Increasing online visibility is the goal of most online business owners. After all, without visibility, you have no traffic and thus no business. However, when you start to research how to increase your online visibility, you discover so many options, yet have so little time for research and implementation. Where does an online entrepreneur turn first to get the visibility (and traffic) you seek to help you promote your online venture? New tricks and gimmicks come out every day, but unfortunately, most of them are like so many recording artists and become one-hit wonders. In my business, I’ve discovered that there are a handful that are able to stand the test of time. Some have been around for as long as websites have been around, while others are newer kids on the block. Here are my 10 most effective strategies to massively increase your visibility online: 1. Press releases. Press releases are a well-known marketing strategy that has worked for years with print and broadcast media. In recent years they have found new life as an online visibility tool. Just like in the old days, your release should carry some newsworthy angle that has been optimized with a select few keywords by which you want your business to be found. Don’t waste your time submitting your release to the free press release sites — the release simply sits on the site and goes no where else. Instead, invest in a fee-based service (I prefer PRWeb.com), which will ensure your release gets the recognition it deserves. 2. Social Networking. A “johnny come lately” to the online visibility scene, social networking now ranks near the top in terms of attracting much visibility to your business for a very low cost. If you don’t yet have accounts on the two most popular social networking platforms, Facebook and Twitter, today is the day to hop on board and begin to network. Choose 1-2 social networking platforms where your target market hangs out, and then begin to work it by making connections, joining groups or networks, sharing resources, and asking questions. Dedicate 15-30 minutes each day to your effort to begin to see results. 3. Article Marketing. Writing and submitting articles to major article directories has definitely stood the test of time for online visibility. Article marketing will drive traffic to your site, establish you as an expert in your target market’s eyes, and give you valuable content to re purpose into information products. For maximum effectiveness, your article needs to contain a strong resource box (author’s bio) that drives traffic back to your site, needs to contain useful content that solves a problem of your target market, and is written in a tips-based fashion, like this one, as they are the easiest for a website visitor to read and digest. 4. Blogging. Business blogs (a web log or journal), have gained popularity over the last few years as an online visibility tool. Blogs use RSS feed technology to immediately get new posts and updates out to your blog subscribers through a feed reader. Unlike ezines or traditional websites, search engines index blog posts almost immediately, which help you generate traffic to your website. To use effectively as an online visibility tool, you need to post 2-3 times per week to keep your readers interested and coming back. 5. Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Optimizing your site or your blog for organic (naturally-occurring) searches has been around from the beginning of Internet marketing. Use a keyword research tool and create a list of keywords applicable to your business. Don’t forget to add things like “how to”, “tips”, or short descriptions of your target market’s problems to your research. Then, take a look at your page titles, page descriptions, page headlines, and formatted text on a page (bolding, italicizing, underlining) and include your keywords in those areas, as well as sprinkling 1-2 keywords throughout the content of your page. Make the SEO appear to be natural, not forced, and the search engines as well as your visitors will love you. 6. Email Newsletter (Ezine). Regular publication of an email newsletter (weekly is most effective) will enable your prospects to get to know, like and trust you and have you be top of mind when they are ready to solve the pressing problems that fall within your line of expertise. If you make opting into your ezine list the primary call to action on your website, you continually build your list with prospective customers. Best of all, if they like what you write, they are more likely to pass along the issue to their contacts, thus increasing your visibility yet again. 7. Signature Teleseminar/Speech. Have you created your signature speech or teleseminar that you can present whenever you’re asked to speak to any type of group (face-to-face or virtual)? If not, design a signature speech or teleseminar that demonstrates your knowledge and expertise without giving away the store (focus on the what and the why but not the how) that compels your listeners to visit your website or request your client attraction device and get on your list. Then, begin to research groups that contain your target market both in your geographic area and online. Once you’ve landed a speaking gig, strategize your best call to action for the group — do you want participants to sign up for your email list, purchase a product, or book a consultation? Add that call to action to your presentation. 8. Videos. With the popularity of broadband Internet connections, it’s much easier for almost anyone to view online video these days. And, with high-quality yet low-cost web cams, video cameras, and screen capture software readily available, anyone can make a video today. You might record a live Q&A session on UStream.com and post it on your site. Or, perhaps you want to record a “how to” tutorial using screenshots from your computer and upload that to your YouTube.com channel. Remember to include your call to action in your video so that you drive traffic back to your site. Just think — your video may cause you to become the next YouTube star! 9. Expert question sites. Most people conduct online searches to find free information that answers their questions. Many online entrepreneurs are registering as experts on an expert or answers site, like Yahoo Answers or AllExperts.com, in an effort to get visibility online. To be an effective expert on these sites, you need to seek out questions that you can knowledgeably answer as an expert. Your answer needs to be very detailed and as specific as possible. The more thorough your answer, the better chance you’ll have of getting chosen as the “favorite” answer, which is the one rated highest on the site and in the search engines. 10. Viral marketing. Viral marketing involves creating a marketing piece (ebook, video, software) that gets passed along free of charge from person to person. Publicity Hound Joan Stewart does this quite effectively each year when she compiles the best tips she’s written about in the previous year in a “best of” ebook compilation that she gives away free of charge on her site. She also encourages her list and website visitors to “regift” it. You’ve got two options when you try to get online visibility: the “steady and effective over time” method or the “quick and short and probably get banned” method. I prefer to use methods that have stood the test of time and won’t result in my site being removed from the search engines. Use one or more of these time-honored strategies to get you the visibility you deserve online.

There is only one main source for making any income from a website and that is a constant stream of targeted traffic. These days almost anyone can build a website, even an outstanding website but with no interested visitors, it just sits there. As the saying goes it takes money to make money and that holds true with Internet marketing and website traffic.
There is hope however, because it does not take a substantial investment to generate targeted traffic to your website.
Many of the high traffic websites online are employing multiple marketing tactics to generate traffic. Some invest a lot of money in advertising campaigns and other costly marketing methods. They are spending large sums of money to make even bigger money. Great for them but what about the rest of us who need low cost website traffic?
Some of the top low cost website traffic tactics also produce some of the most targeted prospects to your website, so at the risk of throwing another cliche’ at you. It’s not the quantity but the quality of the traffic that matters most.
Exchanging links with other related websites is one of the oldest and proven traffic generating methods online. However this method should be more than just creating a link page with tons of other websites plastered on it.
A good quality link exchange should be more than that. Perhaps a section of your website touches on a subject but is not your main niche, you could then link to another website for more in-depth information in return for them doing the same. This also provides added value for your visitors.
A key qualification in exchanging links with other websites is having similar content. They should share a general subject so that there is continuity in the information provided and helps target your traffic.
Link exchanges will also help raise your page rank and increase search engine listings. Search engines will rank sites higher in their listings that have quality inbound links from other related high-ranking sites. Its no secret that ranking high in search engines is the most effective way to generate low cost website traffic.
Traffic exchanges are another great low cost yet highly targeted traffic generating method. In fact you can join most any traffic exchange for free. You submit your website to the traffic exchange, and earn credits to get your website shown while you view other websites. You can bypass most of the drudgery of clicking by upgrading your account or buying credits.
Some may discount traffic exchanges as a waste of time or money but if used effectively it can drive highly targeted traffic to your website. Usually a short effective splash page or lead capture page are much more effective that just placing your sites main page into a traffic exchange. Remember the surfers are doing this to earn credits not necessarily to look at your site, so you must command attention with a good page to get the click to your site.
Traffic exchanges are also a great way to learn different marketing techniques. Keep en eye out for the pages that grab your attention and study them to learn how to create more effective lead capture or splash pages.
Article writing and submission is probably the most effective low cost website traffic generating method. There are thousands of websites that provides free space for articles to be submitted. If you are uncomfortable writing articles there are many freelance writers who are willing to do it for you for a small charge, but to save money, it is wise to learn how to write your own articles.
Your article topics should be focused on the theme of your website or about solving a problem that can be provided by visiting your website. Be careful not to blatantly plug your website or product in the article. Provide good tips and information on the topic showing off your expertise on the subject.
Including a resource box at the end of your article is how to get the targeted traffic to your site. You already proved your expertise on the subject in the article body, and if the reader got to this point now its time to get that click. Provide a short informative sentence about yourself or your website, while enticing them to learn more about the subject by clicking the link in the resource box.
Submitting your articles to as many websites as possible has two major benefits both providing low cost website traffic: Your article can be picked up off the article directory sites and used on other sites and passed around online. This gets you the advantages of inbound links described earlier and even more chances of targeted traffic after those website visitors read your articles.
Participating in online Forums only requires some of your time and nothing else. As you share your knowledge and proficiency in the subject of the forum with others online your reputation as an expert will grow. As you build your reputation in these online communities so does the reputation of your website.
Be careful not to spam any forums with outright ads for your website, and follow the forums rules about posting links. Most forums will only allow links in your signature, similar to an articles resource box. Most forums will always welcome new members as long as you don’t just blast on the scene with both guns blazing throwing links all over the place just promoting your website. You will have much better results by keeping it low key and adding valuable input when you feel others will benefit by your contribution.
As you can see there are multiple ways of generating low cost website traffic. Start out with what you can afford and use your profits to invest in some of the more expensive methods when you are generating a positive income.

The primary goal of any marketing strategy is to increase the company’s public existence so that the company’s business is promoted. Internet marketing is no less but its approach is little different and it target customers across the globe. Many a times people think that by just buying a domain name and constructing a nice website will drive internet traffic, but that is not true. There are many other factors which are necessary to make yourself prove in this competitive world. Especially now it’s the time of recession and everyone is thinking ten times before purchasing a new product or services, but at this time if we will think that we can hire a low cost SEO company to optimize our website then that will be the silliest mistake which we will do, since internet marketing is the cheapest way of all the other marketing strategies and only by choosing the right internet marketing firm you can increase your website traffic and in turn your business. In order to successfully market any business or product the marketer should have a firm idea of what they are doing and why they are doing it in order to estimate the response received and make adjustments as necessary. What is the unique product / service they provide which makes them special or what is their main motive behind doing that particular business. So the selection of keywords plays a very crucial role to optimize your website, which can only be done with the help of a good internet marketing company which uses ethical search optimization techniques. There are several other ways to increase website traffic on your website. Some of them are listed below:   Email marketing: It can be very effective tool if used properly. An extensive study should be performed before preparing a mailing list, so that only appropriate clients are picked. The email should be personalized so that the receiver should have a nice feeling. The list for which we are targeting email marketing should be prepared in such a way that we are not spammed. Remember having a bad name for once is remembered more than having good name, so we should be very cautious. In brief internet marketing can be proved a very economical way to market any business only when used appropriately.   Social Networking: The introduction of the Internet, and especially the World Wide Web, has allowed people to meet new friends and acquaintances across the globe. By the advent of Social networking reaching to the masses has become very simple. The social marketing phenomenon has reached more people than any other marketing strategy in an amazing way, just you need to join the social network, put up the start up pages that correspond to the business and don’t forget to include the link of your company’s website. There are many social networking websites like linkedin, facebook, Myspace etc…   Branding of the website: Your business’s website will be many people’s first impression of your company, products and services. As a result, your site represents a critical component of your branding strategy: It communicates who you are, what you offer and what you promise (your brand) through its content, organization and appearance (the look and feel). WOMM( Word Of Mouth Marketing): WOMM’ has got nothing to do with propaganda, advocacy or advertisement. In the marketing world conversation plays an integral part. And these new media sites focus on conversation as their integral part. For better or for worse people talk about products, events etc no one can stop that. In this day and age, if you don’t have your own website for your business, it’s almost as if you do not exist. Recent studies have found that people are more likely to look up a business online than in the Yellow Pages or other traditional “old-school” ways. Link building is the process of getting other web sites to place a link to your web site on their own web site. SEO Search engine optimization is the process of analyzing a web site and modifying it to enable search engines to read, understand, and index it correctly. The objective of search engine optimization is to increase web visitor counts by ranking very high in the results of searches using the most appropriate keywords describing the content of your site.   PPC Pay-per-Click (PPC) Advertising is a feature that is now being offered by the major search engines. Through a competitive bidding process, you can buy a favorable position on the search engine results for specific keyword search phrases that you choose. You pay for results only on a “per click” basis, hence the name Pay per Click Advertising. The twin advantages of PPC advertising are immediate visibility and strategic placement.   Newsletters Newsletters have massive potential to promote your business, sell your products, inform your potential customers, and retain existing customers. They can increase affiliate sales, market new products, or keep your customers informed of changes. Newsletter can be an extremely powerful Internet marketing tool. Readers love to get something for nothing, especially information. By reducing the amount of advertising and increasing the amount of genuinely useful and informative newsletter content it is possible to build an email list that will continue to purchase from you for years to come. Newsletter design and newsletter content are equally important, both giving you the opportunity to maximize the effect of your marketing campaigns and subsequently make you more money.   Macro blogging Macro blogging or Blogging is rapidly becoming a popular way to promote your on-line marketing. Each blog entry you make should include a hyperlink to your business site and should also include tags associated with the blog topic (which can also be connected with your business opportunity). Every blog post has tags and all of the tags are keywords associated to the topic of your blog and thus your business, so your blog can enhance your search engine ranking. This is free advertising to your website. Every blog is accompanied by feedback and comments (user generated content) about that blog. Either positive or negative comments both are beneficial to you. The more visits to your site, the more you are marketing your business and gaining credibility.   Micro blogging Micro blogging is an innovative way of blogging, this type refers to short written texts of about 140 words that is published online and viewed by all or to a restricted few. Most uniquely, the brief blogs, in the form of messages, can be imparted even through a number of means such as instant messaging, email, text messaging, MP3 and of course on the web. In fact, the business world, micro blogging way to best suit the client-based interaction. This can be done in a number of effective and useful ways. For example, with this particular technique, the companies can keep in touch with their clients, informing them with the constant developments. In this way, the companies can also declare discounts and offers to the blog readers across the web. At times, customers may prefer to talk to any particular staff of their choice. Micro blogging makes the job easier to know whether the staff is available online or not get a more honest feedback Besides these, there are many other applications of the very concept of the ultra micro blogging that is already taking the business and social world by storm. How will writing macro blogs help you improve your business? When you put your content related to your business opportunity on Twitter and other micro blogging sites like Pownce, Tumblr, and Jaiku, Google’s spiders follow…your pages will get indexed…your websites will rank…and you’ll make more business.  User generated content (UGC) It is the content that users (or consumers) write and submit online and can be    Why UGCs are important in internet marketing?           There are several reasons. They are:   If you sell products and services, and if you have a web site, make sure you allow for reviews. If your products are great to mediocre, you should get far more positive than negative feedback, and a resultant positive impact on sales and revenue. Therefore, make sure you enable and allow feedback, optimize your review pages, and get traction for them in the search results by supporting brand evangelists, and answering detractor issues promptly and diplomatically.   Affiliates networks Building your online business with an affiliate network allows you to reach affiliates and customers across the globe. You are able to market your products across the globe. This is very favorable for search engine optimization. Affiliate network marketing is a combination of network marketing and affiliate marketing. This type of marketing involves selling of products and services to consumers through a wide network of independent distributors. After you sell the products or services to distributors, they in turn can sell to other marketers. You earn commissions for your sales. Additionally, you also earn for sales through marketers under you to a certain extent. This is affiliate networking and marketing. Backlinkings   Backlinks are links that are directed towards your website. Also knows as Inbound links The number of backlinks is an indication of the popularity or importance of that website. Backlinks are important for SEO because some search engines, especially Google, will give more credit to websites that have a good number of quality backlinks, and consider those websites more relevant than others in their results pages for a search query A search engine considers the content of the sites to determine the QUALITY of a link. When inbound links to your site come from other sites, and those sites have content related to your site, these inbound links are considered more relevant to your site. If inbound links are found on sites with unrelated content, they are considered less relevant. The higher the relevance of inbound links, the greater is their quality. Ideally backlinks are web pages with high PageRank, with content like yours and that already link to other web pages. Reciprocal links: if you enter a link exchange program with the so called bad neighbors and you link to them, this can be disastrous to your SEO efforts. Paid links: Paid links certainly have their place. For a lot of sites, this place has proven to be in an SEO campaign. Care should be taken when buying text links for SEO, that the link is a genuinely powerful addition to your marketing campaign without relying on it to improve your search engine ranking. Check page popularity and relevance, link placement, and ensure that the link cost and results offer a good enough ROI to justify the purchase of the link in the first place. Paid links could provide you with good traffic if you find the right ones at the right price.   Directory listing To enhance the search engine rankings, it is important to list your website in various directories; it also helps your website to come in the top search engine results of all major search engine results like Google, Yahoo and MSN. The higher the PR of the directory, the more benefit you will get to get your directory listed in that directory. Directories are useful to the user in that if a user wanted to find a site under a particular topic, it would be easy to go to the appropriate category and choose from the selection of links. All links in a web directory are well-categorized and meaningfully sorted out.   Listing in Dmoz (Open Directory Project) Now owned by Time Warner, the Open Directory Project, is the single most important and powerful of all the directories edited by humans. The results from this high-quality directory are also carried directly by Google (where they are listed in a different order, according to Google Page Rank). There are numerous advantages of submitting your directory to DMOZ, and I can’t think of a single drawback. It may take many months to secure a listing, and there is no guarantee that your site will be listed at all. Google takes DMOZ listings very seriously, and in fact they even make it known that if you’ve had difficulty getting listed in Google, one of the best ways of remedying that is to get your site listed with the Open Directory Project. Directory submissions, unlike search engine submissions, are reviewed by human beings and undergo a great deal of scrutiny by the editors reviewing them. It is important that your website is submitted correctly in order to obtain the listings you need. Listings in DMOZ (Open Directory Project) and the Yahoo! Directory can be very helpful for boosting your site in the search engines. Google, Yahoo and MSN view websites listed in these directories as more important than those which are not.   The future of internet marketing As more people join up with digital riot, e-commerce continues to grow. Still, one can’t help but acknowledge Internet users are becoming more refined, particularly as a younger generation moves into adulthood. Specially in this time of recession one cant avoid internet marketing as it’s the cheapest and most effective way of marketing which target people across the globe. The future of internet marketing looks very promising. Happy internet marketing!!!

Is your website traffic generation plan working? Are you seeing the results you want? Have you been trying everything under the sun to generate website traffic and nothing seems to work? Then maybe it is time to try a new website traffic generation system that does give you results! Article marketing is on of the best website traffic generation systems available to everyone. Writing articles is not hard and it doesn’t take an MBA to learn the secrets to driving hordes of traffic to your website. And speaking of website traffic generation don’t you want the best visitors coming to your site? I mean you want visitors that are actually interested in what you have to offer right! It is called “Targeted Traffic”. Targeted traffic is exactly what you get when you write articles. You use targeted keyword phrases (SEO) you get readers that are interested in your product and therefore you have a much better chance of selling whatever it is you are selling. You can put together about 4 articles an hour so if you just work for 2 hours you can have between 6-8 articles that are targeted to your specific product. After writing your articles and spell checking them you just submit them to free article directories such as: Ezinearticles, Goarticles, Articlesbase, Articledashboard, and Buzzle. These are the top directories that will get you the best results and there are all free to join. All you need for a good article is a captivating title, good keywords, useful content, and an attention grabbing resource box. Your article should be about 300-500 words in length which is easy to read and understand. You just write like you are talking to a friend and recommending something they could benefit from. That is it in a nutshell but, there are a few more techniques that you will need to learn before you can start seeing any real traffic. Once you have the basics down the rest is easy as pie. So, learn article marketing and start a new website traffic generation system that really works and is free. You will only need to spend some of your time and not your money. This is the best free advertising that you can have working for you.

Traffic. It’s the all-important piece of the marketing puzzle that faces all web owners. Your product may cure cancer but unless there are people reading your information it won’t matter. And not just any traffic. You want laser targeted, highly motivated customers ready to whip out their wallets and input their credit cards. You are searching for El Dorado. You know it’s there. You’ve read that others have found it. There is a path and it starts here.

SEO, JV’s and PPC traffic will all deliver targeted customers. These techniques require specific knowledge too lengthy to discuss in one sitting. Below are five diverse methods that you start to use to drive targeted customers to your site with the knowledge you gain here.

1. Join the world and start blogging! Blogging is an online weblog or diary that can be easily updated. Your readers can even leave comments or answer polls. Blogger.com, a large server based blog, is owned by Google. Although there are great advantages to posting to a Blogger site you always want to have a blog hosted on your own site. Blogger will take down sites and sometimes for no apparent reason. You can lose all your data and traffic in seconds. Use Blogger to point to your primary site. This gives your site one more back link, another source for traffic and a reason for Google to spider and index your primary site following the links from Blogger. You can post the same content on both blogs and redirect people to pick up an RSS feed from your primary blog.

2. There are people talking about your niche on any number of forums and groups. Join several and provide accurate content rich answers to their questions. Be seen as a helper, someone who is truly interested in the topic and the people. Do not spam. Do not advertise but place your site in your signature line. You’ll be pleasantly surprised at the number of good customers you’ll receive. If people are motivated enough to join a forum or group to discuss their issue then they most likely are motivated to find good information.

3. Article marketing has been a topic of conversation for several years now. People seem to attempt this particular avenue and get discouraged easily. Although this type of marketing will economically generate targeted customers it is a time consuming job. The best technique to use is to post at least three to four articles per week to two or three of the top article directories. It’s not necessary to post to 300 directories, just the ones with high page ranks like ezinearticles.com. These article postings do three things. You have back links from a site with a high page rank; you have access to publishers and your content will be found on organic searches based on the keywords and phrases you enter when you post to the directory.

4. Viral marketing has a mystique about it. The first site that accidentally took real advantage of this method was Interview With God. The owner of the site published a public domain poem on the net just a couple of months before 9/11. His site was ‘discovered’ by many people who took  solace from the poetry and began sending the site to all of their friends. The rest was history. The essence of viral marketing is sharing information with people you know. There are several avenues open to you and even more if you use your imagination. You can take advantage of social networking sites and social bookmarking sites where you can share your information with all of your new ‘friends’. Tell a friend scripts on your site can encourage your current visitors to tell their friends. You’ll find that people will tell their friends if your site is funny, touching or if you offer incentive. Another technique is to offer free information through ebooks with links back to your site.

5. Do you have expert knowledge on a particular subject that relates to your website and business? You not only can share that knowledge in groups and forums but also by using answer sites through Yahoo Answers or eHow.com. In these arenas people post questions and others post answers. People who read the answers rate them. Your site gets traffic when people perceive that you are giving high quality answers.

You have the knowledge to drive traffic to your site. This may not be the flood of traffic that dreams are made of but they are targeted customers, the most important kind of traffic. As your skill using these techniques improves so will the number of buying customers visiting your site.