In most basic sense, an online marketing campaign to attract global customers should include following efforts.

Register With Search Engines There's not enough room in this newspaper for a thorough discussion of search engines and their effectiveness (or lack thereof) in driving traffic to a website. Suffice it to say that 95% of search engine traffic comes from Google and Yahoo, so start there. It's also important to realize that just registering with search engines does not guarantee you traffic, but it certainly can't hurt.

Unfortunately, free search engine lunch ran out a couple of years ago when search engines figured out that people would actually pay for listings and higher placement. Since that time only way to guarantee a high (or at least higher than others) ranking is to pay for it. The two most popular pay-for-placement programs are Yahoo's "Yahoo Express" and Google's "Adwords." Visit their respective websites for details on these programs. Be prepared to spend several hundred dollars at a minimum to get your site listed.

Exchange Links With Similar Sites One free - and potentially effective - way to drive customers to your website is through link exchanges with sites of similar interest. Locate sites that make a good match to your own and contact owner to ask if they will link to your site in exchange for you linking to theirs. If you sell golf balls on your website, set up a link exchange with another website that sells golf clubs. You post a link to them and they post a link to you. It's called digital back scratching, and if done properly, can work well to drive traffic your way.

Go To Where The Customers Are If mountain won't come to Mohammed, then Mohammed must go to mountain. One little known way to attract customers to your website is to market your products on a mega-site like eBay. There are thousands and thousands of people on eBay at any given time and each one is potentially your customer, so it's a great place to drum up business.

Your goal is not to make a living selling on eBay, but to use eBay as a marketing tool to drive traffic back to your website. Go to where customers are, then bring them back home with you.

Let's use our golf ball example. Post a few auctions on eBay selling your golf balls at a ridiculously low price so your auction attracts plenty of attention. When customers make a purchase, add them to your client list and send them an email inviting them to visit your website for more great products. eBay also lets you create your own "About Me" page that you can use to advertise your business.

We have just scratched surface, but hopefully this is enough to get you started. I wish I could tell you that attracting customers to your website is easy, but truth is, it's anything but. It takes hard work, creativity and above all, perseverance.

Here's to your success!

Tim Knox tim@dropshipwholesale.net For information on starting your own online or eBay business, visit http://www.dropshipwholesale.net

Regarding theory being expressed that google doesn’t want you using keywords . Think about it. The whole basis of search process revolves around keywords. We don’t search for a whole page of matching data. We search on a word or phrase. Who is going to determine which words are relevant to our website. Of course search engines must leave that to us. Logic is part of that process and they still can’t get that logic from a machine. It is just too time consuming and resource heavy to try any valid effort at that. The search engines need us to provide that data at this time. If you have figured out point where search engines are deciding that “over use” can be stamped on this one, you have done well. I can show you heavy, heavy keyword placement that is being rewarded as we speak. That is now amidst results of google changes.

USE YOUR OWN LOGIC. Do what is working . If it is working, nobody can say that google is discouraging practice. Personally, I am saying only rule today is that “there are no rules”

Observe, apply logic, and react positively. Don’t quit on it, because job will never be complete. It will be a process of constant adjustment to needs of present time.

Tom Henricks I’m not considered an “expert”.