Introduction
Today the internet is very different to it used to be. Several years ago, if you made a website you were assured of visitors as there were so few sites on the internet. Now, with several hosting companies having over half a million web sites on their servers it is much harder to get the visitors. Just recently, the search engine Google announced it had information on over 2 billion web pages.

Luckily it is not all bad news. Today there are over 200 million people on the internet and thousands of people are getting connected every day. The main problem you will face is getting your site noticed above all the others because, even if you have the best site ever, nobody will know that until they visit it.

Where To Start
There are thousands of places and ways to publicize your site. Basically, you must think to yourself, “How do I find sites?” The first thing you are likely to think of is Search Engines. They are the first place you should publicize your site. Secondly, you probably follow links from other pages. This is a very important way, which we will cover in more detail later.

To publicize your site well, all you need to do is follow this tutorial. We cannot guarantee that your site will be very popular after this but you should certainly get enough visitors to make your site worthwhile.

Preparations
Something a lot of people don’t do right when publicizing their site is that they don’t prepare properly. Anyone can submit their site to a search engine but there is a lot to do before you do this.

First of all, make sure that you know what your website is about. Although this sounds silly, a lot of people find that they don’t really know a category their website could fit in (for example Webmaster Resources). You will need this once you start submitting to directories and link sites. If your site has many separate subjects, promote them one at a time.

The second thing you should write is a description of your site. This should be short, about 20-30 words. There are several things that are quite important about your description:

• Never write anything like “The best site on the internet” or “The coolest site around” because it probably isn’t and people aren’t fooled that easily
• Don’t Begin Each Word With A Capital Letter
• DON’T USE ALL CAPITALS
• Write your description in the 3rd person. For example don’t write “We offer several free services to help your business.” Instead write “Here you can get several free services to help your business.”

Once you have written your description, save it in a text file somewhere. You will need it later. Next you will need to come up with some keywords. These are the words which people will use when searching for your site. You should have about 20-40 of these. Type them into a text file separating them with commas. For example a site offering credit card processing for small businesses might have keywords like:

credit, card, small, business, low, cost, new, startups, processing, creditcard, company, companies, businesses

Here are some tips for your keywords:

• Put your 5 most important keywords first. It hasn’t been proved to increase your search engine ranking but some search engines have a limit to the number of keywords you use so you can make sure they are not cut off
• Never repeat a keyword. Search engines will consider this spamming and will not index your site
• Try to think of alternatives to some words. For example, in the keywords above, both the words business and company were used
• Include plurals of words in your keywords but don’t take out separate ones for them. For example, you wouldn’t take out the keyword company so that you could include the word busine
  sses

Save your keywords to a file as you will need them very soon.

Finally you should make sure you have a descriptive title for your site. An example of this is, instead of calling a site:

Football World

you could call it:

Football World – Teams, stats, results and match reports

This will help your search engine ranking and help people to understand what your site is about.

Meta Tags
The next thing you will need to do is create meta tags. These are a bit of code which goes at the top of your site. It will tell any search engines the description of your site and the keywords.

Creating your meta tags is easy. You can use our very own Meta Tag Creator (see related links). All you need to do is paste the description and keywords you wrote into the appropriate boxes. It will display your meta tags on screen and e-mail them to you for future reference. It will also tell you how to add them to your site.

What Now?
Now you are ready to start publicizing your site. In the next part we will show you how to submit your site to the search engines.

Part 2 – Search Engines

Introduction

In part 1 I showed you how to prepare for promoting your site. This involved writing a description and keywords for your site and changing them into META tags which you could add to your site so that be able to pick them up. This week I will show you site to the main search engines and how to try and engine ranking.

The Problems With Search Engines
Many years ago, when the Internet was just, starting to become popular, search engines did exactly what they were designed to do. They provided a place where you could search all the sites on the internet and get a list of all the best ones in your browser. Unfortunately, millions of sites have been submitted, some of them have no useful information at all. This means that, if you search for a subject of interest on a search engine you will get hundreds of thousands of results, and only about half of them are relevent to the query.

This, of course, causes even bigger problems for webmasters. Unless you are listed within the first 100 results for a search term, very few people will ever visit your site. This means that hundreds of web sites have been set up just to explain how to get a good rating on a search engine. But not everyone can be in the top 100 so don’t expect too much traffic from the search engines. If you are higly rated you will get a lot of visitors (some people get 40%-60% of their vistiors from the search engines).

I have found that, especially if a lot of sites have the same subject as you, you are very unlikely to get in the top 100 for a major search term, so try concentrating on a different, less popular one. Here is an example:

On Free Webmaster Help there is a tutorial explaining how to use PHP and MySQL together. Free Webmaster Help has no chance of being in the top 100 for search terms such as ‘webmaster resources’ or ‘how to build a site’ but does very well on searches for ‘php mysql tutorial’, and I have found that a great many of my visitors enter the site through the PHP/MySQL tutorial. This niche market is making up a great many of my visitors.

Search Engines And Directories
A common mistake people make is to get Search Engines mixed up with Web Directores. Web Directories are collections of sites which are organised into catagories. They are usually submitted and then looked at by a human before being allowed into the directory.

Search engines alre just a huge database of sites, descriptions and keywords which can be searched. They are collected by ‘Spiders’. These are pieces of software which visit a website and ’spider it’. This means that, they take the information from the META tags and then follow all the links on the page to find more pages. When you submit to a search engine you are asking the spider to vist your site

Getting Into A Search Engine
This is one of the easiest things to do badly but actually submitting your site to a search engine and gett,ing a good ranking is completely different. Your META tags play and important part here but so does the actual text of your page. Before you submit your site you might want to do the following as it sometimes improves search rankings:

Add keywords to your page. What this is is when you use the keywords from your Keywords and Description tag in your text. For example:

Title: Web Design International – Professional web design for businesses
Description: Web Design International offer competitively priced web design for medim and small businesses around the globe. You can have your page designed, hosted and a domain name set up and you can even have your web site in multiple languages
Keywords: web, design, site, make, international, translation, low cost, world, host, hosting, domain name, price, medium, small, business, company

Firstly you would start your page using something very like your description. Then you would follow this with more inf
ormation about your business. Several times in this you should include your major keywords like ‘web design’ ‘low cost’ ‘competitively priced’ ‘hosting’ and ‘domain name’. Don’t be tempted to keep repeating these words over and over again, though. Search engines will reject your site if they think you are trying to get a higher ranking this way.

Next you should make sure that you have a lot of links to the other parts of your site from the front page. This will help the search engine spiders to easily get to the rest of your site. On most search engines every single page on your site will appear if the correct keywords are searched for.

Submitting Your Site
Now you have prepared your site for the search engines it is time to start submitting it. The more search engines you submit to the better. The most important, though, is Google. This is because Google now provide the web page matches for Yahoo! and this is the most popular site on the web. Yahoo! is an extremely important place to publicize your site. Because of this there is a complete section dedicated to it int he next part as it is actually a directory.

You should submit to all the main search engines such as Google and AltaVista but if there are any specific search engines for your site then your should also submit your site to them (for instance music site search engines etc.)

If the search engine you are submitting to asks for your description and keywords, check that it is actually a search engine and not a directory (especially if it asks for a catagory). Some do ask for these, though. You can get them from the files you created last week and paste them into the form.

Part 3 – Directories

Introduction
In the last part I explained the difference between search engines and directories and how to add your site to a search engine effectively. In this part I will explain how to get your site listed in a directory and some tips on getting listed on Yahoo.

The Problems With Directories
Like search engines, directories have their problems. In the past, when the internet was small, directories were very effective at their job. As an example, Yahoo, the most popular site on the internet, started as two students’ list of their favorite sites. They published it on the internet and it was extremely popular.

Even now, a directory is a much better place to find what you want than a search engine. This is because, usually, every single site on a directory has been visited by a human. They check that a site is good quality and that it is being submitted to the correct category. This is excellent for users but it makes it very difficult for webmasters to get their sites listed.

This is mainly because there are so many sites listed it can take weeks to get your site added – or, in the case of Yahoo, sometimes never. People have tried to overcome this by trying to get normal people to sign up as a ‘guide’ or something similar, which means that you get to review the sites coming in. The most famous of these is the Open Directory Project. This can give a webmaster an easy, if not very ethical, way of getting into a directory.

Another problem with having human edited directories is that your site needs to be of a very high standard to be accepted. If it isn’t, the extremely busy reviewer will just take one quick look and then forget about it.

Submitting Your Site
Submitting your site to a directory is nearly as easy as submitting to a search engine. You just click ‘Add my Site’ and choose the category for it (more about this later). Then you usually give them your URL, e-mail address, and a description of your site. Keywords are rarely needed. Sometimes they will not ask for a description and will write it themselves.

Most major search engines have a directory as well (although most are provided by the Open Directory Project). There are also hundreds of specialist directories for different subjects (like 123 Webmaster.com for webmaster sites). If you would like to find one for your subject, take a look in the Yahoo directory.

Tips on Getting Listed on Yahoo (and others)
Getting listed on Yahoo is probably the best form of website promotion any webmaster can do. Being the most popular website on the internet, every single site which is listed gets hundreds of visits from it. If you are listed on Yahoo you can be quite sure that your site is going to get visitors.

Unfortunately Yahoo is nearly impossible to get into. Thousands of sites every day submit to be added and most of them are completely useless sites. Yahoo only have a limited staff and it will take months to get listed (if you actually get listed at all). So how can you increase your chances?

First of all don’t bother with all the spam and adverts that tell you that for ‘just’ $150 they will tell you the secret of getting on Yahoo. They don’t work.

As an example, once a newsletter for webmasters I read mentioned a ’secret e-mail address which you can use to get your site listed if you have tried several times’. The next week the same newsletter revealed that this e-mail address didn’t exist and that they had made it up completely as an experiment. The experiment showed that these companies’ schemes don’t work as, over the week, the newsletter’s editor had received several pieces of spam trying to sell him his own idea!

You can increase your chances of being reviewed, though, by following these guidelines (which also work on other search engines):

• Make sure you have a very good description

Find EXACTLY the right category for you. Smaller categories will give your site more chance of being clicked on and there will be less sites being submitted so you have more chance of being reviewed.

Although it won’t work on Yahoo, you can try the following to get your site listed on some directories. Go to the directory and apply to become a ‘guide’ or ‘editor’ for your section. If you get accepted you can then add your own site manually.

Part 4 – FFA Links Pages

Introduction
In part 3 I explained about directories and Yahoo! In this part I am going to focus on FFA Links pages. These are Free For All Links Pages, sites where anyone can add a link for free.

FFA Links – The Good and Bad Points
Some webmasters claim that FFA Links Pages are no use and that their bad points outweigh their good ones but I do not agree. I will show you why I think that it is worth submitting your site to them.

The first good point of being on a FFA Links Page is, of course, that there is a chance that someone will click on the link on the page to your site. Unfortunately, there are so many thousands of sites, big and small, who are submitting to these pages that your site has a very low chance of being clicked on, in fact some FFA Links Pages only keep links for a few weeks before deleting them as they have so many submissions.

There is one time, though, when your link has an extremely good chance of being clicked on. Sometimes only for a day, your link will be listed as a new link on the main page (or a major page) and at the top of your category. Most of the FFA Links pages are very popular and get thousands of visitors every day. In your first week you will get nearly all of your clicks and most of these will be in the first 24 hours.

The main reason why you should add your site to these pages is that Google includes the number of sites who link to you in its calculation of how high your site appears in the rankings. If you are listed on a FFA Links Page you will have another site linking to you, and your ranking will rise.

One major disadvantage of the FFA Links Pages is that they have realized that it is good for a webmaster to have a link on their page as they have so many visitors. Because of this they can request your e-mail address before you submit your site. They will then send you what is effectively spam (unsolicited e-mail). Although you can have your name removed from their mailing lists it is usually harder to do this than delete the e-mails.

Submitting Your Site
Submitting your site to a Free For All Links Page is a little more complex than adding your site to a directory or search engine. Unlike for search engines this is where mass submission tools become very useful.

Before you start, though, there is something very important you must do. Go to a free e-mail provider like Hotmail or Yahoo and set up a free e-mail account. This is very important because you do not want to use your main e-mail address when signing up because of the amount of e-mail you will receive from the FFA Links Pages.

Next go and find a good site submission tool. There will be links on many major webmaster sites (try our directory) or you can do a search. Try to find ones which offer the largest number of sites (usually over 1000) as you need to get into as many as possible to get a good number of hits. Don’t pay any attention to the search engines it says it will submit your site to. They don’t usually work and, if you have been following this tutorial, you will already have submitted your site.

Now you must fill in the form it provides with your sites name and URL and the e-mail address you set up. You may also need to provide a description or keywords, for which you should use your standard ones. Click submit and wait for the confirmation.

Other Sites
There are some FFA Links Pages which are not usually included in the site submission tools. These are usually of a slightly higher quality and they sometimes require to look at your site or a linkback from your site to add you. Some ones you should submit personally to are:

• Free.com
• FreebiesPlanet.com
• The Free Site
• FreakyFreddies.com
• iFreebies.com

Resubmitting Your Site
Now you are on some FFA Links Pages you should start getting some extra traffic to your site but, as I mentioned earlier, you will soon go down in the rankings and some sites will even drop your site. I would suggest that, at least once a month, you resubmit your site (possibly even using a different submission tool) so that you are back at the top again. Some FFA Links Pages will not allow this but it will all be automated and will not make any difference to the submission process.

Part 5 – Reciprocal Links

Introduction
In the last part I explained how to use Free For All Links Pages. In this part I will tell you about one of the most powerful ways of promoting your site. This one will require you to do some hard work but will pay off in the end.

How To Start
Before making some reciprocal links you should understand what they are. A reciprocal link is when you make a link to another website and they make a link back to your site. In this way you will each be able to benefit from each other’s traffic.

There is no ‘reciprocal linking Yahoo’ (although there are some links pages and directories who require a link back to them). You will actually have to find the sites to link to and contact the webmaster yourself regarding a link.

Before you start making links, though, you must be prepared. You should have at least one 468×60 pixel banner, one 88×31 pixel button and a short text link about your site, for example:

My Site – Information, links and communites for webmasters

Or something similar. It will be different depending on your site, for example someone selling computers might have:

The Computer Store – Great bargains on computer hardware and software

You should make a page on your website which has these links and the code used to add them to someone else’s site (you can copy it from your WYSIWYG editor’s HTML code window if you are using one). You must test this before putting it on the internet and make sure the code will point to your image from anywhere on the internet.

Write a little paragraph on this page inviting people to exchange links with you and give them an e-mail address to contact. Then link to it from your site.

You might also want to set up a ‘Links’ section of your site for you to put all your return links on.

Finding Partners
This is where the real work is. You have now got to go out and find link partners. To get the most out of link exchanges you must target the right sites. There are three things you should look for:

1. Similar but not identical content. For example, if you sell CDs you will want to exchange links with some bands and entertainment sites but don’t exchange links with another CD shop.
2. About the same size of site. For example, if your CD shop gets 10 visitors a week you should not try to exchange links with huge entertainment sites getting 10,000 visitors a day.
3. Sites which have other adverts and links on them. For example there would be no point in your CD shop trying to exchange links with a guitar manufacturer who have no banners or buttons on their site.

One excellent way to find sites is to search on the search engines for something to do with your site. Then start visiting the pages until you find one which looks like it fits all the criteria above. Now you can try and exchange links.

Exchanging Links
The first thing you should look for is a section on this site like the one on your site which asks for link exchanges (it could be called ‘Link To Us’. If you find it then choose one of the links and copy the code. Paste it into your site and then upload it. You have now linked to their site. Now you must contact them.

If they provide a form on the website to fill in then just fill it in and submit it. More often than not, though, you will need to e-mail the webmaster. This is an art in itself as you want to give the webmaster the right attitude. If they like the look of a link exchange they are more likely to put your link in a better place on their site. Send them an e-mail like this:

Dear <Name> (Try and find out the webmaster’s real name. Personal e-mails work better)

I have just visited your site and I think that the information about <information> would be of interest to my visitors. (Put something abou
t their site in here so that they realize it isn’t just a generic e-mail. If they are selling a product you could mention this instead.)

I have placed a link to your site at <link location> and I would appreciate it if you would link back to my site at <site URL>. You can use the following code:

<insert code>

(For this section include the URL of the page where they can find the link to your site. The URL of your site so that the webmaster can look at it and the code for the equivalent link to the one you have placed on your site. For example if you placed a text link to the site then offer the code for your text link.)

Thank You

<Your Name>
<Your E-mail>

This e-mail is just a sample and you should adapt it depending on the site you are linking to. Reciprocal linking requires a bit of thought. It’s not as easy as submitting to a search engine.

Maintaining Your Links
It is a good idea to visit the sites you have exchanged links with occasionally. There are two reasons for this. Firstly you should make sure that your link is still being displayed and if it isn’t e-mail the webmaster and ask why. Secondly it is sometimes a good idea to sign the guestbook or post a message in the other websites message board. This is not really essential but if you remember that a webmaster who likes you will place your link higher. Webmasters like feedback and message board messages so this might get your link placed higher.

If you have a lot of links it might be a good idea to make a database or spreadsheet listing them all. Include on it the URL of the site you have exchanged links with, the type of link and any other information. Every few months all you have to do is run through this database and check all the links etc.

Part 6 – Writing For Promotion

Introduction
In part 5 I showed you how to exchange links with other webmasters to increase your site’s popularity. In this part I will show you how to promote your site in more subtle ways. Basically, you can increase awareness of your site by including references to it in other ways.

E-Mail Signatures
E-mail is the main reason most people use the internet. Knowing this is very important as it provides a whole new way of promoting your site. Before explaining how to get visitors through e-mail I will make something very clear: NEVER SPAM! Sending spam (unsolicited e-mail) is a very bad idea. You will never have a popular website if you do it and you are more likely to create a bad impression than get extra visitors.

You can, though, benefit from e-mail by including an ‘advert’ for your site in every single e-mail you send. Think about that for a minute, most people send many, many e-mails every week and if every e-mail you send has an advert on it you are certainly going to get some extra visitors.

An example of this in action is Microsoft’s Hotmail. It is the most popular free e-mail provider on the internet with tens of millions of users. How did they do it? Signatures. Every single e-mail sent from Hotmail has:

Get your own free e-mail at www.hotmail.com

at the bottom of it. This caused thousands of people who received these messages to sign up. With no extra expense or work, Hotmail gained thousands, if not millions, of users.

You can do your own version of this, too. It is called adding an e-mail signature. This is a few lines after your name to give information to the reader. You can include your e-mail address, website address, ICQ/AIM number, or anything you like (in fact a lot of people have amusing signatures). For example here is my signature file:

David Gowans
webmaster@gowansnet.com
ICQ# ICQ NUMBER HERE

http://www.gowansnet.com
Web Design, Free Webmaster Help
and much more – Gowansnet has
everything you need for the internet.

As you can see from this, I provide all my contact information and a quick summary of what my website is about. This is sent on every e-mail I write (although I have several variations of it) and, without any extra work, promotes my site.

You could just type all this out every time but there is an easier way. Most e-mail programs offer a signature option. This allows you to define one or more signatures which you can add to your messages with one click (or can even be added automatically).

A few things to remember about your signature file:

• Keep it short. Write no more than 5 lines about your website.
• DON’T USE ALL CAPITALS
• Don’t try to make pictures out of keyboard characters, they will not display properly on all programs
• Include the http:// in front of your web address. This will make a clickable link in most e-mail software.

Newsgroups and Forums
There are two ways to promote your site through newsgroups and forums (message boards). Both only require a little bit of work and can be very effective.

Firstly, you can promote your website by contributing to the discussions and including your e-mail signature on the posting. This will have the same effect as sending an e-mail except there could be hundreds, if not thousands, of people reading each message. This is an effective way of promoting your site.

Another way you can get extra visitors by using a newsgroups or forum is by referring people to your website for more information. This only works with some websites (mainly ones providing information/tutorials etc.). You must be careful, though, not to make the mistake of spamming the newsgroup or forum. This is when you post a message just to promote your website (or an advert for a product
etc.) with no real purpose. This is nearly as bad as spamming by e-mail.

You should try to get well known in one or two forums or newsgroups. Don’t only promote your site in postings but try to reply to some with information, not just giving a URL for your site. This will increase your credibility and make people more likely to visit your site.

One important thing to remember, though is that you should never just reply to a message with a URL. Include even a small bit of text. For example instead of just using a URL put a minimum of something like:

I think that you would find this page interesting:
SITE URL
I hope this is of some help to you.

Try to point users to the exact page for the information they are looking for. They will be much more likely to visit if they think that they can get the information they want without having to search through your site.

Writing Articles
A very good way of promoting your site, and one which is not widely used, is writing articles for other websites and newsletters. Newsletters are actually the best place to do this and it is a totally free way of promoting your site.

Firstly, you will need to find a newsletter which is about the same subject as your site and that you can write a short article for. Sign up to this newsletter and read it for a few issues to get an idea of what sort of information they publish.

Next you will need to write your article. You should try and write it in the same style as is used by the newsletter you are submitting to. To increase your chance of being included you should format your article correctly. Write it in plain text and place an enter at the end of each line. Lines should be shorter than 75 characters.

A good idea when writing articles is to try not to promote your site directly in the article. People will like and trust you more if it looks like you are writing the article to help them, not to promote your site.

So where do you get the free promotion from then? Well, if you provide an article to a newsletter (or website) for free then you will get a byline in return. This is a few lines after the article which credit it to you and advertise your site. For example, here is my byline:

Tutorial by David Gowans of http://www.freewebmasterhelp.com – Tutorials, articles and links to help you to build your own web site.

The next thing you have to do is send an e-mail to the newsletter editor (or the newsletter’s contact address) with your article and byline attached (either in the e-mail or as a text file). Tell them that you are offering this article for them to use and that they can use it for free if they include your byline.

If you get an article placed in a major newsletter you will certainly get some extra visitors. Some newsletters are sent to tens of thousands of people and, if you have a good byline, you should get quite a few new visitors.

Part 7 – Banner & Button Exchanges

Introduction
In part 6 I showed you how to promote your site by writing e-mails and articles. In this, the final part, I will show you how you can benefit from banner and button exchanges.

What Is An Exchange?
The most common type of exchange is a banner exchange so I will concentrate on this first. Basically a banner exchange is a large system where you can have your banner displayed on other sites.

You sign up to the exchange and give them the URL of your banner. Then you receive some code to put on your site. This code will display another banner from the exchange on the site and log the view. You will have an account where all the times a banner is viewed on your site is logged. These are known as banner impressions.

For every impression you earn you will be given a number of impressions on another site. This is usually done at a ratio of something like 2:1 (for every 2 banner impressions you display on your site you receive 1 impression of your banner on another site). This sounds a bit unfair but the site running the exchange needs a lot of bandwidth and resources and the spare impressions are used to display advertising banners. You may find rates as good as 10:9, though, where only 1 in 10 banners are taken by the exchange owners.

Why Should I Join an Exchange?
Some people wonder why a banner exchange is worthwhile if you only receive 1 banner impression for every 2 you display. You could be using this space on your website for paid advertising, making you money.

The main reason for doing an exchange, though, is that you are getting for free what could cost you a lot of money, advertising on another website. You are almost sure to benefit from an exchange, especially if you can design a very effective banner.

Another reason for joining an exchange is that you do not always have do give up your banner or prime advertising space. It is because of this that many new exchanges have been set up dealing in button and box advertising. These are much smaller and can be placed in navigation bars or just at the bottom of pages.

Banners, Buttons and Boxes
With all the different options for exchanges, what are they all. Banners are the standard 468×60 pixel images you see at the top and bottom of most websites. They are by far the most popular way of advertising on the web.

Buttons are 88×31 pixel images. Being very small, they are usually found under navigation bars or in clusters at the bottom of pages. They are becoming more popular as a method of advertising.

Boxes are usually 120 pixels wide and can vary in height. They are usually found in navigation bars or next to the banner at the top of a page. They are not particularly popular way of having an exchange but are an excellent form of advertising.

Exchange Tips
There are literally hundreds of exchange programs on the web, going from large networks, with millions of member websites, right down to tiny exchanges with a few members. Their display ratios vary greatly also, sometimes even being a 1:1 exchange!

Finding the right exchange program for your website can be difficult but it is usually better to go for a specific exchange which is related to your website because you are likely to get a much higher click through rate (the chances of your banner being clicked on (usually around 1%)). With the big exchanges, although you are categorized, you have less of a chance of having your banner clicked on.

Another useful tip is to get as many impressions as possible. Even if you think that your advertising space is too valuable to give up you are never going to get a decent amount of visitors through the exchange unless you get a lot of impressions. Put the code on every page of your site so that you get as many as possible.

If you don’t have one already, you should get a counter or tracker which tells you
the referring URL of your visitors (the site they have come from). Sitemeter is an excellent option. Although, this will allow you to see where your visitors have come from it will not tell you if they came through the banner exchange. If a site appears that you don’t think you have a link on, visit it. If you see a banner or button from the exchange you are a member of then the visitor probably came through the exchange. Most exchanges also offer statistics that will tell you the number of impressions and clicks you have received.

Finding Exchanges
Finding exchanges is actually the easiest part of using an exchange effectively. You can just do a search on a search engine. Another way of finding them is by looking at the banners and buttons on other people’s sites. These will sometimes have a link under them to the exchange. You can also move your mouse over the button. The URL displayed in the status bar will tell you where you can find the exchange.

What Now?
After these 7 parts of the promotion tutorial you should have a very good idea of how to promote your site. Now you should just continue the promotion process, as if you stop your visitor numbers will fall. If you work hard you can be assured of having a popular site.

You must not forget, though, to keep developing your site and adding new content to make visitors want to come back again.

Source: http://www.freewebmasterhelp.com/

• Build a “X list”.  Meaning a list of however many things you want on your topic.  Example: 10 Ways To Make Money Online. People like to link to these type of posts/articles
• Create a 10 easy tips on your topic type article
• Create a list of the top 10 myths for a specific category
• Create a list of gurus/experts.  Like how I have done with this post
• Make your content easy to understand and follow so that people are more likely to link to it
• Put in some effort to minimize grammatical or spelling errors.  I have said this before and it is helpful so people can follow you posts more easily
• Add a privacy policy and a picture of yourself to build authority on your website/blog
• Submit your website to article directories
• Submit your website to directories
• Trade articles with webmasters
• Trade links with other blogs
• Post comments on other peoples blogs
• Email friends and others about important relevant news and ask them for feedback
• Post a review thread in a forum and ask for feedback
• Submit your website to DMOZ
• Add your posts to social marketing websites such as Digg and get your friends to tag it so hopefully it gets to the front page of the website and gets lots of hits / links
• Join the Better Business Bureau (people will trust your authority more)
• List your site at the local library’s website
• Launch an affiliate program
• Produce a free e-book and put a link for it on your homepage
• Add your website to Craigslist
• Ask and answer questions on Yahoo Answers and provide links to sources (this is a good one I use to get some quick traffic to my website.  It won’t bring continuous traffic but it brings some quick traffic)
• Setup a page with Squidoo
• If you publish a RSS feed with useful content some people will link to that
• Participate in forums and add a link to your website in your signature
• Review other peoples products and have a link back to your website
• Review related sites on Alexa to draw related traffic streams
• Link to other blogs. By doing this most bloggers can track where links are coming from and they may in turn link back to your blog
• Add your blog to Technorati
• Design your website so it is very easy to navigate and you may find that more people will link to certain content on the site
• Sue Google (I do not recommend this one but it will draw a ton of traffic to your website)
• Get sued by a company people hate (hopefully you don’t have to deal with this but you would get a lot of links to your website from people who hated this company)
• Hold a contest. People love contests where they get things for free so they will most likely link to it
• Build a tool collection.  Tools are always useful and people like to link to lists of useful tools
• Offer free samples in exchange for feedback
• Interview someone of authority. People are interested in that type of thing and will tend to link to it
• Create and release an open source site design template.

You can also bet that a good percentage of those will be offering outstanding quality content just like you do, so the competition is fierce.

Under those circumstances, how can you make sure that your blog or website will stand out of the crowd and attract visitors?

In one word: branding.

Bricks and mortar businesses have discovered the importance of branding decades ago, but on the web this is a relatively new trend (just five years ago you didn’t have that many websites around after all).

Below we are going to cover 10 ways to brand your blog or website efficiently.

1. Having a Clear Purpose

You must have a crystal clear vision about the purpose of your website, and you must communicate that to the visitors as well. They must know why they are visiting your website. Why it is worth their time.

“I am going to write about tech” ain’t going to cut it. What part of technology you are going to write about? Gadgets? Web 2.0? What angle you are going to have? Breaking news? Deep analysis? Where will the value to your readers come from?

You need to be able to answer to those questions easily.

Your aim is to make people associate a concept or thing with your website. If I say online video, you are going to think YouTube. If I say funny pictures of cats, you are going to think I Can Has Bheezburger. If I say gadgets, you are going to think Engadget or Gizmodo.

You get the idea. Now you must make this with your own website. It is not easy, and it takes time, but you should always keep this principle in mind.

2. Being Consistent with the Writing Style

There are many studies confirming that the writing part of a blog or website is one of the main parameters that readers use to determine the overall quality of that site.

You need to be consistent with your writing style if you want to strength your brand with it. It does not matter if you write bringing your personal experiences aboard or if you try to keep a more neutral tone, the important thing is to be consistent with it.

If you read tech blogs frequently, I am sure you would be able to tell a post from TechCrunch and one from Mashable apart just by looking at the writing style right? That is what branding is all about.

This point is particularly important to blogs that have more than one author.

3. Sticking with Your Tagline

Using a tagline is not mandatory, although it can help if you come up with a really catchy and descriptive one (check The Best Website Taglines Around the Internet if you need some inspiration).

The important thing, however, is that you stick with it. It got stick in people’s heads. If you change your tagline every other month, people won’t remember it, and they might even get confused about it.

If you are going to use a tagline, you could also consider adding it to the title tag of your website. This will make sure that the tagline will be displayed on search engines when users come across your site, reinforcing the message that you want to pass.

4. Investing Money in a Good Logo

Just like medieval castles used to be identified by their flags, websites are identified by their logos. If you have limited money to spend on design, make sure that the logo is your top priority.

These days you can get good looking logos for as low as $100 (obviously though that the more you spend the higher the quality you should get).

The logo is important because it is the first thing that visitors pay attention to, and usually it is also the image that will stick on their mind once they are gone.

Additionally, whenever people mention your website on blog, they will consider using your logo as an illustration on the article, meaning that the logo itself will characterize your site even on external places. The image on top of this article is an example.

5. Using a Favicon

Most modern browsers support favicons, therefore you should make use of them. Try to adapt your logo, or use the initials of the name of your site, and put them on the favicon.

Favicons are also important because they will appear on the bookmark section of your users, enabling them to recognize your website more easily among the hundreds of others.

If you are not sure how to create or implement a favicon, read How to Create a Favicon.

6. Making the Design Match the Content

The overall look and feel of your design must match the content. If you plan to talk about stock markets, it would be weird to have flowers on the background image right?

Identify what your core audience is going to be, and design around their perceptions and preferences. If you are going to write for professionals or older people, perhaps a traditional newspaper look would be a good choice. If your readers will be younger, a more colorful design could be used. And so on.

7. Being Consistent with the Colors

Make sure to choose a color palette and to stick with it. Colors and moods are very easy to be remembered, so use this in your favor.

You could use the main color on the links, on the favicon, on the footer and so on. If you are going to create special images or badges for the website, make them match the overall color pattern.

Through out the years it is probably that you will need to give a face-lift to you design. That is fine, as long as you keep consistent with the color readers will still feel at home, and your brand will be kept intact.

You can get more information about color palettes and suggestions on ColourLovers.

8. Using Your Website’s Name on Social Media

Are you going to use Twitter? FriendFeed? Facebook? If you are, you could create an account on each of those services specifically for your website.

Social networks are a big online trend, and probably one that will last. If you manage to get your site inside those networks, your brand will rejoice.

Here is a good example: Michael Arrington is a web celebrity, but instead of creating social networking accounts on his name, he always create them as “TechCrunch,” reinforcing his brand across those platforms.

9. Spending Money on Advertising

If branding was easy, companies around the world would not spend billions of dollars every year on advertising right?

It is possible to create a strong brand without spending money on advertising, but paid promotional efforts can certainly make you reach this goal easier and faster.

If you don’t have a big budget, you could consider spending money only during the launch and on the first few months. Use the money to kick start your brand, and after that work with the content and free methods.

One advantage of paid advertising is that it allows you to deliver a specific message to a specific audience. If you purchase a banner on a popular blog, for example, you know who will be reading that, and you can tailor your words to pass your brand to those readers.

10. Spreading it Everywhere

Branding is psychological, meaning that you will need to get inside people’s heads. Sometimes this will inevitably be a numbers game. That is, the more exposure you manage to give to your brand in front of the web users, the longer it will stick with them.

Practically speaking, use your website name and logo in a many different places as possible. Put the link on your email signatures. Write guest articles for popular blogs and put your website name on the byline. Talk about your website in online forums. Purchase advertising banners. Stamp tshirts with your website logo on it and so on.

Source: http://www.dailyblogtips.com/

Every website needs a promotional plan to ensure that the goals and objectives of a business’s website are achieved. In the make believe world of the movies, they may be able say, “if you build it, they will come”. In the real life of business, however, a much more active approach to marketing and promotions is required.

Your site needs a promotional plan to reach its goals. In order to formulate a strong promotional plan, you need to know what those goals are for you and for your website.

Your website needs a goal and a purpose. What you have to do is to decide what your site is supposed to be doing for you and your business. While most promotional articles offer the nuts and bolts, we will take this opportunity to look at the overall goals of your site, and why a plan is needed for its success.

For many people the website is a tool to gain added business for an offline company. For others, the website may be the entire venture in itself. Still other websites may be designed as informational sites and targeted and qualified traffic is not a concern. A good promotional plan needs to consider these factors.

You must know who, either businesses, or consumers, or even both, constitute the target market for your business. If you are going to use your website as a vehicle to convert those potential prospects into paying customers and clients, you need to identify who they are first. Some preliminary market research will be required to answer that question.

Another need is to decide where and how you are going to communicate your promotional and marketing message to your identified target audience. There are virtually unlimited methods to reach your potential customers. You must select the avenues that are right for you, your business, and your promotional budget.

Once you have answered these basic questions, you are ready to begin developing a promotional plan, for your own website.

Planning your Website Goals
A major part of any website promotional plan involves setting the goals your website is trying to achieve. Without previously decided upon goals in place, your promotional and marketing program can drift aimlessly from one idea to the next. A lack of focus will mean greatly diminished results.

The major categories of website goals include sending traffic to an offline bricks and mortar business, direct product sales from the website itself, sign-up for further information usually by newsletter, or as a purely informational site. All websites usually employ some combination of any two or three of these purposes. For promotional purposes, a more focused campaign is best. Failing to target the efforts could result in a dilution of the desired results.

Before you decide on the means, you have to select the goal of your website. If your goal is building offline traffic, you will want to develop a strategy that emphasises the product line and qualifying potential customers and clients. Since the product and service offered requires qualified prospective buyers, the promotional technique will have to be chosen for the website traffic to self select. Your site will benefit from a strategy that funnels qualified buyers in your direction.

If your website is in a highly competitive and optimized category, your site may not be able to rise high in the search engine results pages (SERPs) for really difficult search terms. Your better bet, in those cases, would be to concentrate on targeting localized business. That means ignoring a more global reach, and thinking about dominating your own neighborhood and city.

You should determine if your business requires large volumes of lower priced sales, or fewer sales at higher prices. That dichotomy is important in deciding whether to try to gain wider keyword coverage, or if a highly specific set of conversions is sufficient.

Following that preselection process, your site will then help convince the visitor to choose your company’s products and services. The promotional methods employed should flow naturally into that marketing process, as a logical next step. Your site should attract the buyer to select your product, if comparison shopping. If your product offering is what is desired by the purchaser, then your offline business should be the point of sale.

If the purpose of your website is the actual end sales point, your promotional goal should be to bring as many prospects as possible to your site. Selecting promotional strategies that maximize traffic will work well for this type of site. Simply target the marketing efforts where potential customers can be found to improve the level of conversions.

An informational website will benefit most from a less targeted wide ranging marketing and promotional campaign. You want as much visitor traffic as possible to gain maximum exposure for your website.

Deciding on Your Promotional Techniques
When you select your various promotional and marketing campaigns, be certain to keep your website’s overall goals in mind. If you are seeking preselected prospects, your methods should be highly targeted to the most effective areas.

For websites seeking a more general readership with the goal of onsite sales, your marketing strategy should be to gain a wide range of qualified visitor traffic, keeping a high level of conversions in mind. The techniques employed could include a combination of free and paid promotional ideas.

For informational websites, the best marketing and promotional plan should be to gain the maximum number of visitors possible. By their very nature, purely informational websites should concentrate on free or very low cost promotional methods.

A starting point for any website, whether profit or purely informational, should be the employment of a solid link building program. Links can be added from submissions of your site to the various general and niche directories available. Decide which directories are important and potentially valuable for your industry. Gain entry into the most relevant niche directories as well as the most influential mainstream directories.

For-profit sites should examine the many specialized paid directories to determine their benefits versus their costs. If the inclusion fee is low, consideration should be given to inclusion in that directory. Free directories provide some traffic, plus important one-way themed links, that provide a boost in the search engine rankings.

Links can be added from providing good and useful content, although the so-called natural linking process is slower than many webmasters would like. On the other hand, those usually themed and one-way links are often very powerful qualified traffic generators. The links also build Google PageRank and provide a link popularity boost. There are many ways to tackle the problem of adding more incoming links. You need to determine which one is right for the achieving the goals of your website.

Aiming to Hit your Targets
Once you have planned your techniques, you need to be certain of hitting your targets of choice. Often that is easier planned than achieved. Start at the end and plan backwards. Picture your business and your website teeming with online and offline customers. You need to know how they got there. If you have no idea where or how they arrived, your plan needs tweaking. Make certain your goals have the means for achieving the desired results.

If you are in highly competitive keyword categories, target lower competitive search terms. There is much income to be gained by being the dominant business for less competitive keyword phrases. Some research shows that the longer, and hence less competitive keyword phrases, may in fact be the ones where the buyer has already made the product decision. Make certain your business becomes the chosen vendor. Dominating those less competitive longer phrases might be a solid strategy for your website.

Most research shows that the number of people clicking through to page two is fewer than remain on page one. Those going on to the third and subsequent pages is even fewer. Your promotional and marketing goals should take that research into consideration. Make it a goal to pick all of the easier search traffic. As your site gains strength in the SERPs, you can widen your net accordingly.

There may be some justification, if you are in a highly competitive keyword environment, to consider a pay per click or Google Adwords program. If the keywords for your industry are difficult to rank for effectively, then purchase of keywords and paid search engine placement may be the right promotional approach to consider. Since only the clicked-on keywords require payment, it may be a cost-effective method of gaining additional visitor traffic. As always, your site will require good sales copy to convert the traffic into paying customers.

Programs like Trusted Feed and Site Match might pay dividends for sites that would otherwise be lost in the depths of the search results. Paid placement can get your site to the top of some of the major search engines, and literally buy time, for you to improve your organic keyword rankings.

If your business has the budget, paid placement might be a way to achieve your site’s goals. As with paid keywords, calculate a cost versus benefits analysis to find out if a paid placement program will earn the needed revenues.

Conclusion
Your site needs a promotional and marketing plan to achieve the overall goals for your business. Whether your site is designed to send traffic to an offline business, convert traffic to online sales, sign up people for further information, or is an exclusively informational site, you need to determine those overall goals and objectives.

Visitor traffic simply won’t arrive on its own. It requires hard work, planning, and patience. With a solid promotional plan in place, your business can reach those desired business goals.

Once those goals are set as a result of your market research, you are ready to decide upon your promotional techniques. They are many and varied and must relate to your overall objectives.

When the techniques have been decided upon, make certain that you hit the target market for which you are aiming. Failing that hit of your target, you may need to reassess your chosen techniques and aim your bow to send the arrow more carefully.

With a solid marketing and promotional plan established, and good reliable techniques in place, your site will achieve its business goals.

Your aim will be true.

By Wayne Hurlbert
http://www.seochat.com

You have probably heard much discussion about the new phenomenon of weblogs, more popularly referred to as blogs. Long dismissed by serious webmasters and business people, blogs were thought to be the sole province of angst-ridden teenagers, and a few self-indulgent writers. That is not the case any longer.

Blogs have stormed onto the Internet, sporting strong Google PageRanks and often very large and intensely loyal readerships. The worlds of politics, sports, and business have seen an explosion in the number of blogs over the past year. Blogs are everywhere on the Internet. Along with providing a boost to your Google PageRank and to your search engine results pages (SERPs), blogs are a tremendous promotional tool for your website and your business as a whole.

By adding a blog to your existing website, or as a cross-linked standalone site, a blog will pay heavy dividends to your business. By adding a human element and a sense of immediacy to your site, a blog will add not only potential new customers and clients to your business, but a healthy injection of goodwill as well.

Blogs provide a powerful promotional vehicle both online and offline. Perhaps it’s time to consider starting a blog.

Promotional Benefits that Blogs can Provide
Blogs build regular readership traffic. Because of their frequent updates, often daily, readers will return very frequently. A traditional static website has far fewer changes, and often requires coding and the assistance of a technical person. There is no such requirement for blogs.

Most blogging platforms allow for the transfer of fresh blog posts directly to a website, providing a continual supply of new material. Because of these regular additions of fresh keyword rich content to your site, you gain favor with the search engines. The spiders will crawl your site more frequently and index your site more often. The new keyword-laden content will create some pages that score highly in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Blog Content
The content of a blog should not be blatantly promotional in nature. Instead, it should provide that benefit more indirectly. Posting regular blog entries about industry news in your business area, fair and unbiased product information and reviews, new product development information, and business advice for your readers will establish you as an expert in your field. As an expert, you will be called upon by the media for interviews and often as a speaker in your industry area. The promotional benefits of those activities are obvious.

Links and Free Publicity
Other bloggers (people who write and maintain blogs) will also promote your blog, by linking to any blog posts that interest them and their readership. Bloggers are free and generous linkers of the blogs they read. Many bloggers are completely unaware of their Google PageRank and often of their blog’s position in the search engine results. They freely link to blogs for the content alone. The search engines are, at best, a distant secondary concern.

You get free publicity and promotion for your blog from other bloggers. Since many of the other bloggers, who link to your blog columns, are in posting similar themed content on their own blogs, you get the benefit of any topic sensitive PageRank that may be implemented by Google. You also get some much needed link popularity and some PageRank boost that help your site in the search engines.

Blogs Bring a Human Element to Your Business
The very concept of adding a human element to your business may seem a little obvious to many people. On the other hand, many business and website owners have overlooked the benefits of placing a personal stamp on their business. A blog can provide precisely that human element for you.

Frequent Updates and Conversational Tone
The first thing you will notice about a business blog is its frequent number of updates. Almost every day a new post or column is added to the blog. The posts are usually written in a conversational tone and often contain personal elements about the writer. Those personal elements are where the human face on the company appears.

As your readers return daily, and your blog is written in a manner that encourages repeat visitor traffic, your visitors get to know you as the author on a more personal level. The personal writing will include information about you as an individual, as well as information about your company.

Developing a Relationship of Trust
Because your blog readers return at least several times per week to read your latest blog postings, you begin to develop a rapport with them. Over time, they become familiar with you and naturally become customers. It’s generally agreed by marketing experts that people prefer to do business with people whom they know and trust. A blog helps to develop that trust in you and your products and services.

Promotion Online with Blogs
The online promotional benefits of a blog are numerous and powerful for your website. The immediacy of your blog can provide up-to-the-minute information about your company to existing and potential customers and clients.

Your blog will develop a loyal daily readership over time. The importance of that readership is its business potential. Every one of those regular visitors is a possible future customer or client. By visiting your blog every day, many of them will be interested in checking out your main business website. In that sense, a blog is a customer attractor for your company and its products and services.

By means of the ubiquitous comments systems found on most blogs, reader feedback can be almost instantaneous. Don’t worry about the potential for comment spam or abusive comments. While a potential annoyance, they are minimal compared to the benefits of personal interaction with your visitor traffic. Most blog platforms contain a built-in comment feature. If your blog system doesn’t include one, there are many good third party add-on commenters available. E-mail spam doesn’t prevent a business from using e-mail. Comment spam shouldn’t stop you from having a commenter added to your blog either.

RSS Feeds
A powerful feature of blogs is the use of an RSS feed. RSS stands for either Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication. Take your pick, as both are correct. What an RSS feed does, is send a blog’s highlights to recipients instantly upon publication. Most blog programs have an RSS or Atom (or a combination) feature for enabling transmission of your blog to a wider audience of subscribers to your RSS feed. Many blogs have a sign-up feature right on the blog itself, making the addition of a feed easy for your visitors to read your blog as you update.

To read blogs, your visitors need to use what is called an aggregator. By attaching an aggregator, which is a blog collection and reading program to their web browser, customers can read your blog posts as they happen in real time. Some well known aggregators include Bloglines, Feedster, and Kinja. There are many more available as well.

E-mail newsletters are usually on a delayed time scale compared to the speed of an RSS feed. Because of this speed difference, e-mail newsletters will take on a different role for your business. No longer required to provide news, your newsletter can provide more in-depth information and special offers to your subscribers. The RSS feed enables you to utilize your e-mail newsletter in new and innovative ways.

Promotion Offline with Blogs
Surprisingly, blogs can have some solid offline benefits for your business. One of the most important is the value of your blog to the media. Blogs are regularly scanned by the mainstream and the trade media outlets, vis RSS feeds, for news story ideas. Your breaking news story is of interest to the journalists in your field.

Be certain that you have easy to access contact information on your blog and on your website, so reporters can make instant contact with you. They are often on very tight deadlines and can’t wait to find you. By being available, your business story can be told, and you can also be quoted as an expert in other news stories. You may also find yourself being contacted as an expert speaker in your business area. The blog will establish your authority credentials.

Your blog will already have helped establish you as an expert, in your field of business because of your daily informative posts. Since blogs are still relatively new to the business arena, you will also be seen as being on the leading edge of innovation, for your industry. You know that can never be a bad thing.

Be certain to include your blog URL on all of your business cards, letterhead, and everywhere else your main website URL is included. Many people will visit your blog for information, who might not otherwise visit your business site. They will often use the blog as an entry to your company website, and eventually become customers or clients.

Conclusion
The promotional advantages of adding a blog to your existing website (or as a stand alone blog) are many and powerful. The addition of a blog component establishes you as an expert in your field, reaping rewards as a media spokesperson or a public speaker in your area of endeavor. Being a blogger places you and your business on the leading edge of your industry. Standard offline promotional techniques will also pay dividends when applied to blogs.

Online, your blog will pick up many solid and theme-related links from other bloggers, and from traditional websites. The topic sensitive links created will boost your Google PageRank and your search engine results for your main keywords. Often, your blog will provide another search engine result for your business keywords, creating another entry into your main business website.

Because of the freshness of blog content, the blog is crawled often by the various search engine spiders. That frequent addition of newly crawled content to the search engine indexes will enhance your level of visitor traffic.

Through the use of RSS feeds, your blog posts will be instantly available to your blog subscribers. Used in conjunction with your existing email newsletter, your blog’s RSS feed will keep your readers up to date on your business and your products.

Add a blog to your promotional efforts, and reap the rewards, both on the Internet and offline as well.

Your business bottom line will thank you for being a blogger.

By Wayne Hurlbert
http://www.seochat.com

Everyone is searching for ways to promote and market their websites. I’m sure you are no exception. Simply building a website and placing it out there on the Internet doesn’t guarantee success in Internet marketing. In fact, by failing to publicize and market your website, it is almost certainly doomed to failure.

The old idea of “if you build it, they will come” might work for a movie script writer. It won’t likely work in the real world of modern online business. You need to find simple, low cost ways to market your website to potential clients and customers.

One proven technique that is well known and practiced by the Internet marketing pros is posting on Internet message boards and forums. By posting on the message forums, savvy marketing people gain visitors, establish themselves as experts in their field, and multiply their success many times over. You can too.

All you have to do, is start to think like a marketing professional. The Internet discussion boards, and even some of their other members, will do much of the marketing on your behalf.

What are Internet Message Forums?
Internet message and discussion forums are everywhere. Their many members discuss topics ranging from baseball to photography to crafts to search engine optimization. Whatever your business or hobby, there are numerous Internet message forums awaiting your membership.

To find a discussion forum that suits your interests, you can conduct a search on any of the major search engines like Google, Yahoo, or MSN Search. Simply enter the topic and the keywords message forums, discussion forums, or discussion boards. You will discover numerous choices just a click away.

As you surf to a message board, you will notice that each one is slightly different. They have unique memberships, resulting in varying atmospheres. Some are more business like. Others are given more to friendly discussion. Still others will have heated debates and arguments. Be sure to select the boards that make you feel comfortable as a poster.

Don’t go anywhere near a message board where you might be hesitant to post. That is not what you want to do. What you do want to do is become an active poster and participant. That is why careful message board selection is very important.

Once you have selected a board or boards to join, it’s time to sign up as an active member.

How to Become a Message Forum Member
To join most message boards, you will have to register as a member. The membership process usually requires you to provide a user name. You may use your real name, or if you prefer, you can create a fictional pen name, called a “handle”. You will be required to provide a valid e-mail address for communications.

Some forums require some additional personal information, to protect the message board, from those who might wish to destroy their online community. Your information is almost universally protected by a password.

Once you have that information in place, and had your membership approved and confirmed, you are almost ready to post. You are not quite ready yet, however. You still have a few things to do, in order to have your message board postings help market and promote your business and website.

Creating the All Important Signature File
In order to gain new visitor traffic, develop a solid reputation, and gain search engine optimization benefits, you must create what is known as a signature file, or “sig line”. What a signature file does is create a live link back to your website from the message forum itself. That link into your website is very important.

The signature file for your link should not simply be your website’s URL. If at all possible, avoid that type of signature as it doesn’t describe your business. It also provides less than the desired level of search engine optimization. Using your website title is better, but still is not what you want to use.

Use a your targeted keyword phrase as your signature. If you can use the keywords, right in the live link, that is the best possible signature. It provides a keyword inbound link to your website. Many message forums permit the use of additional descriptions, brief offers to visitors, phone numbers, and even physical and e-mail addresses. Take advantage of these free promotional vehicles.

By targeting your most important keyword phrases, you accomplish several important goals at one time. You successfully describe your business and possibly what your business can do for anyone clicking on the link. You also gain powerful keyword rich backlinks to your website, enhancing your incoming link totals.

Posting on Forums and Forum Etiquette
Armed with a message board membership and a signature file, you are now almost ready to begin posting on the forum.

Prior to posting, be certain to read a number of the discussions, referred to as “threads” on the board. They will give you an idea of the topics under discussion. They will also help you to know some of the various posters and the forum moderators. The moderators are the board peacekeepers and often the initiators of new topics. They will usually post responses in a large number of threads as well.

Their style of posts will give you a very good idea as to the tone of the board, whether formal or casual. They are also very good people to get to know. Their assistance will help you to better utilize the message forums many services for all members, as well as yourself.

When you post, you want to be polite. Ask good questions seeking any information that you require. There are no foolish questions. Everyone was a first time poster at some point, so don’t be shy. If you are able to answer other members’ questions, feel free to do so.

By providing good informative answers that seek to help others, you will develop a reputation as being an expert in your field. That will go far in enhancing your business reputation as well.

Don’t get involved in arguments. Arguments on discussion boards are called “flaming”. Often involving personal attacks, “flame wars” are something for you to avoid. You shouldn’t involve yourself in a flaming match, even if your post is attacked for no reason. Provide a polite and informative answer. The other members will recognize you as a person who keeps their head in most situations.

Avoid being drawn into heated discussions with those who set out to cause arguments and flame wars. These individuals are known as “trolls”. Avoid their discussions, and don’t debate with them. They thrive on attention. Don’t give it to them. They will soon leave your message board for other locales.

Marketing Benefits of the Message Boards
As you develop a reputation for providing informative and helpful postings, your opinions and posts will almost always be read by other members. Since the members of the message board are also interested in the same subjects as you, they are all potential clients and customers for your business. Their families, friends, and business associates are, by extension, also your potential customers.

By becoming well known to the board membership, your reputation and that of your business will grow. People usually prefer to do business with people whom they know. That would be you, if you have been writing good, thoughtful and informative posts. They will click on your signature line and check out your business, your products, and your services. Many will become customers and some will even recommend you to others as well.

Search Engine Optimization Benefits of Message Boards

Most message forums are search engine spider friendly. It is important to note, however, that not all message boards are crawled regularly by search engine robots; but most are. Make certain that you check the search engine friendliness of the board prior to joining.

The backlinks created by your signature file will be crawled by the spiders. Google often includes forum posts in your backlink count. Since Google only displays incoming links, with a PageRank 4 or higher, those are very good incoming links indeed. Posting on forums simply increases your number of incoming links.

By placing your website’s most important keyword phrase in your signature file, your keyword power in the search engine results pages (SERPs) is enhanced. The more keyword rich links you can create, that are pointing toward your site, the better.

As you post on a regular basis, and establish yourself as an expert in your industry, you will find a number of other members linking their site to yours. These natural links are a tremendous boost to both your site’s Google PageRank and to your search engine placements for your keywords.

The potential for additional natural incoming links, makes posting on a message boards a powerful technique, for increasing your backlink total. You will also find theme related website owners who will want to engage in traditional link swaps as well. These exchanged links are still helpful to your website. They are especially beneficial if they are from sites that are related to your own.

Conclusion
Seeking out a number of message boards, related to your area of business, is a powerful way to market your website.

Your marketing efforts will be greatly enhanced through your participation as an active contributor to your various discussion boards. Members of those forums will see you as an expert in your field, making it much more likely that they will become your customers and clients in the future.

Your search engine marketing will improve as well. The additional incoming links, resulting from your post signature line, will enhance your Google PageRank and your search engine results.

Keyword rich incoming links will raise your site higher in the search placements. You also have the potential to receive many natural incoming links, along with a number of themed link exchanges.

Join those Internet message boards today and start posting your way to success.

By Wayne Hurlbert
http://www.seochat.com

By being the subject of a news story, your site and business receive an implicit endorsement that no amount of money spent on advertising can match. People tend to put more confidence in a business that is covered in a news article than they do in any paid advertisement. It should be part of your business promotional strategy to get your message into the various news media.

The established road into the news media is by way of a press release.

Why Send a Press Release?
Your online business has a newsworthy story. It may not be immediately recognizable, but there is news within your business. Because your business activities have news value to some members of the media, you need to get your story out there to be written. The standard means is by way of a written press release.

Your first step is to find a newsworthy story. In the news business, that is referred to as the “angle”. To find a news angle, many people suggest thinking like a journalist. An even better idea is to think like an editor. The publication editor will always want to know the news value of the story and its angle. It’s up to you to provide it for them. Send them a press release.

There are many story ideas lurking in your business right now. You may have a new product that serves a specific need. Your website may have been redesigned in a new and unique way. Your staff may have had additions. Your site may have some special holiday or seasonal value. You may be involved in some unusual promotional or charitable events. There is also the good old human interest story.

The opportunities to find news within your organization are unlimited. It’s up to you to let the world know about them. The media exposure will bring in many new and qualified customers and clients.

Grabbing Their Attention
A press release is like a cover letter and resume for your news story. It is written like a news story. In fact, some publications will print your press release without alteration, but don’t count on it. The best idea is to write it like a journalist would and review it through the eyes of the editor.

To start writing your press release, you must include some basic and necessary components.

Start with a headline. The headline is probably the single most important part of the release. It is the grabber. It makes or loses the sale. A busy editor, inundated with hundreds of press releases may not read beyond the headline.

Make it count. Words like You, New, How, Now, are especially strong and will help grab the editor’s attention. Like the headline in a good sales letter, newsletter, or your website, spend the majority of your time on the headline. It can make or break whether your story gets included or not. A headline should convey the idea of the article and compel the editor to read on to the lead paragraph.

The lead paragraph will answer the classic five who, what, where, when, and why questions. It should flow smoothly from the idea conveyed in the headline. The lead, as it’s called, should answer directly to the headline. If it doesn’t, either the lead, the headline, or both should be rewritten to send the same message.

Write the lead paragraph without heavy use of adjectives. If you can avoid any, that may be even better. Avoid writing adverbs too. Use as few words as possible. About 50 words should be enough to convey the story. Think like Sargent Friday from the old television series Dragnet: “Just the facts.” The lead should tell the entire story, even if the editor chooses to read no farther than the first paragraph.

The Main Paragraphs: Filling Out Your Story
The main body of your press release appears in the middle, following the lead paragraph. Here is where you provide the supporting news story for your lead and headline. Be sure to include some quotes from the key people involved in the story. If your press release is about a new product or innovative idea, testimonials from experts in the field and satisfied customers are ideal.

Write the press release in the inverted pyramid style. By that, I mean place the most important information first, and the less important supporting information second. Use short sentences with action verbs. Be sure your press release reads as a news story and not as a sales letter. If it sounds like sales literature, it will likely end up in the trash or delete file.

For product releases, many experts recommend using bulleted points. Three features is ideal, but don’t write more than five. The idea is to have your release published with as little editing as possible. The less your release is altered, the more your message will be read from your point of view.

At the end of the release, be certain to have your name, phone number where you are available, and a link to your website. Your contact information should also appear at the top of the release, below the headline. There you would include your company name, your contact name, address, phone and fax numbers, e-mail address, and your website URL.

Make yourself readily available and easily reached at all times to the media. If your release is not used, but you are easily contacted, you may still find yourself asked about other news stories in your industry. If at all possible, get to know as many editors and journalists who cover your industry and business in general. That familiarity can get your press release noticed, and your name remembered, for other industry news stories.

Sending Out the Press Release
Send your press release to the online and traditional offline media who cover news stories in your industry. If the news angle you have chosen has wider appeal, feel free to send it to other media who cover that news area. Avoid sending your release to media who would have no interest in your story. Don’t ever be seen as a spammer. Your future releases will invariably wind up deleted if you are regarded that way.

While everyone imagines their story in the big city daily newspapers, they are only the tip of the iceberg. For them, your best bet is the business or technology section. Don’t overlook small weekly newspapers. Their distribution is local and their readers are your potential customers. Often pressed for time and staff resources, they may publish your release as is.

Many trade and industry publications, both online and offline, publish news stories in your industry. These highly specialized and targeted publications are read by those people in your business area. These magazines are very interested in receiving interesting and informative stories about your business, personnel, and products. They usually have special sections pertaining to those matters, and need stories to fill them.

Don’t forget to send your release to the many Internet press release distribution sites. They include http://www.prweb.com, http://www.pressreleasenetwork.com, and http://www.internetnewsbureau.com; among others. There are many more available with a search. These sites let you post your press release, either free or for a modest subscription, and are available to journalists worldwide. Be sure to post your press releases on those services. Being picked up by an unknown media outlet could lead to new contacts in the news industry.

Press Releases as SEO
Be certain to archive all of your previously distributed press releases on your website. Make them available to the media and the search engine spiders at all times. Your press releases are full of keyword rich content that will enhance your overall search engine rankings. Even an unused press release can perform powerful service as a search result page for your site.

Be sure the press releases are included in your site map and have easily followed keyword text links. Link them back to pages that provide background to the news angle being covered. Be sure the link includes the appropriate keywords. These links will enhance your search engine results.

Your site will receive valuable incoming links from all online media, and from many online versions of offline media as well. Links from media sites, who are often authority sites themselves, are strongly themed to your site. Not only will they enhance your Google PageRank and incoming link totals, they will go far toward establishing your website as an authority site for your keywords.

Make your releases available along with an entire press kit. That kit should include company information, biographies of key personnel, and all previous releases relating to your business. You will need them for journalists when you are contacted about an article. Along with maintaining a hard copy version, the online press kit will provide benefits too. The press kit’s keyword rich content will add more value to the search engines.

Conclusion
By sending out targeted press releases to online and offline media outlets who cover your industry, you can receive valuable free publicity. That media exposure is better than any amount of paid online or offline advertising. By being the topic of a news story, your business gains almost immediate stature as an expert in the field.

By forming and maintaining available, reliable, and honest media contacts, you can also be quoted as an industry expert in other news stories. Keeping the channels open with the media will help you. Talk to the various journalists and editors in your business area. Send them informal story ideas, even if they are not about your own company. You may still be quoted in the resulting article. Your own press releases will receive a warmer reception when you send them too.

Don’t forget to archive your press releases on your own website. They will add keyword rich content for the search engine spiders to feed upon. The added content factor gives your press releases double value; they can be news, and they can provide website content.

Press releases can help your business reach new customers and clients with free publicity that money simply can’t buy. Find a news angle in your business. Send out your press releases today.

By Wayne Hurlbert
http://www.seochat.com

If you are like most webmasters or bloggers, you are constantly searching for fresh ideas to add content to your website. You are already well aware that adding more pages to your site will enhance your search engine rankings. You realize that you require more keyword phrases to find their way into searches. The question arises as to where to find ideas that appeal to your visitor traffic. The answer may lie in your own visitor traffic logs.

Hidden in the pages of those ubiquitous, but often overlooked features of every website, are some gems waiting to be mined. Keywords used to find your website are one of the most ignored, yet very valuable prizes found in your visitor logs. By using those keywords, in a manner consistent with the main theme of your website, you can gain additional search engine referrals.

Visitor logs also provide useful information on the activities of your visitors that can helpful in adding fresh content to your site and in improving conversion rates from tire kicker to customer status.

Visitor Logs are Keyword Mines
When a Internet search engine user enters keyword phrases into the search box, you want them to find your website high on the search results. It logically follows that the more keyword rich content is found on your site, the more searchers will find you. Occasionally, they find your site through very unusual searches.

Your visitor traffic logs will normally contain a list of the keywords and keyword phrases that led an Internet searcher to your website. Some of those phrases ranked highly enough on a search engine result to cause the user to click on the link to your site. As you check through your visitor logs, you will see several patterns in them.

Regular Keyword Searches
First of all, you will see the regular keyword searches that you expect to find. They will be your main important keyword phrases. As expected, your visitors found you through them. If a phrase is heavily targeted, and many users discover your site by searching that phrase, you will know that to be an important keyword phrase for Internet searchers. Be certain to use those key phrases early and often as you build new content pages, or freshen up the content on existing ones.

Secondly, there are your secondary keyword phrases and combinations. Not being your main focus, these keyword phrases are often overlooked in favor of the more heavily targeted search terms. As secondary terms, they may even be sources of better quality Internet traffic, as they are the result of more specialized and deeper searches. As you analyze these terms, be sure to include them prominently in newly added content pages. The pages where they brought traffic to your site can be revamped as well, giving the keywords more strategic placement and usage.

The third set of keywords, found in your visitor logs, are the very unusual and occasionally downright hilarious ones. Before you spend your entire day laughing at them, study them carefully. Look for recurring words and phrases within the unorthodox searches, keeping in mind that the search engines equate those terms with your site.

Should any of the search terms prove useful, and on topic in any way for your website, their inclusion in added content pages might bring some unexpected bonus visitor traffic. Keep in mind that many of these unique discoveries may be exactly that. They may be one time events, and never repeated. They may have little long term value for your site. Before dismissing them all, however, make certain that you are not tossing away some real Internet gold.

Length of Stay and Making it Pay
Visitor traffic logs normally maintain a record of the length of stay for each visitor. Keep in mind that you are tracking unique visitors. As you search through your records, you will discover that many visitors arrive, stay only a few moments and leave. What they found at your site was not to their liking and did not solve their problem.

Short Time Visitors
If you have a large number of short time stay visitors, check the pages at which they entered your site. If the pages in question are not content rich, there is no need for visitors to remain on your site. Their needs were not met. If some entry pages are showing fast exits from your website, it’s time to revamp those pages with some new content.

It is also a good idea to have links to other pages on your site prominently displayed as alternatives for the visitors. If you can solve their needs on other pages, your traffic may remain longer on your site. Longer stays mean higher proportions of conversions to customers, whether at the present time or in the future. The raw number of visitors is not as important as the conversion rate of visitors to paying customers.

New Visitors for Old
Every website needs a steady influx of new visitor traffic, whether from search engines or from links on other sites. To enable visitor traffic growth, new visitors are constantly required. At the same time, a webmaster must retain already existing visitors and customers. The previously acquired traffic forms a base for new arrivals to build upon, increasing the traffic levels overall.

In your visitor logs, there will be records of new visitors and of returning traffic. Be certain to determine the percentage of your traffic that is new, against the percentage of previously existing visitors. A large drop in new visitors could indicate that your keywords are not ranking very highly in the search engines. Your links perhaps are not being clicked, or your other website promotional activities are not as effective as they were in the past. It is necessary to take some action to remedy the situation.

In the case of your visitor logs, you possess the data to make the needed changes. If you are not ranking well in the search engines, it would be time to do some website optimization. The best place to begin is by adding more keyword rich content. More pages of content will also help your site toward potentially becoming an authority site in your area. Combining that activity with an active linking program to increase your Google PageRank and incoming links can help as well.

Returning Visitors
If the number of returning visitors begins to fall in proportion to the new traffic, it is time to create some new content as well. If the regular visitors find no updating of information at your site, there will be no real incentive for their return. They may turn to a competitor’s website instead. That should provide enough reason to create some new and informative content. As a bonus, the fresh content will help in the search engines, gaining more new visitor traffic.

Once a visitor arrives at your website for the first time, it is important to keep them there and to have them return over and over again. As a visitor becomes more familiar with you, your site information, and your products, that individual is much more likely to become a paying customer or client.

Traffic Flows Within Your Site
Another helpful feature of your visitor logs, are the records of the pages accessed by surfers. If any one page is receiving very heavy usage, it makes sense to examine that page carefully to see why it works so well. With close study, that page’s success can be duplicated, on other pages throughout your website.

Be certain to have each web page optimized for its main keyword theme only, to maximize its power in the search engines. It doesn’t matter which page is your visitor’s entry page. What really matters is whether they move freely around your site, with possible action taken toward becoming customers, either now or in the future.

Tracking your visitors, as they navigate around your site, can also help determine if your site architecture is visitor friendly. If your site is difficult to move around, requiring many clicks to get anywhere, the visitor’s next click will be out of your site. Make certain your page menus are easy to read, understand, and follow. Be sure they take the visitor somewhere helpful as well.

Conclusion
Your website visitor traffic logs are a veritable goldmine of information, helping to attract and keep visitors at your site.

The search terms users enter into the search box, that wind up finding your site, can provide you with ideas to add new pages of fresh content. The search terms and phrases include your main targeted keywords, your secondary and less fully developed keywords, and those phrases that you never thought were important. All of the searches provide ideas for adding new pages of additional information.

By tracing the proportion of new visitors to returning traffic, you can determine if your site is successful at adding new readers, and in retaining your regular customers. Should there be a dramatic change in the percentages, you can investigate the reasons. If positive, you can emphasize those factors more. If negative, you can make changes to prevent major traffic dips.

The visitor logs can also help in keeping your site easy to navigate and visitor friendly. Knowing which pages are popular, and which ones receive little surfer activity, can assist you in revamping your site to be more useful for visitors.

Your visitor traffic logs are there for your benefit. Mine them for gold today.

By Wayne Hurlbert
http://www.seochat.com/

An error 404 page simply means that the web browser could not find the file you requested. This is termed as a “page not found” error. The server generates an error (404), and enters it in the error log, then it returns the page that it is set up to return as standard. These pages are usually very ugly and look nothing like your site, furthermore they look nothing like what the visitor was looking for.

Why You Need an Error 404 Page?
If you think that this does not apply to you consider the following: In 2 years’ time when you added several sections and changed names, etc., your site will have mutated into something else. The fact is that mistakes can be made, links missed or spelled incorrectly and not checked. Even if your site is perfect, someone can still put a link to your site and spell a file name incorrectly – giving a bad impression of your site through no fault of your own. A custom error 404 page will help to keep a site visitor even if they turn up at a page that wasn’t quite what they were expecting. A custom error 404 page should tell the user where they are, what page they are on, the likely cause of being there and where they can go to find the information they require. It is all about keeping that visitor and turning them into what they were before they got that error 404 – a potential customer.

How Do People React to Error 404 Messages?
The vast majority of web users are not technically knowledgeable and do not know what an error 404 message is. They simply know it is not what they were looking for and click back in their browser. Some people know to go to the root of the domain but this is still not what they are looking for. The fact of it is that when most people see an error 404 page they think the site no longer exists and will simply go and find another site.

Why You Need an Error 404 Page
If you think that this does not apply to you consider the following: In 2 years’ time when you added several sections and changed names, etc., your site will have mutated into something else. The fact is that mistakes can be made, links missed or spelled incorrectly and not checked. Even if your site is perfect, someone can still put a link to your site and spell a file name incorrectly – giving a bad impression of your site through no fault of your own.

A custom error 404 page will help to keep a site visitor even if they turn up at a page that wasn’t quite what they were expecting. A custom error 404 page should tell the user where they are, what page they are on, the likely cause of being there and where they can go to find the information they require. It is all about keeping that visitor and turning them into what they were before they got that error 404 – a potential customer.

What Should an Error 404 Page Look Like?
The last thing an error 404 page should look like is the standard or default error 404 pages. You should aim to make an error 404 page that looks and feels identical to your site, then with any luck most users won’t even realise that an error 404 page has been generated and won’t have a tarnished view of your site before they buy.

Use the same colors, logo, buttons, links and navigation as you use on your home page. Then give the users a link to a search page, the home page or other important areas as well as giving them your standard navigation system. With many options the user is far less likely to click back on their browser. One important thing to note is that an error 404 document can be served in any directory – i.e. www.yourdomainname.com/PDF/engineering/marketing. This means that you should always use explicit and full file names for any links, images, etc.

What Do the Error Codes Mean?
There is technically an error code, or status code, generated every time a request is made to a web server even if the request was successful. For example the status code 200 means ok. Codes in the 200 and 300 range are generally successful requests that have a file returned. 400 errors are generally bad errors, which are either incorrect or bad requests. If you have access to your server logs or a good statistics package you can see how many error 404’s are actually generated. On one site I maintain the stats package shows that for last week 1.3% of all requests are 404 errors. This may not seem like much but when that 1.3% means 38 requests you can see how many visitors you could be losing.

What Are the Requirements for Setting Up an Error 404 Page?
Ok, this is where it can get tricky. The requirements for setting up an error 404 page depend upon your set up and web server. Generally, you need to have administrator access rights to your server. As most shared servers (the most common type for small business web sites) do not allow you to have full administrator rights you may have a problem. Some good web hosts allow you administrator rights to your directory alone, this is very useful. If you are not sure about this ability ask your web hosting company, as they may be able to set this function for you.

How Do You Put Up an Error 404 Page?
An error 404 page is controlled by a file called .htaccess. The dot prefixing the name is important. It is also important to know that windows and Unix systems treat these files differently as the dot is a hidden windows file. This is often apparent when you want to upload or change a .htaccess file as with some FTP (File Transfer Protocol) packages the file is not visible. To get around this upload the .htaccess file as normal and it will overwrite the existing file.

Another problem here is that windows won’t let you call a file .htaccess. What I do is save and upload the file as htaccess.txt and then rename it once uploaded.

Making Your File
Now that all that’s out of the way, here’s how to make your .htaccess file.

1) Open up your favorite text editor.
2) Paste this code into the editor:

ErrorDocument 404
/filename.html

3) Save as htaccess.txt.

4) Upload the file to the Top Root of your directory.

5) Rename the file as “.htaccess”.

6) Create and upload the error 404 document filename.html

7) Type in an incorrect file path such as www.YourDomainName.com/does-not-exist.html

Revel in your hard work

What Does it All Mean?
The .htaccess file used effectively can be a very powerful tool. It can be used for far more than just creating error404 documents. In this case it simply tells the server that the ErrorDocument 404 is /filename.html rather than the default ErrorDoocument 404. If this command were not in .htaccess or if there was no .htaccess at all then the default 404 error document would be displayed.

The .htaccess file can be used to stop certain user agents from visiting the site e.g. – an annoying spider that won’t obey the robots.txt file. It can be used in conjunction with .htpasswd to password protect a directory as well as many other things.

In Conclusion
Having a custom error 404 document may not seem like a big deal but when you consider that it needs no maintenance, does not cost anything and keeps your potential customers on your site becomes a smart move. By holding on to your customers you are keeping them on your site ready to buy from you, not your competitor. This is a classic example of the phrase “prevention is better than cure.”

The important things to remember are:
1. Make sure you have the dot in the .htaccess file.
2. Make your error 404 document look like every other page on your site.
3. An Error 404 page stops bad and out-of-date links tarnishing your image and keeps customers on your site.

1. Intelligence: Allows you to get to know what’s really going on in the minds of your potential/existing customers by simply observing and interacting with forum posts.

2. Providing visitors with a sense of security/reliability: Thanks to the existence of recent posts, visitors feel that the site is ‘alive and kicking.’

3. Differentiation: A site with a winning forum, led by wise, open, and communicative moderators, and is home to constructive members, can provide an organization with a strategic differentiation and a competitive advantage.

4. Increased traffic: Increased traffic comes from returning visitors who are replying to posts, as well as browsing new topics (in this sense, it is recommended to email all members recent posts as a reminder and an invitation).

5. Improved search engine rankings: Search engines will notice both the increased internal link popularity and the members’ of the forum’s community writing about issues that are associated with themes that are directly and indirectly associated with your site’s targeted keywords.

Those who have been involved in launching a successful forum know that it’s not an easy task, even if you’ve already got a significant captive audience that is visiting your site, reading your newsletter, and so forth. Without mentioning the technical aspects of embedding a forum into a website, I shall explain the factors critical in the creation of a successful forum.

Success Factor One – Forum Leadership
As with traditional communities, virtual communities can only get going if one or more leaders take initiative. This does not necessarily have to be the ‘official’ leader, such as the Webmaster who decided to put up the forum in the first place.

A leader needs to have the ability to attract potential/existing members to willingly join and interact in the community. How does a leader do that’ Mainly by providing community members with access to knowledge and a sense of belonging. He does that by making a real attempt to understand the values of members, and by using superior writing skills to transfer knowledge as well as inspire.

Success Factor Two – Initial Traffic
If the best leader in the world lives alone on a stranded island, a successful community will never exist. This implies that in order to establish a successful forum, you not only need successful forum leadership, but also initial traffic of potential community members.

If the site is just starting out, an email to friends, family members, and colleagues may be in order. Additionally, tools that track potential link exchanges can be used to detect Webmasters who may be interested in joining your forum. In fact, they might even invite the audience of their sites to participate in your forum! Because of this, articles may be written, optimized, and published yours or another site. Perhaps those articles present a controversial topic, or maybe they’re just a direct invitation to talk about a presented topic at the forum.

Initial traffic can be increased if you take into consideration the different user behaviors of forum members. Each member is unique, but they can also be grouped according to the level of their interaction within the forum community. One group is the ‘heavy users’ who will write frequently and initiate new topics. A second group is the ’shy group’ or ‘learning beginners,’ who only read forum posts without ever actively participating. There are other types as well and it would be beneficial for you to identify the types of groups in your forum. Why’ At times, different communication approaches should be used in order to communicate the different groups. For example, a survey can be used to invite members of the ’shy group’ to make their first steps in actively participating in the community. This enables the shy members’ participation without requiring them to write long, meaningful messages to a group of people that they still don’t feel comfortable with.

Finally, if you already have a website and are adding a forum to it, it is recommended to have a direct invitation to the forum in a noticeable spot on the homepage. The same goes for a newsletter.

Success Factor Three – The Big “Mo” (-mentum, That Is!)
The momentum at the beginning is crucial. Many times, a forum will make an impression as if it is becoming successful but, in effect, it starts dying down after the first wave of members’ posts and enthusiasm.

Before this stage, is can be fruitful to detect key members in the community and offer them premium rights and responsibilities. The classic example is to offer a responsible, knowledgeable, motivated member to be a moderator of an unmanned forum category. Moderators are rarely paid but they can gain experience as well as enhance their public relations and networks. Another way to praise moderators is to simply use the power of the forum to compliment them in front of their audience. This can empower and motivate them to continue their new leading roles in the community.

Asking initial members to invite their relevant friends and colleagues is also highly recommended. Incentives in the forms of contests, riddles and promotions could be integrated as well.

Another way of maintaining the initial momentum is to optimize the thread pages of your forum. First, you can choose category titles that are not exactly identical to the typical category titles of many other similar forums. Sometimes a slight tweak in keywords can help you position a forum category in top SERP’s for a second-most popular search phrase while all other competitors are targeting the most popular term (in other words, find your niche). Second, use your SEO skills to optimize titles, descriptions, headings, texts and internal links of forum threads. Third, increase the link popularity of the threads by submitting them to directories, offering them to link partners and including them in other relevant threads and articles (ex:. ‘check out what GoogleGuy said about’.')

Finally, Once Established
Once established and running, managing a forum is a very challenging and time-consuming task. Still, establishing one is even harder, and that’s where you need to concentrate on the three critical success factors: the forum’s leadership, initial traffic and initial momentum. All in all, a successful forum may be the single most dominant factor of your online success, so it’s definitely worth the effort!

Source: http://www.seochat.com