Offline advertising through magazines and newspapers is extremely profitable to most online businesses. However, the same is not always the case for online advertising. There are effective online ad methods such as pay per click engines, classified ads, etc. But the real key to success through online promotion involves creating rich content. People are on the web with questions that need answers, unless your products or services can answer their questions sales will not come so regularly.

There are some important steps you can implement in your business that will create a powerful content strategy for you as well as create an effective and useful marketing strategy. This will take some time each week, but even with as little as 30 minutes a day you can be well on your way.

1. Search Engine Optimization

Optimizing your site for the search engines means creating keyword rich content, exchanging links with other relevant websites, submitting your site to online directories, all which create strong backlinks pointing to your site.

Having relevant backlinks pointing at your site will get your site "spidered" more often by major search engine like google. This will then move you up in natural search placement as your site becomes more and more optimized.

Submission to directories is a great way to increase the amount of "spider" views and hits your website received. Submit to http://www.alexa.com to ensure improved rank as well as view all sorts of traffic stats for your site and your competitors.

Keeping your site rich in relevant content and having strong keyword meta tags is an important part of SEO.

2. Articles

Utilizing free articles is also one of the most valuable free promotion methods to develop rich content and increase your websites targeted traffic. Writing articles brand you as a trusted expert in your niche area of writing and create quality content for your site that search engines love.

If you don't know where to start or simply don't want to do the writing yourself you can always include other people's content rich articles on your web page. This is completely legal assuming the articles are unedited and the author resource box is intact unedited.

some major article directories are:

http://www.ezinearticles.com

http://www.goarticles.com

http://www.articlealley.com

When writing your own articles, keep in mind that article directories do not accept spam. Do not simply write about your own products or services, write about topics that would be important and useful to a wide range of web users. Then include affiliate or website links in your own resource box. This is a great way to build your web sites credibility as well as increase quality content.

3. Press Release

Similar to articles but also different, press releases are a great way to build rich content and increase targeted web traffic to your site. A press release is news about your business or website that is then posted on popular online news sources. Create them similar to articles with rich content and then submit them to some major press release directories, many of which have a high traffic rank and thousands of daily and weekly visitors.

Some great press release resources you can use are:

http://www.prweb.com

http://www.free-press-release.com

http://www.press-world.com

4. Blog RSS Feeds

Creating content rich blogs is a great way to increase your websites traffic and content. Utilizing RSS feeds is a great way to easily distribute your blogs content to other web sources.

RSS is confusing to most web users who don't really know what it is or how it is used. RSS is a form of coding that can be added to any website or blog. What the coding does is update itself with relevant content regularly. So if you have an RSS feed on your webpage of blog there will be constant content updates with relevant information. Due to the self-updating your web page receives increase search engine position and increased spider traffic.

When your blog is complete and you have updated the content several times, be sure to "ping" the blog to some major sources. "Pinging" will increase your traffic from web users and web spiders. The two most commonly used sites are:

http://www.pingoat.com

http://www.pingomatic.com

5. Free Ebooks and Resources

By creating free ebooks and reports and then offering them to your visitors, you create incentives for return visits and increased traffic. Fill the eBooks with quality relevant information about whatever topic you are writing about, but most importantly fill the eBooks with your own affiliate links.

Even submit your ebooks and reports to some major ebook directories for increased traffic and popularity.

http://www.ebookpalace.com

http://www.ebookdirectory.com

Increase the incentive to get your ebooks by making them viral. This means that other people can input, or brand, their own affiliate and website links into your ebook and then offer it to others themselves. This increases the traffic and users you have to your eBook offer.

After you have implemented these rich content strategies add other sources of income to your web pages. Utilize free incomes like Google Adsense or the yahoo equivalent. These place relevant ads onto your site which are constantly being updated, increasing the amount of search engine spiders you receive, and they are an additional source of income to you, even if small.

http://www.google.com/adsense

Online advertising such as pay per clicks can be extremely effective in promoting your website. However the costs can become too high for the type of traffic and amount of sales you are generating. By focusing on creating quality content for your website, and then promoting that content, you can continue to drive targeted traffic to your site for free for a long time. The most powerful and profitable website are those which turn up with high placement on natural, unpaid, search engine searches.

About the Author

James has been involved in advanced internet marketing and home business opportunities for the last 4 years within the frame work of a multi national billion dollar company. He is a graduated student of http://www.homeincomeuniversity.com