Copyright 2006 Karl Stadler

It is late afternoon as the sun is slowly setting, you are lying comfortably on your beach chair watching the waves and your sipping a pina colada with one foot in the sand. A gentle breeze is bristles through the palm trees keeping you cool. You have two waiters at your beck and call, and another on standby for just in case. Next to you the dachshund is comfortably in his own chair with the latest branded dog sunglasses, watching the French poodles go by, thinking, If my legs were just a little longer. The laptop by your side connected to the Internet via satellite, announces every few minutes with the all too familiar sound that yet another payment has been made into your account. The utopia we would all like to be in, on autopilot, doing the thing we desire.

Now close your eyes and imagine yourself there.

If the Internet business was as easy as it is sometimes made out to be we would all be on that beach. Thinking about it, it will become quite a crowded beach, so we will have to build some high rise buildings to get the view, and before long we will have another city with everything we tried to get away from...

For most of us that utopia is our room or office and the view is mostly the computer screen. Pina colada's are replaced by coffee, but the dog is still in the same frame of mind. But honestly, nothing stops us from taking that holiday, I would however suggest leaving the laptop at home.

If you are reading this I assume you are a Internet marketer fighting your way through the dense jungle of cyberspace to get your spot on the beach.

This is a hard slog as the Internet is growing and changing daily and there is no surefire way of achieving top status and then just staying there, sorry if I just ruined your lifetime dream of a permanent beach vacation.

Making money on the Internet is as easy and as hard as it gets. Here are some tips on web promotion if you intend to get to the top.

There are three ways to drive traffic to your site:

1.Buy traffic, with PPC, banners, and so on.
2.Generic searches through the search engines.
3.Articles.

The first method is simple if you have enough cash to throw around, but I do believe that that is not the case with most of us. A well planned and executed strategy with advertising has it's rewards and can be very profitable but most marketers go about it the wrong way, you just don't put ads up and expect people to buy. It just does not work that way and that is why so many startup Internet ventures fail.

Method two is a longer term method, but if done correctly you will be able to sip some pina colada's on the beach while all the others are stuck in traffic.

Web Promotion is the best route to follow for sustained long term success.

You have to get your website seen by the major search engines, and you have to get ranked well in order to be found by people who are surfing. The main idea is to rank well in Google, but I guess you know this by now.

To get a top ranking in Google the following needs to happen:

1.Your site has to be indexed.
2.You must have links.
3.Your web pages have to be optimized and search engine friendly.

You are competing with millions of other sites and getting to the top is a difficult task for anyone.

This you might not believe, but you can do it for free, or close to, the only difference is that it will take longer to achieve your goal. By the way 24 hours is not the goal, more like 4 to 6 weeks is a good estimate.

Lets work backward from point 3 to 1.

Web Promotion: On Page Optimization

Follow these steps to optimize your page:

1.The page has to have a title within the title tags 'TITLE'.
2.The title must be relevant to your page.
3.Use your keywords in the title.
4.Choose 2 to 3 keyword phrases for your keywords, not a million.
5.Use overture search to find the right keyword phrases and check them in Google.
6.Choosing the wrong phrases will never get you ranked, when starting out aim low, 1000 to 2000 searches per month.
7.Your heading must contain your main keyword phrase and must be in the 'H1' tag.
8.You must have a sub heading containing your second or third keyword phrase and it must be in the 'H2' tag
9.Your content must contain your keyword phrases, one per two paragraphs, don't overdo it, Google will see this as spamming.
10.In your content bold each keyword phrase once with the 'b' tag.
11.Make sure your main keyword phrase appears in the last 25 words in your body text.
12.Your content should be original, and shouldn't be less than 500 words.

In a seashell that is the basics of what you should do to optimize your page.

Web Promotion: Links

For Google however, off page optimization is the most important feature to determine your rank. This is nothing else than links to your site. This is the factor that determines the importance of your site.

Thousands of links will mean nothing to you, you have to get links that are relevant to your site and your site content. Choose your links wisely because unrelated links will count against you. You can use link farms but be very careful it can easily come back and hit you in the face.

There are two ways of getting good relevant links to your site:

1.Find websites that are similar to yours and email the web masters and ask for a link.
2.Write articles.

By writing articles you get two distinct advantages:

1.You will generate web traffic from your resource box in the article, anyone who reads it can click through to your site.
2.You will receive relevant links to your site from each website that publishes your article.

Web Promotion: Indexing

Last but not at all least, you will only turn up in a Google search once your site has been indexed.

Getting your site indexed basically boils down to your links, if you have links pointing to your site, Google will follow those links from other sites find your site and index it. Again writing and publishing articles for web promotion purposes is the cheapest and best route to take. If you need your site to be indexed faster, you are able to get indexed in 24 hours or 2 days. For a 24 hour index you must have a link from a PR7 page, and for a 2 days index a link from a PR6 page. There are sites where you can purchase these links if you are really in a hurry.

These methods, shortly described here are the basics of getting a better life for the dog, some really good looking French poodles, and some relaxation time for you on the beach.

You can read more on writing and submitting your articles by following the link in the resource box.

Never stop dreaming!