So you have built a nice web site with good solid content and now want to start selling your products or services.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is rapidly becoming a dying art. You know that traffic is important in order for a web business to survive. But, how do you get the type of traffic you desire?

Links?Lot’s of valid inbound links.

Solid inbound links are vital for good search engine ranking. After all, the search engines are in business to make money. They need to deliver quality sites to their searching audience. The advertisers won’t pay for space with the search engines if people don’t use them.You wouldn’t use a search engine for long if it delivered a host of web sites that were not related to your search terms, would you?

How do you go about getting these links?

Directories are a great start.

It is easy to locate directories that will be consistent with the content of your site.

One great resource is SearchIt. This free tool will enable you to search for directories on both Google and Yahoo and return fantastic results. Once you have found directories that meet your criteria, submit your information.

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What are Blogs?

Having heard the term previously but not having paid much attention most are just to afraid to show their ignorance and ask the question, what is a blog? Lets face it; the term blog does not conjure pleasant images.

Blogs are web logs that are updated regularly, usually on a daily basis. They contain information related to a specific topic. In some cases blogs are used as daily diaries about people’s personal lives, political views, or even as social commentaries. The truth of the matter is that blogs can be shaped into whatever you, the author, want them to be.

Where Did Blogs Come From?

The roots of blogging can be traced back to the mid 1990’s. Who the very first blogger actually was is unclear, as the art of blogging did not really take hold until 1999. The original “weblogs” were link-driven sites with personal commentaries. The very first blogs were human guided Internet web tours. While initially thought of as diaries or online journals, blogs have evolved into the latest fresh web content.

The Future of Blogs

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1. Maximize the effectiveness of your banner ads. Don’t just use the same ad on every banner, use a variety to attract the greatest number of clickers. Use a banner system, which changes the banners at you website.See: http://www.domainregistry.de

2. Make your web site load much faster by cutting down on banner ads and start using more buttons. Button ads are also smaller and take up less space.

3. Offer free advertising space to well known and respected companies on your web site. Sometimes people link their business credibility to yours.

4. People have been taught all their life to respect people in authority. Tell your visitors that you are the president or CEO of your business.

5. Offer people a free telephone consultation before they order your product. When they get to know you personally, it could convert to more sales.

6. Test the “bill me later option” on your web site. Most people are honest and will pay you. It is a powerful little niche and could increase your sales.

7. Find a charity your target audience would likely support. Tell people on your ad copy that you will give a percentage of the profits to that charity. P.S.: You should do also, what you have promised.

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Creating a new website is only the first stage in what is a long, arduous process to internet success. Millions of new websites, many of them intended to be commercial, are created every year and then????nothing happens. No, or very few, visitors come to the site. But what can seem worse, not even the search engines are in a hurry to come visiting. Most search traffic is likely to come from Yahoo and Google, and increasingly MSN. Yahoo and Google, though, have always taken a long, long time to bother to crawl your website with Googlebot and Inktomi Slurp. These are the robots that scour the internet listing website pages and storing them to provide the database for their search results.

Yahoo have, for a long time, offered a quick way to get considered for listing, but that has been expensive, too expensive for many. Now, though, there is a free and cheap way to get the search engine robots coming to your new site quickly. When I first tried this method last December, 2004, Yahoo’s Inktomi Slurp and Googlebot were crawling my relatively new site within hours. They had both been before, but only briefly and intermittently for the couple of months I had been developing that website. From that day, GoogleBot, Inktomi Slurp and more recently MSNBot have been meeting every day, sometimes several times a day, on that website. It’s become like a daily Robot’s Tea Party.

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Introduction

This article assumes you already know what a ‘meta-tag keyword’ is and know a little about their importance to search engines. In this article I will attempt to explain the art of choosing the most appropriate and best performing keywords for your web pages.

As you should already know keywords contained within your websites’ meta tags are extremely important in allowing search engines to determine the content of your web pages. In order to make sure that these keywords are bringing your site up within Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS) and driving visitors to your site, the most important factors in determining your keywords are:

• Relevance.
• Choosing keywords that people actually search for.
• Choosing keywords without too much competition.

Relevance

All your keywords should ALWAYS be relevant to the content within the page they describe. Adding keywords to your site just because they are commonly searched for words is not recommended. Not only will it frustrate visitors who are looking for other information, but it may well get your site black-listed from search engine rankings.

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Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising is one of the most cost effective (and just plain effective) ways to get laser-targeted traffic to your website. For just pennies per click you can have your offer placed in front of only those people who are truly interested in what you have to offer.

There is a problem with PPC however. Return On Investment (ROI) can be quite low if your ad campaigns aren’t designed properly. In a nutshell, you need to make sure that enough people who click on your ad make a purchase to allow you to end up with a healthy overall profit!

Here are a few tips for maximizing the effectiveness of your PPC ad campaigns:

1 ? Write clear and concise ad copy that tells the potential customers EXACTLY what they will find after the link is clicked. Since you have to pay cash for each and every click, you want to limit the clicks to those people who are truly interested in what you’re offering!

2 ? Be creative with the keywords but be precise in the ad copy. While you want the ad copy to be very precise in describing your offer, you want as many people as possible to see the ad in the first place.

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Guerrilla Marketing Design is more an attitude than a system of do’s and don’ts. It’s an attitude that emphasizes the efficient and memorable delivery of information.

-First Commandment: Purposeful

Guerrilla Marketers view design not as a matter of subjective likes and dislikes but as a strategic tool intended to achieve specific goals. Guerrillas avoid unnecessary decoration. Every mark on the page must serve a purpose. Guerrillas make design decisions based on how efficiently their designs communicate a desired message to a specific audience.

Guerrilla Marketing design begins with a plan, based on careful analysis of message, audience and competition.

-Second Commandment: Recognition

Guerrilla Marketers refuse to get lost in a crowd. They know is it better to stand out and be recognized rather than confused with their competition.

Guerrillas recognize that their customers and prospects are bombarded with thousands of competing messages each day. Accordingly, Guerrillas choose colors, typefaces and layouts that project a distinct, easily recognized image that sets their message apart and accurately reflects their values.

Their designs project a consistent image throughout all of their marketing. Consistency is achieved by using a unique combination of colors, type and layout throughout their print and online communications. This consistency multiplies the impact of their marketing dollars.

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If you agree that traffic is the true currency of the web, then you’d want to read this article very carefully?

Every web site owner and Internet marketer with a commercial goal understands the true value of the visitor, studying the synergy between traffic and sales.

The problem is, it is all too easy to get caught up in specific traffic generation methods and lose sight of the ‘bigger picture’.

What’s this bigger picture you ask?

Your focus should be on creating a total traffic strategy, instead of just concentrating on smaller individual techniques.

This is important as a well-defined strategy allows you to choose the BEST traffic sources for your business goals. It’s the smarter and more powerful approach for leveraging on your incoming traffic for skyrocketing profits.

Now setting up a strategy might sound daunting to some, but it really comes down to understanding the difference between SHORT-term traffic and LONG-term traffic.

Most marketers do not even realize there IS a difference between the two, and how this difference can impact your business in more ways than you will imagine.

First let us look at the definitions of these two traffic sources:

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Assuming that it is legal to do so in your state or province, running a contest on your website or forum is a wise idea. Contests can promote goodwill, stimulate interest in your site, and bring quality visitors back to your site time and again. The following tips will help you build a successful site without busting your advertising budget.

1. Be clear about your contest rules. Instead of just allowing anyone to participate, require all participants to be registered members to your site. If you run a forum, require a minimum number of posts [ten is a good place to start] from members before allowing their participation. Be clear about the prize[s] offered, any limitations/restrictions that may exist because of local laws, and state the contest beginning and ending dates. Once a winner has been determined, publish the winner’s name and notify the winner personally via email.

2. Join affiliate programs for magazine subscription companies, book publishers, and CD companies. Magazines, books and music are some of the cheapest items to give away. Generally, if you purchase something from your affiliate program you will receive a heavy discount plus earn some of that money back in commissions.

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Whether you’ve got 100 or 100,000 people on your email list, chances are you can optimize your web page to better feature and promote your ezine. Here’s a few ways to capture more customers and leads - without having to increase your traffic.

Give Something (Or a Few Things Away)

Studies show that most people will only subscribe to about a dozen email lists at a time, and given the number of lists out there, you’ve got to seriously compete for your customer’s email address. Giving away free bonuses is a great way to push you over the edge.

A few things you can give away are:

Free ebooks. This is a strategy many marketers use - and it’s a little worn out. Not just any free ebook will do anymore. Still use it, but make sure your ebook is something your customers crave. Ebooks like “10 Easy Ways to Make Your Skin Look Younger” and “7 Ways Moms Can Make Money On Ebay Today” will get you a ton of email sign-ups.

Free courses. This is a lot like the free ebook strategy, except you break up your course into a sequence using an autoresponder. This works well if you want to be in constant contact with your prospect for a few days or weeks.

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