Some directories ask a fee for inclusion. If you can afford a few, we highly recommend it, as this will count big time towards your search engine rankings. Be careful not to submit you site to insignificant, low traffic directories - go for big ones. A proper internet search will put you on track of better ones.

Step 2 : Acquiring relevant links to your site

In essence this boils down to establishing better reciprocal links. You will do this over a period of weeks, months and even years. Put an amount of time every week aside for this purpose. It will be a very good investment in end ! This long term link-acquiring program will eventually yield dividends. The trick lies in finding sites related to yours, but not directly in competition with your site or target audience.

You will need to "show cause" to other site owner why it's advantageous to link to yours. Start by compiling a curtious email link request message that you can use over and over. Make message personal by addressing it to a specific person whenever possible. Remember, more relevant links pointing towards your site, higher your search engine rankings will be. Coupled to good related content, it will not surprise me if you eventually reach a number 1 position on a major search engine for more than one keyword phrase !!

The next logical step would be to post all your articles to as many as possible article resource sites. Most will accept articles for free, while other might charge a small fee for every submission. Again, if you don't have much advertising revenues, use free ones. Good sites that will accept your articles for free are :

- Article City

- Go Articles

We cannot over-emphasize importance of articles as a powerful website marketing tool ! Writing articles will be time well spend. As with posting articles to your website, posting articles to a resource site could literally acquire 100's, sometime 1000's of links to your site.

4 : Join Search Engine & other Specialized Discussion Groups

This can be a fun way to market your website and products. Be careful though not to spam group you participate in. You will be expelled very quickly. On other hand, when you provide good input in discussions, your fellow groupers will not mind a bit of marketing for your website. The good thing of a discussion group is that it helps to gain you Credibility ! And credibility is what sells on internet. People buy from someone they feel they can trust, period. Like with writing articles, join a discussion group relevant to your field of expertise, site and products / service you sell. People will start to notice and remember your name. As with articles, you could be recognized as an expert !

5 : Offer Free Stuff, eg. E-books, Bonuses, etc.

People love to get stuff for free, and very sight of word FREE makes people excited. You can use this tool to very good advantage. Be careful though not to deceive visitors to your website. As with articles, an e-Book can be a fantastic marketing tool for your website. Yes, it will take a bit of your time in beginning, but return on your time invested in writing / creating an e-Book can be enormous. Be sure to offer some useful advice, tips, etc. in your e-Book, preferably something fresh & new. Don't bore people with same info found in 100's of related e-Books ! A top 10 e-Book can be most powerful marketing tool of them all. People are curious, and if you offer them very good & fresh content, they will be more than likely to purchase a 2nd e-Book from you. Keep on writing ...

There you have it - 5 very powerful tools with which to promote your site & products. Used correctly you will thrive on www.