First off success does not come easy and it is something that takes time and dedication to become successful however there are some who have that bit of extreme luck where everything works out easy for them and they become successful instantly. So for the rest of us how should we work at it to become successful?

Success is very much a gradual thing. It won't happen instantly.

If you want to become a success it is worth picking one main area in your field and becoming really good at that one thing instead of doing everything and one you are really making a name for yourself within your one or two areas then you can start to expand to other areas but you need to be able to give them the same sort of time, attention and quality that you gave your first one or two products.

One of the main things to being a success online is to have a website that is found. If people can't find you how can you expect them to buy your services. Sounds simple right, but it is not easy to get yourself to the top of the search engines these days and it can take dedication to stay there. This is the usually called digital marketing it encompasses all of the online marketing elements that help get your name out there. If you are truly going to get your website found then you should expect to pay a constant monthly fee to a digital marketing agency like www.celebes.co site, as it is a full time job running your own digital marketing which would take time away from more important areas of your company.

It can also be worth while giving a user a reason to come onto your website such as running a competition, having a sale. You might only have this competition for part of your consumer market such as the people that follow you on social media to try and get more social media followers like a 10% discount is someone types Twitter or Facebook into the discount code area of the website. Social media can also be an effective tool for an ecommerce company, but like everything if it is not used at all or properly then it is not very effective for a company.

Once you have got your website onto the top area of Google and you are now starting to get users onto your website it is now important to make sure that the user journey from a user arriving on your website to buying one of your products is nice easy and smooth.

This is where you will need to consult with an ecommerce web design company that will help plan the layout of your website and make the user journey simple for the user to find what they are looking for and buy your product or service with no hassle or fuss. If you are to hide your products on some random page that may have a link from other pages how can you expect the traffic on your website to ever find it. If you have a lot of products on your website do you have an easy way to search though them or filter them say you sell shoes and the user wants to see all the black trainers does your website have the ability to allow the user to easily filter out what they are looking for, if not then this should be one of the things that you should be speaking about with your ecommerce web design company.

Since its launch, Google penguins have been dancing on the minds and hearts of digital marketing experts. Like its cousin Panda, it has taken the internet marketing by storm and has drastically affected the website rankings. As most of us are now familiar to what penguin update has targeted to and how it is focused to promote ethical SEO practices, Companies who had adopted unethical ways to establish their PR and built their back link farms through immoral practices have suffered greatly at the hands of Google Penguin.

However there is still some doubt that this Penguin is going to take down all unethical practices and will be successful in implementing its moral guidelines. It is predicted that this update by Google has been or will ultimately boost the negative SEO practices. Since competition among the companies to gain better SERP and PR has increased, thus companies tend to adopt negative SEO practices to pull down their competitors. This has been happening for quite a while now that firms tend to damage their competitor's websites by giving bad reviews, posting unnatural links to their sites, damaging their online reputation in order to bring their website in the top ranked sites.

Unfortunately there is no specific tool adopted by Google to either check or stop this practice. Google algorithms are just there to analyze the quality and quantity of back links and how credible the site is through its content, PR etc. They are not able to differentiate whether the links are posted deliberately to bring down your site on the ranking ladder or identify the spammers doing this to your site without your knowledge. Hence the whole responsibility falls on the webmasters or SEO Firms to keep track of their websites and identify any unnatural back links pointing to their websites.

Since back link building is one of the major factors used by Google to analyze the quality of a website hence many small or medium firms are using negative SEO techniques to sabotage their competitors and gain better ranking. Giant firms or financially strong websites are not really affected by negative SEO as they have the legal power and strong analytics to keep the spammers away whereas the small players need to stay alert on their competitor activities.

On the other hand Google need to come up with some more refined and strict tool to counter negative SEO practices. It needs to reconsider its strategies to reward websites solely on the basis of PR and back link numbers because now with negative SEO this has become much easier for spammers to bring their sites in high ranking. If Google did not realize this soon, it will ultimately impact its search quality.

There are two ways to hire search engine marketing services for your company:

• Find an online provider.
• Hire someone in your local area.

There are advantages and disadvantages to both of these options. Let's go over them so you can determine which one is right for you.

Virtual Providers

The advantage to find a search engine marketing provider online is the ability to hire skilled freelancers for less expense than you could hire a professional local service. Many freelancers make a living marketing on behalf of their clients from home, so they are able to charge less than a larger marketing business may be able to charge.

The disadvantage here is that you could find a service provider who doesn't really know what they are doing. It can be some time and a lot of money out of your pocket before you realize that the freelancer doesn't have what it takes to get you on the front page of the SERPs or drive targeted traffic to your website.

Of course, there are some great online marketing services offering services through the Internet at very reasonable prices. You just need to make sure you check into them before officially hiring them. Look for reviews and testimonials from clients and get solid evidence of the results they have produced for other clients.

You also want to make sure they have enough experience to know what works and doesn't work. They should also be up to date on the many changes that are currently coming down in the online marketing world.

Local Providers

Local search engine marketing providers have the advantage of being located near your home. You may be able to call them up easier or visit them in a local office. Some people just feel a lot more secure with this type of business.

Yet, it can be difficult to find a local service that offers top notch services. Some are so overbooked they may not be able to give your company the individual attention you need and deserve.

You should check into a local service much the same as you check into an Internet based provider. Make sure they have the expertise and experience needed to deliver results. Make sure they are aware of all the changes currently being made with online marketing.

Learning From the Best

The best thing you can do is learn from the service provider www.viralhost.co to do your search engine marketing. Watch what they do for your site and ask lots of questions about what they are doing and why. You will eventually gain some knowledge yourself so you can do some of this for yourself. That may cut back on what you have to pay someone else, as long as you have the time to do some of it yourself.

Hiring a search engine marketing professional is essential if you don't know the ropes of online marketing yourself. Just don't get caught up searching for the cheapest possible service provider. This is one product that gets better with more investment. You shouldn't pay extremely high rates, but expect the best providers to charge reasonable rates.

It is possible to find a local service provider operating online. This may give you the comfort you need while supporting online marketers in your own area of the world.

The world of digital media has rushed up on businesses like a speeding bullet train. As well as many businesses not understanding how to utilise it, the heavy weight corporate companies are now using their financial muscle to hire the best people to develop this new age of communication. It's not just businesses that have been taken aback by the rise in social media. Just recently Saatchi and Saatchi, the biggest marketing company in the noughties, announced the creation of a digital marketing company. They realise the importance of this fast moving new age of marketing and the need to offer this service!

The biggest and most confusing area in digital marketing is social media and the social networks. So why should you be involved with social media. Well, let's look at the bigger picture of how to create a brand. Branding is what differentiates a corporate company from a small company and the number one reason many of the corporate companies such as Nike, Apple and Google etc. spend money on marketing. Creating a brand builds trust; many small and medium businesses do not focus on this part of their business and are usually price driven in value. Let's use the current pound store trend as an example. Soon they became 99p stores, what will be next 97p, then 59p? how about 49p? How long do you think it will be before there is a better Primark?

The point I am trying to make, is if you are a price driven small or medium business with no aspiration to become a brand, sooner or later someone will undercut you and steal your business. Social media is a great way to build brand awareness and communicate your U.S.P (Unique Selling Point). The problem is that its free, so many S.M.E (Small and Medium Enterprises) do not value it. If you haven't yet started using social media, ask yourself why the big brands are now spending millions to ensure they are connecting to their consumers. Do they know something you don't?

So what should you do to make sure you are positioned to take part in this digital age? Firstly think of it as just another form of marketing. It's not so scary then! At the least; you should be on Facebook and Twitter.

Add this to your yearly marketing calendar (Use Hoot suite to print off your stats and analyse them quarterly to see what is working)

If you have staff? Allow them 5 hours a week to manage your social media. (Content is King...Emotional content is golden)

Tracking your statistics is vital, many SME's that I talk to have no idea how many people visit their website and from where. Social media if done correctly will increase this by 10% on average. But if you don't know your website stats you will quickly say social media doesn't work!

Free Social Tools

• Twuffer: Store Your Tweets
  
• Twittwall: If you don't have a blog this is great.
  
• Bitly: Another Tool For Tracking
  

When you attend a creative web- solutions workshop, you will be shown how to create strategic content for your social media based around your product, using the chart below. It's too much for this article but we would be happy to share this with you at one of our workshops.

Whilst you were tucking into your turkey on Christmas Day and becoming increasingly annoyed by your relatives were you 1 of the 107 million people in the UK who visited retail websites on that day? Some people will do anything to avoid playing charades! Recent stats from Experian have shown that UK Internet users made 84 million visits to retail websites on Christmas Eve, 107 million on Christmas Day and 113 million on Boxing Day. Boxing Day broke all previous records with web sales being up by 17% on last year.

The UK has an insatiable appetite for Internet shopping that online retailers just love to feed. It is estimated that on www.daihatsumakassar.org, Britons spent 14 million hours surfing the net looking for bargains. Even on Christmas Day visits to online retail sites were up 71% on the previous year. Many major retailers launched their sales as early as Christmas Eve, slashing prices on big-ticket items and consequently creating a surge in Internet use over the Christmas period.

The seeking out of bargains is rife during January and this is a great time for businesses to be communicating with their existing and potential customers about all the offers that they have in place. These are still financially strapped times in the UK and your average consumer's are doing plenty of research on the Internet first before deciding to buy that big-ticket item. The challenge that the online retailer faces is to be prominent in the mind of the consumer when they are ready to buy. Driving people to their website is key to this and social media in conjunction with email marketing is critical to making this happen.

Just check your own email inbox and you will see that just about every company you have ever dealt with and who have your email are currently trying to engage with you about their various offers. They do this for a reason... it works. And it particularly works in January when people are striving for a bargain. The businesses that will flourish during this period are those that have compelling offers and those that have an effective way of informing people about those offers. It's also a great time for getting people who maybe haven't bought from you before to buy from you, therefore capturing contact details that you can utilise in the future so that you can build a relationship with them.

If you are an online retailer and you are looking to maximise on sales during January and for the rest of 2019 then email marketing will put you in pole position to achieve this.

Always! Unless you do not want the site to get found in search engines. The ONLY reason you may want to use a FREE or cheap site is if you only want it as an online reference point and only wanting to tell people in conversations about your site.

However, if you want your website to actually get found in search result pages, get found by potential customers looking for your products, then get a website made for you and get it optimised for search engines.

FREE or very cheap websites are often very difficult or nigh impossible to fully optimise them to get found in search engine results. When we optimise a website, we need certain areas of the source code to be edited and include keywords. We need pictures to be labelled and content to be included in Header tags. Free sites or very low cost sites often do not allow you to edit these areas and these are the most important for search engines to know what your site is about.

When is FREE Not Actually Worth "Paying" For?

So "paying" for a free or reduced cost website has its drawbacks. Whats the point in having a website if it cant be found by search engines? So having a marketing plan that involves a website like this, will cost you more financially in the long term and cause you more stress. Why stress? Because you'll be sitting back thinking that as you have a website, visitors will come flooding in and sales rocket when in actual fact your website will not get found!

Why have a great looking shop window if the door is nailed shut? Visitors wont be able to get in and buy from you.

What Type of Website Should a Business Have?

One that can be edited to get found in search engines!!

I am not advising to go out and spend A�5000 on a website, when your budget is not a good as that. However, it is advisable to actually buy a website that will do what you want it to do. One of the better and most popular website platforms is made in WordPress. This is basically a blogging website that has some excellent themes which can be adapted to suit your design and functionality. The beauty of a blogging website is that by adding a regular blog, with good quality content, is a good plus point for Google and other search engines. Its also like adding a new page to your site and one that can be targeted to your customers.

What is The Purpose of Having a Website?

The main purpose of having a website is to attract visitors and increase sales. So, getting a website found in search engines is probably the MAIN reason for having a site. Having a website is like having a shop window, you show the world what it is you do. A website can help you sell your services or products and direct people to information that you company holds on their products and answer questions using FAQ pages.

A website is a SALES tool, so getting it found in search engines is the number one priority. This is where free or cheap websites lets you down. They make it nigh impossible to edit the site for SEO, so it may be great having a great looking website - and these sites do offer great design BUT if it cant get found by search engines, how are people going to find it and more importantly how are you going to make sales?

IS a FREE Website Worth It?

It is up to you, to continue with a free or very low cost website that cannot be found in search engine result pages (SERPS) OR use your marketing budget to get a real website made, that can be found by search engines and start to drive customers to your site?