Opportunities in Internet marketing exploded in 2008 and have set an innovative path for 2009. Social networking created the biggest noise amidst a cacophony of new products vying for attention. The five biggest attention getters in the internet marketing arsenal emphasize the importance of search engine optimization and interconnectedness in formulating your Internet marketing plan for 2009. If there’s a keyword that will describe successful Internet marketing efforts in 2009, it’s collaboration.

• Facebook went mainstream in 2008, growing at the unbelievable rate of more than half a million users a day. Poised to overtake popular competitor MySpace this year, Facebook now reports more than 130 million active users and millions more “friends” who regularly access Facebook sites. Widgets in the Facebook sidebar herald the Internet’s next big trend: open social networking. Facebook widgets and Google’s Friend Connect allow friends to stay connected while visiting other websites and blogs. Enabling visitors to communicate with each other while visiting your website will position you to take full advantage of open social networking and its customer referral potential.
• iPhone is transforming the way we communicate. Communication experts at last fall’s Web 2.0 Summit predicted that within 5 years the iPhone will be the most popular phone in the U.S. and that more people will access the Internet via their phones than with computers. Quickly multiplying iPhone apps already allow users to search the Internet, access GPS directions, ID and download music, play games, read books, play an instrument, snap a picture, send live video, and much, much more.
• Twitter marries the immediacy of cell phone technology with the power of the Internet. Twitter allows you to post short-burst alerts to customers. Use Twitter to provide immediate answers to customers’ questions, direct them to useful site pages or offsite info sources, and alert them to special offers.
• Podcasts have many of the same advantages as face-to-face communication, allowing you to connect to and interact with customers on a direct personal level. Podcasts allow you to show your products in action, provide valuable training seminars in product use, sponsor vibrant interactive sessions between customers and staff specialists, and introduce customers to innovative new products and services.
• Blogging allows you to develop a rapport with potential customers. Linking to other blogs and websites also creates important search engine links that can significantly boost your rankings. Blogs are a proven method of maintaining a connection with established customers and attracting new customers. An informative, interesting and well-written blog will keep people coming back to see what’s new.

There are tricks to every trade. On Tuesday, we explained how search engine optimization increases website traffic. SEO employs a proven variety of techniques to attract search engine spiders and maximize indexing of your website into Internet search engine data bases. SEO vastly improves the probability that your site will be displayed on the short list when a consumer inputs a query about products, services or information offered on your website. And that short list is where you want to be. Studies have shown that most consumers never click beyond the first page of search matches. The goal of SEO is to get your site ranked highly enough by Internet search engines to put it as close as possible to the top of the first screen of query responses.

As we mentioned, there are tricks to every trade and SEO is no exception. With more than 20 years of combined experience in search engine optimization and Internet marketing, the SEO experts at Increase Visibility have developed and perfected specific techniques proven to drive maximum traffic to your website. Among the most important of these SEO techniques are keywords, title tags, URLs and linking.

• Keywords. Deciding which words to optimize for search engines is the most crucial and most difficult task in formulating a SEO plan. The words selected as keywords must match those most often used by consumers to search for what you sell. Finding the specific words that are most popular and create the highest search volumes is as much art as science. There are tools that measure search volumes for specific words, but it’s selecting the right combination of highly-relevant keywords that will bring paying customers to your site.
• Title Tags. For successful search engine indexing, the text that appears in the title bar of your browser is the single most important element on your web page. Loading this title tag with keywords maximizes indexing when search spiders crawl your web pages. Each page should have a unique title to ensure indexing. Otherwise it’s like having a shelf of books all with the same title. No one knows they’re different books.
•  URLs. URL structure is equally important. Because search engine spiders crawl URLs much as they do individual web pages, your URL should be constructed to make use of keywords rather than the default numbers assigned by many publishing systems. To avoid confusing search spiders, each page should link to a single URL.
• Linking. The way in which other sites link to yours impacts your search engine ranking. Including keywords in linking anchor text improves search engine rankings. You can encourage this by providing copy-and-paste HTML code for linkers.