It may seem odd that a professional web marketer is suggesting that you might do your own web marketing, but honestly for some people this is definitely the best thing! If you have an aptitude for the geeky, or some background in related fields such as web design, you may find that you are able to bring more to the table than any outside company in terms of your small businesses web marketing efforts. It will definitely take some time and energy to do well but it may be well worth it.
I will warn though, don’t think that you can whip together a Google Adwords campaign in a couple of hours and expected results. This is exactly the sort of approach that generally leads to most small businesses throwing away most of their web marketing budget and then writing the whole thing off as a ‘ripoff’. The same goes double for SEO. Do NOT read a few posts on what will get you to the top of Google and think you are hearing the truth! In all likelihood, you will simply damage your site’s reputation with Google and rank worse than ever!
That being said, I’m going to post some great resources for the potential do-it-yourself web marketer. There is a horrible amount of really bad information out there which is either outdated or simply an attempt to take your money, so I’m hoping that these genuinely good resources will be helpful for a few people 🙂
SEO
In my opinion, bar none the website which most consistently delivers genuinely good, up-to-date and thoroughly researched information on SEO would be www.moz.com. Here’s a really great free guide they created for the beginner SEO marketer:
http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo
Once you’re done digesting that guide, I would also suggest their 2013 ranking factors:
http://moz.com/search-ranking-factors
SEM/PPC
With Google being the king of the PPC platforms I would suggest you start there. Honestly, probably the best free resource is Google’s own training platform:
https://support.google.com/adwords/topic/3374694?hl=en&ref_topic=3119071
If you’re really serious, I would strongly suggest investing in a month or two worth of fees to view the lynda.com tutorial found here:
http://www.lynda.com/Google-AdWords-tutorials/Essential-Training/
Beyond that, Bing and Yahoo! would be you next concern. Ads for those two platforms are managed through a common platform the ‘Yahoo | Bing Network’. It’s extremely similar to Google Adwords and the average person could find their way around quite easily once they are familiar with Google’s platform. However you might find their training helpful:
http://advertise.bingads.microsoft.com/en-ca/bingads-training
Good Luck!
If you decide in the end, that you’re better off letting a professional handle your web marketing, then check out our REALdeal web marketing packages.
You can also call me to discuss if you wish at 1-888-587-2383 ext2. Happy to help!