1) Web site promotion is a top priority for a web site owner, or the web site will not be top ranked and will not likely succeed. Competition and clutter on the web is so high and growing that only the most diligent and/or wealthy promoters hold the top positions in search engines like Google and Yahoo and are visible in directories and on banners and elsewhere.

2) Success at web site promotion and traffic building is a real science requiring study, expertise and work. But beware. Many so-called promotion "experts" are not, and most "SEO experts" are not either. Many are rip offs and scams, and often end up corrupting your web site code and making your site code partly invisible and "non-compliant" with W3C standards (which a good web site designer developer strives to maintain so the search engine spiders don't get lost). Don't let anyone but your Webmaster or web site designer developer maintain and manage your web site and files. Site files are not to be fiddled with by amateurs. A good web developer-webmaster keeps "versions" and backups (complete snapshots) of your web site files for several reasons, and no updates should be made which are not kept in such back-up repository, which is also important for copyright enforcement, and to return to a page version that ranked higher. Minor changes in web pages can reduce popularity. It's all about gradual change and testing or simultaneous testing to improve traffic and conversions. Changes in versions must be tracked and preferably done all at once periodically.

3) What is web site promotion? Promotion is marketing term for activities to increase visibility and sales that in regular business include things like creating "PR" events, special offers, giving demonstrations, samples, news releases and creating "buzz" about your company or products, including advertising is part of promotion. But on the web, web site promotion has a slightly different meaning, primarily building "qualified traffic" to your web site. Qualified" means interested in, needing and capable of buying your services or products, immediately or soon. In some businesses, most any traffic is good, but in most businesses qualified traffic is much more important. You should remember this very important distinction. Without it, you will not likely have web success.

4) Most businesses and organizations fail at proper web site promotion. On the Internet, site promotion is integral to all other aspects of the business and strategy. It depends on properly matching the business and resources to the best market niches on the web. Therefore, the central issue is having congruent strategies to include all the wording content of the web site which must match the most available key words on search engines. But that is only part of the problem. There are technical and search engine disqualification rules to consider, such as over-duplicating key words, and failing to properly use meta-tags. There is also non-paid promotion and directories and other forms of promotion to consider.

5) Other search engine standards and rules can be a serious obstacle to a high ranking. Even if you use paid promotion and "PPC" (*pay per click), top positions can not be achieved without good content that is informative, authoritative and distinct. The main measure of how authoritative is your site is how many sites link to your site and how much inbound traffic you have. Now you see it is a chicken or the egg type problem. Which comes first? Paid and organic (unpaid) ranking are also helped by the quality and size of the sources of links to your site. Links from major companies and information sites and directories in the "core" of the internet improve rankings.

So, promotion and ranking requires discipline, knowledge and time, even for wealthy companies.

6) The biggest misconception and scam is SEO-Search engine optimization companies promising you they can get your site to the top of search engines. What most don't disclose (which is fraud) is that a) they actually don't get you to the top, and b) when they do it is in obscure unused search key word categories and c) on obscure search engines. Others promise your banner or link placement on many web pages. Those pages turn out to be their own pages about gambling or similar things, with little traffic. Some people have signed up for $1000 per month for such rip-off scams. And who cares about the obscure unknown search engines and directories that no one visits? Focus on the bigger names and learning how they rate web site quality.

7) This brings us back to the first tier search engines and directories and inbound links. These are where the action is. Unfortunately, costs of PPC "Pay per click" bidding have gone sky high. That is called the "auction effect". It only takes 3 or 4 consistent wealthy bidders to drive prices wild, and now even the next lower 10 positions are expensive on Google. So, your big choice is whether you can spend thousands of dollars on bidding for PPC ranking, or spend thousands of hours building a better web site which MIGHT (or might not) rank in the top 10 organically. Organic ranking is placement in the regular rankings under the featured paid web sites (like on Google). Competition is fierce either way. Organic placement includes the coveted "inbound links" rating factor and great content to classified as "authoritative". Don't forget, you have to know all the other rating rules and technical aspects. Big content also makes for a difficult to navigate site and slow page loading. Only web developers-webmasters expert in all this can really help you balance and master these complex requirements. You may be better off in keyword phrase categories with 3 to 5 words which are more specific to your business and/or products. Those phrases should appear in your web page at least twice but less than six times.

8) Time is a critical factor. Either way you go, paid or organic, it takes literally years for a site to fully propagate if it is not heavily promoted by paid promotion, and even if it is, it still takes over a year. Don't expect much traffic or to make much money in less than 6 months unless you do things well the first time or two and use paid advertising.

9) Good promotion is planned from before the web site is even named. The name is important, preferably having important keywords in it. The entire site design, look and strategy is built around the web marketing strategy which is based on long research of competition and niches (gaps) in the market matched to an overall business strategy which takes all that into account based on resources and budget of the company. The first question is how much staffing and budget will be dedicated to web site development and promotion? If you do not have at least $10,000 to $15,000 cash and one or two dedicated staff expert webmaster and promotion persons to build and promote your site, you need to be doubly careful, depending on how complex your site is. If you expect to play at this part time with about $1000 total budget, don't expect much. You would have to be extremely lucky in your choice of services and products and how and where you offer them.

10) Next a web site owner must understand the difference between traffic and qualified traffic and conversions. Conversions are what matters: people who buy or join up. If you use paid advertising promotion, you must work hard to "qualify" and "screen" the people and traffic coming to your site. Paid placement, PPC or ads must screen out those who are not really interested or who can't afford your offering. That is high priority.

11) There is a high priority to have your web marketing integrated into everything you do, from the beginning, including domain name selection. Because it can take about a year for a website to propagate, it is also important to get a name early and get some semblance of a home page up as soon as competitor research is done and the focus, differentiation, positioning, style, keywords and marketing strategy are determined.

12) A key factor is whether you have flexibility. Do you have an existing business or are you starting a new one, a web version of your business, or a new web business? Understand that the web is different than regular business, with competition growing fast. The barriers to entry are low compared to "brick and mortar" businesses. You must have and emphasize some competitive advantage or expertise. See Checklist starting a new website.

13) The emphasis in marketing and in Web-Success pages is finding a niche and tweaking your business's focus and differentiation. Trade dress and style matter, but more important is the content and following proven advertising principles. Your site should also be fast and easy to navigate, or all the promotion in the world will not matter. Also, you have about 1 second to interest the visitor. Don't drive them off with obnoxious pop-ups.

14) Consider buying an existing site that someone lost interest in and did not promote properly, especially if the site is in a similar line of business or informational and has some traffic and ranking. You may then tweak that and use it as a gateway to your site. That is how promotion is done and one way to get inbound links.

15) PPC or pay per click advertising like Google is important, and if you have a budget for it, or even if you go organic, you must study their requirements for content and ease of spidering. Pay per click is a tricky business, and you must be an expert at screening prospects before they click !! Writing ad copy takes practice. Study successful business's paid ads that run a long time. Name the audience and product in the ad.

16) A key part of your business strategy has to be your budget and whether you can afford mostly paid promotion or rely on free "organic" search engine placement, which is hard to do and does not work unless you work constantly at it for thousands of hours. unless you are in a very tiny niche of unusual product with little competition. If you are in a major category with a common product, you likely will never compete with paying advertisers. Go over your goals, your business strategy and your web strategies with your web designer in consultation with their web business consulting arm to review your goals and make suggestions for more improvements to save you money and be more competitive in the long run. A good web designer-webmaster can suggest how to save money on PPC, narrow your focus some and how to use alternate hooks to more strongly draw prospects. These may require alternate domain names, if you get ambitious, to compete organically.

17) Avoid most web site promotion companies, especially those who only do "SEO" keyword and key phrase additions to your site. Don't give them the keys to your site!! They can mess it up. Do not play around yourself with a good web site using a WYSIWYG page editor, and we would especially not use Frontpage. That is a quick way to make your site fail or be costly and hard to maintain. Real expert web designers do it directly to keep code clean and compliant. Top experts almost never use WYSIWYG and never do so after the page is mostly built.

18) Do consider placing links around blogs, forums and places which will link inbound to your site. Consider minimal link exchanges. The problem with exchanges is people leave your site if you add links !! All outbound links should open in a new window.

19) Try to work out deals on link lists and top lists which can help organic placement.

20) Directories are a quick way to get some inbound links which help rankings. Better directories are also useful, generally and generate some traffic directly.

21) In summary, good promotion is a combination of many efforts and good planning, study and design from the inception, done diligently for years. That is like success in most businesses, isn't it? This is also a good time to really study proper web site design tips and factors for web business success.

Good Luck