing to anything online related to your business. Today what seems like a great time saving application could be tomorrow’s nightmare. Keep your customers in mind does this platform solve their problem if not think again before you hit the submit button.

Remember the thesis, commercial sites sell, so ideally, proceed with caution and invest in resources you own otherwise, it can be taken away from you and when and if that happens remember, I told you so and I feel your pain!

Author Bio: Jerry Pollio http://www.cmtmarketing.net

Category: Marketing
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