5 Internet Marketing Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Doubtless you’ve heard plenty of advice on how to make Internet marketing a success. Some of the ideas and strategies seem to make sense, others don’t. Naturally, when pursuing Internet marketing, you want to avoid wasting your time by using the strategies that work and avoiding mistakes.

The good news is that there are many strategies that have potential. You just need to separate the wheat from the chaff. Let’s look at some things you should avoid:

Calendar of Events — This is an idea that starts out with the best of intentions, but eventually falls by the wayside. If a calendar is not updated regularly and it contains outdated information, it can make your site feel old, annoy visitors and cause them to look elsewhere. If you are unable to keep up with time-sensitive information it is best to leave it off the site.

Poor Site Design – First impressions are important, and the design of your site can tell potential customers a lot about your business. If your site looks thrown together it may send a poor impression of your business.

Glitz & Glam -  Flash design that includes distracting graphics and animations, perhaps with a bit of audio thrown into the mix may be popular with some, but webmasters need to ask themselves if their primary target market will care more about a few bells and whistles or actual content.

Flash enhancements aren’t even supported on the iPhone and iPad, and probably for good reason. Unnecessary Flash animations can burn up processor cycles and can slow things down. If such additions do not enhance your effectiveness in reaching your customers, then perhaps it is a strategy that is best avoided.

Search engine optimization (SEO) – Aha, I threw this in here just to get your attention! This is a strategy that doesn’t work only if you don’t use it. Some people think that this is one of those mysteries of the Internet that is impossible to figure out. They think there’s too much competition for SEO to be of any use whatsoever.

The important thing to remember is that some SEO is better than none at all. It can be as simple as incorporating meta title information and keyword-rich content into your site. The important thing is that you devote a little time to SEO regularly.

SEO is something that can be incorporated into every website, no matter what Web editor or software you may use. For example, if you use Apple’s iWeb to design your website, you can use the iWeb SEO Tool, a third-party product that will allow you to edit your title tags, and imported meta tags to each page of your site, and provide alternative image texts so that even the graphics on your site can help to draw visitors. It also allows you to add Google Analytics, stats counters and other features to your iWeb website.

Some marketing strategies don’t work simply because they aren’t given enough time. Others don’t reach the appropriate target audience and still others fail because they aren’t given the constant upkeep they require to be effective. Be sure to devote the time necessary to the strategies that are truly effective and avoid the rest.

About the Author:
Webmaster of InternetMacMarketing.com, Tim Arends has been a user of Macs since 1994 and has helped purchase, install, maintain and troubleshoot Macintoshes and Mac networks for business for several years. he has sold and demonstrated Macs at a major retail chain and has been a Mac user group ambassador, newsletter editor, and program director for over ten years. He has written about Macs and Mac software for national magazines. Currently, he runs his business exclusively using Macintosh.

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