Thank your lucky stars that over 200 million people access the Internet.  When it comes to making money online, you can’t ignore the mere presence of 200 million people, no matter what you sell on the internet.

Say what you will, but if you’ve been online for any amount of time, you already know that getting the audience you want is a lot harder than it seems.

When the dust settles, you have search engines to submit to, links to make, banner exchanges to sign up for, e-mail databases to create, lists to post to, and I could go on and on.

It is absolutely vital that you think outside the box when you are designing a web promotion strategy.  You see, the Internet provides a place for any and everyone to share, receive, and contribute information. 

But here’s the real kicker…you have to know HOW to harness this traffic and give the people what they are looking for.  Keep reading as we cut through the smoke and mirrors.  You will walk away with a solid plan for increasing your web traffic.

Let’s begin…

1) Target The Right Audience.

No doubt about it, the Internet is a market of niches; and if you have the capability of appealing to one or more of these niches, you can become very successful.

Here’s the tip…the more obscure the subject, and the smaller the market, the less users you will get for your website. 

With that being said, you goal here is to get people who are interested, and with money to spend, to come to your site and become loyal users.

It is a waste of time to market to people whose interests are different from what your website is promoting.

Consider this fact:  If you goal is to make money, you want to bring to your website the types of people who are prepared to buy what you are selling.  There is no need to reinvent the wheel here. Being everything to everybody will put you on the short end of the stick every time.

Let me ask you…who will benefit the most from visiting your site?  If you can answer this question, you have your target market.

Direct your marketing efforts only towards that group people, and you will be able to get your foot in the door and start seeing some real profit.

By now, you are probably wondering just how to find your target audience.  A good rule of thumb is to look for online communities, e-mail lists, discussion forums, and virtual communities in your niche. 

Poke around different sites to see what is most important to them.  What are their complaints?  What problem keeps popping up that no one has solved?  You’ll be surprised at just how much you can learn from this method. 

In fact, if you do this early enough in the game, and on a consistent basis, your marketing strategy will develop right before your eyes.

2) Know Your Competition.

If you really want to increase your web traffic immensely, then research your niche and spend as much time as possible studying how other website are conducting business.  You can use any search engine to find websites located within your niche.

But that’s not all.  Visit your competitor’s sites as soon as possible.  What you can learn can help improvise the quality of your own website. 

Read their content, follow the links on their website, check out and even order their products. See what their promotion techniques are, find out their search engine ranking, and more importantly – find out what group of people they appear to be targeting the most.

Pay close attention to those features that seems to gain a lot of usage.  Do they blast free offers, give out discount coupons, offer free software, offer membership to a free newsletter, and do other marketing activities worth modeling?

The point here is to look at the big picture.  What are they doing to add value to their site?  Take notice of just how well they deliver.  In fact, ask yourself if they over-deliver.

A word of caution here:  Competitors site do change, and change often.  It is to your advantage to check on these sites on a routine basis. 

Stay ahead of the game and be flexible. Despite what you may have heard, consider getting on your competitors mailing list.  This way you will know what they are offering when, and how much. 

Get to know your competitors well.  The more you know, the easier it will be for you to beat them to the punch and increase your web traffic

3) Make Your Business Easy To Find

As you might have noticed, marketing messages are everywhere, and it is easy to get lost in the crowd. 

I’m telling you, society has a short attention span.  So, do whatever it takes to persuade them to your side – and do it fast.

For starters, your domain name is your signature.  It is a great tool for catching your target audience’s attention.  What it boils down to is making a good first impression. 

Having your own domain name projects a professional image of your website.  It tells the world you mean business.  And, on top of that, it tells your niche that you have dedicated a space to serve only them. 

And, just in case you are wondering, getting a domain name is really cheap. We use NameCheap.com for all our domains.

The main thing here is to grab a name that stands out from the crowd – one that commands attention.  Choose a unique word or short phrase.  Something people will remember and can easily type into a web browser.  Think of words that cause good feelings to stir and begin there.

My point is, make the domain as distinctive as possible because it is what people will use to come to your website.

All in all, you can run a successful business and garner the lion’s share of online traffic if you know where to begin.  Where will you go from here?

To Your Success!

Warm Regards,
Jeremy Gislason
Follow us on Twitter at:
http://twitter.com/SureFireWealth

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1. What is SEO?

SEO stands for search engine optimization. A search engine is a tool many internet users use to find sites that are relevant to their needs. The three biggies when it comes to search engines are Google, Yahoo and MSN. There are however, hundreds of search engines available to internet users. Search engines work by sending out spiders to crawl through the World Wide Web and gather information. If you have the information they’re looking for, in the places they are looking, they’ll find you and place you in their results when a person is looking for your information.

 The task of understanding what search engines are looking for and putting it in the right places on your website and in your content, is the essence of search engine optimization. So now you might be asking…what do search engines look for and where do they look for it? The answer is keywords and links. Keywords in your html coding, keywords on your webpage content, keywords in your content, and the number of incoming links you have to your website.

2. How important is SEO?

Let’s just put it this way. What’s better a few visitors who stumble upon your website or hundreds of visitors that go to your website with the direct intention of learning more or making a purchase?

With more and more people searching and shopping online, getting on the first page or two of the search engine results can mean the difference between keeping your day job and becoming an internet millionaire.

3. What are text links?

Links are just one of the tools you can use to increase your search engine optimization. The more quality links you have, the better your search engine ranking will be. Text links are links that contain only text. Wikipedia is a great place to examine internal text links. The links are contained within a sentence and when a reader clicks on them they are taken to a different page on the same website. The kind of text links you’re looking for will be text links that will take readers from your article, ebook, or web copy to your website.

An excellent tool to generate incoming links is to write copy for online audiences like article directories, blogs, and ezines and insert text links in the copy. Webmasters will link to the content and thus to your site. Additionally, when you allow free reprints of your copy provided the links are maintained, you’re encouraging links to your website.

4. What are link farms and link exchanges?

Search engines don’t accept just any old link. The link has to be from a relevant and quality company. This means you don’t want to participate in link farming. If a search engine suspects your links to be lacking, they’ll actually penalize you. Link farming or link exchanging is essentially the process of exchanging reciprocal links with Web sites in order to increase your search engine ranking. A link farm is a Web page that is nothing more than a page of links to other sites. Stay away from link farms. When you generate a link from another site, it had better be relevant and coming from a real web site.

5. What is duplicate content?

The definition of duplicate content is web pages that contain substantially the same content. Some search engines will penalize you for this. How do you avoid duplicate content? Don’t publish the same article in several locations. There are many tools available online to help you re-write your content so that it is 30%, 40%, and even 50% different. However, the best way to avoid duplicate content is to simply write new content.

6. How do I find the right keywords?

There are several steps to finding the most profitable keywords. The first step is to generally do a bit of brainstorming and come up with a list of keywords you think people will use to find your products. The next step is to research supply and demand for those particular keywords. Supply means how many other websites are using those same keywords and demand is how many people are looking for those particular keywords.

The key is to find keywords with high demand and relatively low supply. There are many effective and useful keyword tools to help you find this information and to generate keyword ideas. Once you decide on a few keywords, it may be useful to do a bit of testing before you commit to them. Click Here to read our review on keyword tool software.

7. How do I optimize my web pages?

Placing your keywords in the right location is a good start to optimizing your web pages. Search engines look to the headings, subheadings, domain name, and title of your website. They also look in the content on your page and primarily focus on the first paragraph.

Try to get a domain name with your primary keyword included. When you include your keyword in your URL it tells the search engine spiders immediately what your site is about.

Title Tag. Your title tag is the line of text that appears on search engine results pages that acts as a link to your site. This is a crucial element of your webpage as it describes to your visitors what your page is about.

If you view your source code, your title tag will look something like this: <TITLE>Search Engine Optimization Tips</TITLE>

Keep your title tags brief, descriptive, up to date, and keyword rich will help to increase the relevance of your site in the eyes of the search engines, as well as giving your potential visitors a good idea of what they can expect from your site.

Meta Tags have lost their importance to the search engines however it is still helpful to place your keywords in your meta tags. In your source code they look something like this: <META NAME=”description”

8. Do I need to submit my site to the search engines?

The simple answer is – no. Search engine spiders are always out there doing their job and collecting information. Every time you update your website, add content, or change your keywords, the search engines capture the information and record it. However, if you want to be listed on a directory, like the DMOZ Open directory project, then you will need to submit to those.

9. What are spiders?

Search engine spiders are also called web crawlers or bot. They’re basically automated programs which scan websites to provide information to search engines often for the purpose of indexing or ranking them.

10. How does content help my SEO?

Content is one of the best tools to improve your search engine ranking. It is a great place to emphasize keywords, encourage linking to your site, and increase traffic. The key to content is to make sure you’re offering quality content and you’re updating your website and your content frequently. Content can be provided in many forms including:

• Blogs

• Forums and chat rooms

• Articles

• Reviews

• Case studies

• Reports

• How to guides

• Tutorials

• e-books and much more.

To Your Success!

Warm Regards,
Jeremy Gislason
Follow us on Twitter at:
http://twitter.com/SureFireWealth

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