Promoting your site and generating traffic is a topic of significant interest to every Web Manager and designer. Getting a top ten ranking on the major search engines can go a long way to accomplishing this objective. Simply set up your Meta Tags properly, organize your web pages and submit your site to the search engines and voila! your done right?

It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that if 100 web managers submit their site to the search engines under specific keywords, at best only 10% of them will succeed in getting a top ten ranking (maybe 1 will get all 10). Search Engine ranking can quickly become a game in which you are constantly tweaking and changing your site in order to maintain or improve your position. In fact, I have only touched on this topic so far. There are many other factors, gimmicks and games that can be employed in the quest for the "holy top ten ranking". These include topics such as Gateway pages, Word Density analysis and much more. I will discuss some of these more advanced topics in future newsletters.

Although achieving a high search engine ranking is a valid and potentially profitable objective, it can also become quite unproductive. It is a lot like trying to ride the crest of a wave. It constantly moves and there is always some one else that wants to be on top. There are many other promotion techniques that can be equally or more productive than search engine ranking depending on your business. Working to improve your search engine ranking gets a lot of attention and press because it appears to cost nothing and can be learned by anyone that is willing to invest the time. This is deceptive however. Time is money or in this case, web site hits. At some point the time invested does not generate a profitable return.

So how else can you promote your site?

Techniques for promoting your site can be divided into two major categories. These are traditional promotion techniques and Internet promotion strategies. Examples of the former include 30 second Super-Bowl TV ads or World Soccer Cup championship finals for those of you outside North America. Examples of the latter are to purchase banner ads on all the major Internet sites. Both these techniques are guaranteed to generate some interest in your site if for no other reason than to find out were you are getting that kind of money. For the rest of us, the Internet still provides many opportunities to promote our sites and attract visitors at minimum expense.

A web site is a destination. Once you are successful at attracting visitors, what are they going to find when they get to yours? The content you provide your visitors will determine how long they stay and how often they return. In an effort to attract visitors, many of us easily overlook the content on our site. As most of us have probably heard, "Content is King".