Making money with your web site is the dream and goal of millions of webmasters all over the internet including myself. In order to reach this goal you need a variety of web site promotions running all at the same time.

Search engine optimization is still my number one traffic generator. I receive more traffic from Google than any other source on the internet. But it is becoming increasingly more and more difficult to achieve a top ten placement on Google or any other search engine as the internet grows and more webmasters compete for the same key words. There once was a time when I could rely on Google to provide me with all the traffic I needed but not any more. I need to promote and advertise my web site elsewhere if I expect to continue receiving good quality traffic to my web site.

Writing articles like this one is just one of the ways I use to promote my web site. There are literally thousands of sites on the internet that will allow you to submit articles such as this one. Your article will remain in their database or directory and as long as you allow re-print instructions along with your author bio you may also see your article on other sites that you did not even submit to. Make sure your web site URL is in your author bio and make sure the URL is active. Some sites will only post your article with static URL’s which will not be quite as effective. You can also use anchor text for your URL to help your search engine rankings. Use your targeted key words as your anchor text and you should see an increase in your search engine optimization efforts.

Number three on my list of web site promotions requires some cash. The majority of people I talk to about getting good quality traffic to a web site all want to do it for FREE without any advertising dollars spent. Although it is possible to promote a web site for FREE with no money, I highly recommend some form of pay per click campaign using Google adwords or Yahoo search marketing (formerly Overture). There are also a host of other smaller pay per click engines that I have used in the past including Findwhat and 7Search.

Press releases on the internet are gaining in popularity recently and you can actually get a press release published and listed on Google and Yahoo news search within 24 hours. For guidelines and how to get published visit the following web page. http://www.prweb.com/

Reciprocal linking has dropped off of my priority list of web site promotions but it can still be a very important means of web site promotion if done properly, and back links to your site are also essential to a good search engine ranking with Google. First of all you are not going to want to trade links with just anyone. Make sure the page’s your links are going to be on are actually indexed by Google. If you do not have the Google toolbar get it. It will tell you if a page has been indexed or not. Also ask the webmaster you are trading links with how many links they have per page. If they put more than 30 links on a page chances are your link will be lost and never clicked on.

Free classified advertising is another way to promote your site for free. But as the internet grows so too does the amount of webmasters submitting to these free classified sites. And the more people there are posting the less likely your ad will be seen. The key to good free classified advertising is testing your results. Test everything you do. When you find a good classified site that is giving you traffic keep using it but follow their guidelines on how often you should post.

Last but not least you need to be collecting e-mail addresses from your web site. Start a newsletter and ask your visitors to subscribe somewhere on your site. Once you have built up a good subscriber base you can e-mail your subscriber base a weekly newsletter that has to do with your web site’s theme or subject matter. Always include UN-subscribe instructions in case your visitors change their mind and no longer would like to receive e–mail from you.

I have just touched the surface on a few of the different techniques that I have used to promote my own web site. There are actually hundreds of other offline and online methods to promoOnline advertising traffic leaves when advertisers don't make it easy to stick around.

Business website owners who buy online advertising often get frustrated when most of their

expensive traffic leaves as soon as it arrives--i.e, it "bounces."

Why does traffic from online advertising bounce? Think about it: you've done the same thing many

times. You've searched on a search engine, clicked on a result, then left that page less than ten

seconds after you arrived. You did that again and again until you found what you were looking for.

You might easily have left a trail of bounces on the server logs of a dozen websites, for a dozen

website owners to worry over.

Why did you keep leaving? Because you weren't finding what you were looking for on those websites

within the first ten to thirty seconds of arriving. Experience had taught you that you'd find what

you were looking for faster clicking on other search results, one of which was bound to have what you

were looking for, than sifting through the pages of a website that didn't look very promising from

the start.

That's how everyone searches, and how everyone treats online advertising. You have to work with this

behavior rather than against it.

How to Catch Your Online Advertising Traffic before It Bounces

So how do you keep online advertising traffic from bouncing? Think about why you bounced. What made

you doubt that the website had what you were searching for? If you were using a search engine, you

had searched on a keyword--let's say you searched on "small business website content." Without

realizing it, you were scanning each page for the keyword, "small business website content," or

something very close to it.

A website that talked about "small business web copy" might have been what you were looking for, but

if you didn't know that "web copy" is just another term for "website content," you'd have hit the

"back" button. You’d keep hitting the "back" button until you arrived at a page that had that keyword

in the page title, page headings, and in the first few lines of the body, maybe in boldface to make

it easier to find.

Of course, if you arrived at the page via a link from another website, you weren't looking for a

search engine keyword. You were just looking (hoping) for something that had to do with what made you

click on the link in the first place. If the page title and the first page heading resembled the text

of the link you had clicked on, you'd feel like you had found what you were looking for--no worries

about this being one of those pages that changed after the other site started linking to it.

But if the link promised no. 72 monkey wrenches, you'd feel let down if it brought you to the

homepage of a hardware store. Experience tells you the store might have stopped selling no. 72 monkey

wrenches long ago and never bothered updating its inbound links. Experience also tells you that even

if the site does have what you're looking for, it may be more trouble than it's worth to find it. Why

search through a website when search results from the entire world wide web are just a click of the

"back" button away?

Thanks to the "back" button, on the web, no one has to feel let down for long. Except advertisers who

let visitors down.

About the author

Joel Walsh is a website copywriter at UpMarket Content, a website content provider for small and medium-sized businesses. He has written as a staff writer for books published by Barnes & Nobles and St. Martin’s Press, as well as numerous online publications. Website: http://upmarketcontent.come a web site. Use your imagination and do not be afraid to try new things. Test everything you do and when you find something that works keep doing it.

About the Author

Tom Worsley is a successful work from home Internet marketer and independent representative for Strong Future International (SFI), Owner and Webmaster for http://kawarthapublishing.com.