Finding hordes of traffic visiting your website is every Internet Marketers dream come true. Unfortunately most websites simply do not receive all the traffic they would like to.

Even if you are happy with your traffic levels there are definite ways you can improve upon them. Review this list of top 10 Internet Marketing Strategies and decide for yourself what strategies you can add to your Internet Marketing success.

Google Adwords & Beyond
Good ole PPC. I’m sure you have heard of how Google pay per click campaigns supercharge your Internet marketing success what you may not know is there are other PPC websites than the highly expensive Google Adwords.

• 7Search.com
• LookSmart.com
• AffiliateFuel.com

However, if you are just starting out it’s best to utilize free Internet Marketing techniques to start with until your website generates enough cash that it pays you to do PPC. With that said let’s look at 9 more marketing options available to all Internet Marketers.

SEO Your Website
SEO sure isn’t what it used to be, but that doesn’t mean it should be abandoned. Don’t get overwhelmed in the area of SEO, but do make sure that the search engine spiders know what they are looking at when they arrive.

Get Involved With Forums & Blogs
Find PR3 or above forums and blogs which are related to your niche and get involved with them. While you can’t do blatant advertising on them, most allow you to provide a link back to your website. At worst this is another backlink to your website, at best those who are interested in what you have to say can explore more about your offerings with a simple click.

Write Articles & Submit Them To Article Directories
You earn more backlinks while position yourself as an expert in your industry. When writing articles I personally focus on the bum marketing approach where Google tells you what to write. You want your content to remain unique, but it’s easy to do that while writing for markets that are largely untapped within your given niche.

Shoot Videos & Submit Them To The Video Directories
If it’s true for articles it’s 100 times the case for videos.

Use Social Networking & Bookmarking
I’ll admit that this is an area where my own website marketing strategies can be greatly developed. And they will. To ignore Web 2.0 strategies when marketing your website is to risk sure death of your Internet marketing business.

Use Automated Newsletter Services
I’m sure you’ve heard that it’s in the list. You know what? Their right! Start building your Internet marketing list from day one for optimum success with your website. My own personal favorite in this area is Aweber. There are other similar services, just be sure to check how their customer service works before getting involved. In this area I’ve personally found none better than Aweber.

Create Interactive Possibilities For Your Audience
Someone has taken the time to visit your website. Treat them like royalty, not fresh meat to suck blood dry. Look for their opinions with polls and surveys. Encourage their involvement with contests and give-aways. Why not build your own website forum and encourage your visitors to submit their own niche related questions and comments?

Link Your Blog & Website Together As One
Search engines love blogs because their very nature leads to fresh content on a continual basis. Here’s one article marketing strategy I use with blogs. I write two similar articles. One for the website the other for the blog and then link the two together in some way. Those interested in reading the blog article will likely be interested in the website and visa versa. Do you think the search engines will notice your visitors bouncing from blog to website and back again? You bet they will, and you will be reward nicely because of it.

Advertise Niche Related Products
With all the above said, why not markFinding hordes of traffic visiting your website is every Internet Marketers dream come true. Unfortunately most websites simply do not receive all the traffic they would like to.

Even if you are happy with your traffic levels there are definite ways you can improve upon them. Review this list of top 10 Internet Marketing Strategies and decide for yourself what strategies you can add to your Internet Marketing success.

Guy Siverson (AKA SEOGuy) - Read 3 Steps To Internet Marketing Techniques That Work. Partner of http://Search-Engine-Optimization-And-Beyond.com

What we did
We were involved right at the beginning of the Pilates Digest startup concept. We selected WordPress and bbPress as the platforms to build a scalable site that could support a growing amount of users and AWeber to support our subscriber base. We designed the online magazine layout to support new and previous articles, display users activity, like comments and forum questions, and most importantly make it easy for users to subscribe to the free newsletter. Monetization strategies included optimizing content and increasing site promotion while selling affiliate marketing programs and advertisement. To increase content and information sharing we established a social media strategy to distribute content on social platforms such as Facebook Pages, Twitter, RSS, forums and other blogs. Ongoing search engine marketing efforts include Google AdWords paid advertisements and search engine optimization.

Technologies
CSS, XHTML, PHP, WordPress publishing platform, BuddyPress forum platform, AWeber for email marketing, Google Analytics to track performance, Google AdWords for paid advertisement

Services
Web Strategy, Web Development, Website Design, Internet Marketing and Social Media

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SEO web design is a skill that can be learned, though most search engine optimization (SEO) for beginners courses dwell too much on linking strategy as opposed to web site design per se.  There are many ways for most normal people to get an improved search engine ranking, and secure a high search engine listing, and while linking is important, good on-site SEO is also necessary.

Although it might not seem like it, getting a good listing on Google or any of the other search engines is not as difficult as many like to claim. There are rules to follow, and if you play the game properly then the outcome should be in your favour.  The tips provided  in this article are not really secrets as such; although many people offer to divulge marvelous secrets to you, all they are giving you is stuff that people have been using for years.

So you won’t get any secrets here.  I have nothing hidden away that I don’t want anybody to know, and if I had I wouldn’t tell you about it! Would you?  If you had some secrets that were so valuable that they were making you money, would you give them away free in an article like this one?  Of course you wouldn’t!

So here are my not-so-secret tips on getting a good listing in Google and improving your search engine ranking.  You likely know a fair bit about meta tags, and have been informed that most are not used by search engines.  Well let me tell you something. If you ‘Google’ Article Services you will finds my website right at the top in the #1 position for that keyword. Check the description that Google provides right under the title: that is exactly as it is in the ‘Description’ tag that I have on the site. So don’t let anybody tell you that Google don’t use the Description tag, because they do.  So do Ask and MSN (now Live Search), and Yahoo also uses it, but not the whole thing exactly as written.

The Keyword tag is another matter.  Google aren’t interested in what you tell them the keywords are:  they decide the relevance of the page themselves from the text and Alt tags on the page. Google no longer need keyword repetition to understand what you are writing about:  they have the LSI algorithm now, that will determine the meaning of your page from the character strings it contains.  The algorithm is programmed to calculate a relevance factor from the vocabulary you use in relation to the rest of the vocabulary on the page. However, back to SEO web design, and some search engine optimization tips for beginners.

In addition to the Description meta tag, the HTML tags you should use are:

1.  The Keywords meta tag.  Although little used it only takes a second to put in, and does no harm.  There is evidence that some search engines might use it. The rest of the meta tags are pointless.

2.  The TITLE tag.  This is the title of your web page, and should contain the primary keyword for the page.  Each page should be written round one primary keyword that relates to the subject of your website or niche.

For example, if your niche is costume jewelry, the primary keyword for your home page would be ‘costume jewelry’.  You could then have a number of ’silos’ with a main page title each.  The title of one main silo page could be ’simulated diamonds’ and the first page title of that silo could be ‘garnets’. All of these are the primary keywords for their respective pages.  Another silo could be ‘colored gem stones’, with that as the primary keyword for the main silo page, and that for your first sub-page in that silo could be ‘citrine’. And so on.

Each page must have one primary keyword, and it should be included in the Title tag for that page. The Title tag does not appear in the body of the article, but in the HTML between the two HEAD tags in your html.

3.  The H tag.  These are heading tags, with H1 being the most important. The heading for each main section in your page should be contained within H1 tags, and many pages have only the one set of such tags.  Subheadings, containing secondary keywords, should be contained within H2 tags, and so on. Thus, in the example above, the heading or your garnets silo could be could be ‘Garnets in Costume Jewelry’ in H1 tags.

After an introduction to garnets, you could then have an H2 heading containing ‘The Source of Garnets: Where Garnets Come From’,  then another passage of text headed  ‘How Garnets are Cut for Costume Jewelry’, again held in H2 tags.

4.  The ALT attribute.  Use ‘Alt = ‘ within the Img tags of your images and graphics.  This lets the search engines know what the graphic is about:  search engines do not read graphics, and the Alt attribute offers you the chance to use your graphics meaningfully with respect to SEO web design.

Text Formatting
That’s all you have to worry about regarding the HTML tags. You text formatting can be used to emphasize to search engines what the important text on your page is.  Thus, if you use bold text, underscoring or italics, they indicate the important words and phrases.  Thus, use the ‘STRONG’ and ‘U’ html tags in your heading.

Write Naturally
Don’t worry too much about your keyword density (KD), other than having to much. Too high a KD could harm you if Google thinks you are making unnecessary use of them. Write naturally for human readers, and not robots. If your text reads well and makes it clear what the subject of the passage is about, then you will be fine. In my writing I ignore the concept of KD altogether. I use my keywords as indicated above, and also in the first and last 100 characters on the page (or at least in the last paragraph somewhere).

Good SEO web design is not keyword fixated, but contains good contextually related vocabulary that the LSI algorithm can use to target the relevance of the page to the search term being used by somebody using the search engine to find information. That’s all a keyword is:  a term used by somebody looking for information.  If you cannot work without a target KD, then I would go for a max of 1% with plenty associated vocabulary, synonyms. Related terms, etc.

Thus, if you are writing a 400 word article on the keyword ‘losing weight’, use these words four times, not twelve (1% not 3%)

None of these are web design secrets, and I doubt if there are any such secrets left any more. I suppose the only thing even approaching a secret here is that my description meta tag is copied exactly by Google in the listing for my #1 placed website.  That allows you to determine how Google users see the description of your site in the listing.

I have several more SEO web design tips to offer, but these will be the subject of another article. In the meantime if you implement these search engine optimization tips for beginners, then you should soon see an improvement in your website’s search engine ranking.

If you want more SEO web design tips, you will find Part 2 of this article with more search engine optimization tips for beginners on Seocious Tips 2 along with a free gift for everybody from me, Pete Nisbet of SEOcious.

What we did
The school felt that their old site was to boxy and outdated.  We created a site that was modern and simplistic while easy to maintain using WordPress as the content management system.  We collaborated with the school to choose a font, color scheme and layout that would reflect trends of today’s popular websites. The use of drop-down menus was replaced with a more descriptive and user friendly navigation that was limited to two tiers.  We also developed a clean and elegant faculty directory application that displays faculty bio and contact information.  How the directory information was managed was important since the data changes frequently and may need to be approved by others.  We simplified the process and now users edit an excel sheet then upload the changes to the directory application.

Technologies
CSS, XHTML, PHP, WordPress publishing platform, Google Analytics to track performance

Services
Web Strategy, Web Development and Website Design

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Small business owners need to monitor whether their investment in a website is providing a good return. Are your products and services easy to buy? If they aren’t, you are wasting time and money and probably doing more harm than good.

Ask yourself the following five questions to see whether it’s time for a redesign:

1. Has the size of the site grown substantially?

If your site continues to grow and change like most business sites, you need to evaluate whether it’s still meeting your objectives. As you add new products and services you need to re-organize your information. In addition, you should consider adding multimedia information (audio, video) to sharpen your message.

2. Is some of the content outdated or unnecessary?

Does your website have up-to-date content? Someone should be revising spec sheets, changing promotion dates and adding new material weekly. If your website appears static, it looks like you’re not a serious business.

3. Is the most important content buried below?

Here’s where you need to do an “easy to buy” audit. By that I mean you need to evaluate how easy it is to find information and actually buy your products. This sounds like common sense, but we’ve all purchased online and know that it can sometimes be frustrating.

4. Are you using the latest technology, instead of hard-coding?

If you created your website more than 18 months ago, you are probably due for a technology update. This is also true if you started with a very basic site and “hard-coded” everything. Ask your webmaster whether he has some suggestions. You can be sure he will.

5. Does the home page design suit your current business objectives?

Does your website communicate the depth and breadth of your current business? If you have changed the focus of your services, added new products or want to communicate a different face to your visitors, consider a redesign for your overall website.

Copyright 2005 Digital Media Works, Inc.

About Digital Media Works
Digital Media Works, Inc. (http://www.DigMediaWorks.com ) is an Internet marketing and design firm that specializes in solutions for high tech and e-commerce companies.

A seasoned 25+ year management/marketing professional, founder Stephanie Diamond is experienced in building profits in a broad range of product and services businesses. She created a highly successful line of multimedia software products that sold millions of copies for America Online, and has developed unique business strategies and products for a variety of companies, including AOL Time Warner, Redgate New Media and Newsweek, Inc.

What we did
We migrating the existing design and streamlined the navigation. We walked the client through each stage of our e-commerce blueprint and redesigned the entire store and catalog of products. The e-commerce software, Able Commerce, offered a complete content management system and shopping cart solution. The client can manage catalog, order and customer information all from a web browser. We customized the source code to meet the clients needs, optimize content for search engines and discuss selling and email marketing strategies to drive repeat business.

Technologies
CSS, XHTML, ASP.NET, Able Commerce for CMS and shopping cart, Google Analytics to track performance

Services
Web Strategy, Web Development, E-Commerce and Internet Marketing

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William Ford, Headmaster Windermere Preparatory School

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What we did
We migrated the existing design and streamlined the store’s navigation. We walked the client through each stage of our e-commerce blueprint and redesigned the entire store and catalog of products. The e-commerce software, Able Commerce, offered a complete content management system and shopping cart solution. The client can manage catalog, order and customer information all from a web browser. We customized the source code to meet the clients needs, optimize content for search engines and discussed selling and email marketing strategies to drive repeat business.

Technologies
CSS, XHTML, ASP.NET, Able Commerce for CMS and shopping cart, Google Analytics to track performance

Services
Web Strategy, Web Development, E-Commerce and Internet Marketing

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Angela West, Manager of Stallion 51 Corporation

Visit www.p51store.com » and www.stallion51.com »

What we did
We collaborated with the owners to choose a font, color scheme, logo design and layout that would reflect the company’s brand. The site was designed so customers could easily schedule online classes, purchase items from the online store, view recent articles and join the newsletter. We selected WordPress as the content management system because it was robust, easy to use and distributed content to social platforms very well. A flash animation was designed with photos and transitions to illustrate each unique service that the business offered. Monetization strategies included optimizing content and increasing site promotion while selling affiliate marketing products. Ongoing search engine marketing efforts include Google AdWords paid advertisements and search engine optimization.

Technologies
CSS, XHTML, Flash, PHP, WordPress publishing platform, AWeber for email marketing, Google Analytics to track performance, Google AdWords for paid advertisement

Services
Web Strategy, Web Development, Website Design and Internet Marketing

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