Thursday, December 18, 2008

Forward Thinking Tactics For Online Marketing

By Stewart Woyo

It is finally finished. Your site is gorgeous, appealing and downright amazing. With your graphics and images painstakingly chosen, you just know you'll be rolling in the dough in no time flat. You submit your prize to the search engines and the directories and sit back to watch the money storm begin. You wait. And wait. And wait. Finally, a few weeks later, you know that a pretty site alone does not generate revenue by itself. The search engines aren't going to do the work for you, so you'll have to find a way to promote your site and get it in the public's eye. A solid strategy is the only way to get the traffic your website and business deserves.

You may be thinking that an online website promotion strategy is too difficult to come up with. It's easier then you think! Here are 5 ways to drive traffic to your site and get you the hits you need.

1) "Move the free line," is a phrase for a popular website promotion tactic. Offering a sample or service for free is a proven method of generating increased traffic to your site. Be sure that your company's information is included on your sample. In this manner, visitors who love your sample will constantly be reminded of where they got it, and be able to come back to your website again. Give the visitor something of value for free, and include a call to action.

2) If you are willing to spend money to make money, paying for traffic is a quick way to send visitors to your website. This also allows you to see if your website actually converts. Pay per click search engines and networks allow you to target visitors. With these, you only pay for visitors that actually land on your site. This very effective promotion method is best used if you have a specific targeted audience for your traffic.

3) Network, network, network! Networking is one of the oldest and most successful tools of business. Focus on building relationships with related businesses, but not direct competitors. The trick is to find businesses that offer similar products and services as your own and share the target audience. Exchanging links with your partners can lead to more conversions for everyone involved. Having unbroken links to quality sites will help improve your search engine rankings. You can also exchange your customer email lists to increase the effectiveness of your email newsletters and direct marketing. This may be the most valuable tip in this article.

4) Content is king! Think about the sites you visit most often. They could be news sites, or weather sites. Maybe a site related to one of your hobbies. Why do you visit them often? Because each time you visit you read or see something new. Your content doesn't have to live on your website alone. Write articles and submit them to other websites and directories. Make sure they always reference, or better yet link back to your site. The person that was interested in your article will most likely be interested in your site. Before you know it you'll have created an endless stream of web viewers. Plus, as long as you update your contentthey'll keep coming back.

5) Marketing is often a visual concept, so online video creation and syndication is a powerful tool in your arsenal. Online video generated traffic is considered the most responsive traffic. Invest your time into making as many online videos as you can. These videos should be syndicated and submitted to more than a dozen of the web 2.0 video sites populating the internet. Not only will this method generate traffic from the viewers in the online video community, but it provides free search engine traffic as well due to the videos being ranked high in the search engines. - 15478

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