The Evolution of Internet Marketing

The internet in its inception was initially used solely as an information network medium for sending emails and sharing files. Its growth and literal explosion in the mid 1990s was due largely to its commercialization. The internet as we know it today, a super highway of information, commerce, interconnectively and expression began as a small collection of static product pages. The Internet was a new marketing avenue for businesses to expose their products to a larger audience.

The eventual commercial growth of the Internet superseded all expectations; the development of the Internet as a social network also exceeded its primary vision. The Internet as we know it today was born out of commercial marketing. More and more businesses saw the Internet as a viable avenue for marketing products. Static pages were quickly upgraded with graphics, navigation systems and links. Next came the ability to buy and sell online. This is where the market really began to boom. Nowadays it's as simple as clicking a mouse and you can buy practically anything online.

As more and more people joined the .com buzz it quickly became apparent that simply having a website is not enough. The concept of marketing websites in order to market products and services emerged. From very early on webmasters have been finding new and interesting ways to attract visitors to their sites and increase their search engine rankings.

Internet marketing nowsdays is a booming industry. There is nothing more important for webmasters than marketing, as without it you will be virtually invisible. Basic marketing techniques that emerged early on included trying to increase search engine rankings. This progressed into "Search Engine Optimization" (SEO) and "Search Engine Marketing" (SEM). SEO is on the top of every webmasters list when it comes to increasing rankings and therefore traffic. The aim is always top ten. SEO encompasses all the elements of a site. From design, layout, content and coding to link popularity and usability.

SEO quickly became the focus of marketing campaigns net wide and with this many theories emerged as to how to achieve optimization. Usability is an important marketing concept that got a lot of attention in the early days of SEO. The concept of usability is all about enhancing user experience and ensuring that the user is able to access relevant, specific information in a simple and effective manner. Usability concepts have implications for design, content, nagivation and all other site elements. This idea generally requires a lot of market research and the site is tailored towards targeted users. These concepts work well for SEO purposes as search engines rank sites geared towards users well.

The latest in Internet marketing news is the concept of link baiting. This has been around since the inception of commercialized business online, but the term is under a year old. Link bait is anything on a site that inspires a user to link to the site. It can be something useful, funny, silly, controversial or newsworthy. Anything that attracts natural links is considered link bait. Linking baiting is an important tool in the SEO arsenal as search engines rate link popularity.

Essentially Internet marketing is changing all the time. New concepts, tricks and techniques emerge everyday. It is important however to remember that although Internet marketing is constantly evolving the basic principal of marketing always remains the same. The audience is everything, the market is the key.