Online Marketing Newbie - What The Heck is Relevance? - Internet Marketing Australia

Every business, every industry has it own vocabulary. Business jargon, if you will. The same is true with online marketing. Some of the terms make you shake your head and wonder, "Whatever are they talking about?" Relevance may be one of those terms.

If you've not seen it (or heard it) yet, you will. The admonition to "Keep your landing page relevant." Or "Keep your keywords relevant." Or "Use relevant keywords." Or "Let your readers 'see' relevance."

OK. Thank you very much. But what does it all really mean? And how does it affect your online business?

What Does Relevant Really Mean?

First of all the word "relevant" simply means related to the matter at hand. A synonym might be pertinent. It's important that the information you are presenting is as close to what your visitor is looking for as possible.

In the early days of internet marketing, there was a good deal of "bait and switch" tactics. You might be looking for a good recipe and wind up clicking into a website selling weight loss products. You felt as though you were tricked. (And you were.) Marketers once were able to get away with such actions. But no more. Nowadays, people are much more savvy and they demand a higher level of excellence. And remember, one of your goals as an internet marketer is to build trust levels.

Relevant Landing Pages

When creating a landing page for the product you are pre-selling (if you are an affiliate marketer, you pre-sell, the product's website does the actual selling) the difference between making a sale or not will be a direct result of your landing page relevance. Your relevant landing page won't be just any old HTML page to send your visitors to.

When someone performs an online search - whether Google or any other search engine - they are looking for results that most closely fit their search. This is why it is important that you do your best to create a page that is relevant to the keywords they searched for. For example, if someone is searching for a good cheesecake recipe, and you send them to a page about calorie counting and weight loss, the topics may be distantly related, but are not precise enough. The landing page is not relevant to the visitor's search.

If they are searching for cheesecake recipes, then offer a free report that is full of a wide variety of cheesecake recipes and then offer other information of varieties of related desserts. Perhaps your product is actually a recipe e-book full of quick, easy dessert ideas. Now everything is relevant the to visitor's search.

When creating your landing page, pay close attention to your headline. This is the first thing your visitor will see. It's good if your landing page headline uses the exact keywords that came from the search, as well as some supporting content that outlines the benefits of the person being on your page.

Relevant Products

The products presented on your landing page also will need to be relevant. In addition, make it clear how these products will help, what their benefits are and when and why to purchase. The more questions you can answer for your visitor, the higher your conversions rates will be.

Nobody wants to get a sales pitch outlining something that is not pertinent to their search. They don't want to be searching elsewhere to get all of the info they need to make a purchase. (If that happens they probably won't come back to your site to buy.)

The Rewards of Relevance

Another reward of incorporating relevance is that you become good friends with Google's Quality Score algorithm. A relevant landing page will increase your Quality Score, which means your minimum CPC (Cost Per Click) will go down and your ad positioning will go up!

It's good to get to know your customer. That way you will be able to answer their questions before they even get a chance to ask them. It is your responsibility as a marketer to deliver information to help the customer make a purchasing decision. This all comes down to the relevance of your content.

As you can see, the term relevance is really quite simple. The key is to plan your campaign with the same "theme" if you will, running throughout. Relevance starts at inception. If you can't find the relevance in the initial idea, you're never going to portray it online.

Your campaign might grow something like this:

* Choose a good product

* Create keywords that precisely answer what your product-buyer might search for

* Write a few articles containing your keywords. Make sure the articles are full of information relevant to your product.

* Now continue on doing the same thing with ads, blogs, Squidoo lenses, HubPages, landing pages, and so on.

Grow your campaign a little each day and - now that you know what relevance means - make sure all aspects are relevant one to the other. Soon you will have a list of people who trust you enough to buy from you.

Relevance means that your customers are able to find you (that means you've got to also be relevant to Google, MSN, etc.) and that once they do, that they'll be properly driven to complete the desired course of action you've set forth (i.e. make a purchase or leave their contact info). True relevance is getting them to do it again... and again.