Of course the first thing you will have to do is optimize your site for the major search engines. It is not hard, but it is very time consuming, and very essential that you follow all the recommended steps! But I’ve covered this topic in an earlier article on SEO Optimization, which you can also find on this site.

This time, I’d like to concentrate on some of the more creative and less common ways in which we can make our site more visible, in order to drive traffic to the site, and give ourselves a far better chance of increasing sales volume.

One that I have found very useful is through some of the main forums, such as those at Yahoo, MSN or Delphi. These sites usually frown upon direct advertising, so we have to be more subtle. For example, in my signature, automatically appended to each post I write, I use a simple text link to the article blog I run at my site. It is usually where I try out my articles first, before submitting them to Ezines like this one.

If you’re like me and are a regular poster on one of the more popular forums, then you should get quite a considerable increase in traffic. Since I added the text link to my signature on my main Delphi forum, my traffic has increased by almost 15%. If I recall correctly, Delphi has around 100,000 members, so that is a heck of a lot of potential traffic! As my site is pretty much aimed at an international audience, I naturally chose a Delphi forum with an international membership. That way you do not exclude any potential visitor, but certainly do include far more than if you participated in a more domestic forum.

Another is the use of signatures, on your emails. Whether you use a free email provider, such as Yahoo!, Hotmail or Gmail, or a POP3 account connected to your web/email host, setting up your signature should be a breeze. Mine looks something like this (the website is fictitious):

Michael Davies

Tel: (603) 7725 NNNN

Mobile: (6012) 337NNNN

Skype: abcdefghkl

www.mywebsite.com

For your FREE COPY of an e-book on Search Engine Optimization (worth USD89), by A N Other, one of the Net's leading Internet Marketing exponents, please visit my website at www.mywebsite.com/SEO-book

This too can be very effective in helping to drive traffic to your site. Obviously if your email contacts are few, the impact also will be less.

You’ll notice that I also have a Skype account (not the address shown, of course), and I use that too, for simple promotions of my site. I have personalised my account with a simple statement: "Please visit my website at http://www.mywebsite.com " appended immediately after my account name. This is shown in the Skype directory and is therefore visible to a potential eleven million visitors!

If you are not yet a member of one or more of the social networking sites, like My Space or Facebook, I strongly suggest you join. This is a very easy, very effective way to promote your site. Another is the business networking website, Linked-In, where you can reach many decision-makers, aswell as increase traffic to your site.

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