If you have an e-commerce business, a blog or an informational or lead generation website,  it’s only logical that you’ll need plenty of traffic to be successful.   Strategies abound for driving traffic and finding buyers.  This post is focused specifically on a few key content marketing strategies.

Content is King. Content is King. Content is King.

Writing is a creative process, it takes a little time, but once written it will spread virally to hundreds, maybe thousands of other sites and the benefits are permanent. The links back to your website from creating remarkable content can also be permanent.  Google loves freshly baked content and your search engine optimization (SEO) will improve as well.

Getting Started with 3 Content Marketing Strategies:

1. Article Marketing

Very simple. Write excellent articles on subjects related to your area of expertise.  “How To” articles are always a great way to start.  Oh, and spend almost as much time creating a great Title as writing the article itself.  Your article title should be compelling and make people want to click through to see more.

Article Title tips:

• Answer a question you get asked frequently:  “How to Write an Effective “How To” Article in 5 Easy Steps.”
• Use numbers: “7 Quick Tips for Keeping the Weight off this Holiday Season.”
• Use a little fear: “Don’t Become a Victim of Your Own Ingorance: The 3 Hidden Dangers of Not Getting Your Annual Physical.”

After your article is written it’s time to get it out there for people to see.  Here’s what to do with it:

• Post it on your blog
• Post it on your social media sites (Facebook and LinkedIn)
• Tweet it to your followers
• Submit to article directories like EZineArticles, Self Growth and Article Base.

Make sure when submitting to article directories that you take some time to complete the Resource Box.  The resource box is the section at the end of the article where you can promote yourself a bit, provide a short bio and a link or two back to your website or blog.

Article marketing is an excellent method of building high quality one way links back to your site and building your credibility online.  Writing remarkable content not only stamps you as an expert in your filed but over time can create an enormous amount of traffic to your site with pre-sold visitors.

Next action: Start writing.

2. Blogging for Business

Blogging is another great way to drive traffic to your website.  Often taken for granted or deemed as not that important by those to unfamiliar with online marketing best practices.  The first recommendation I make to a new SEO consulting client is to get a blog integrated into their site if they don’t have one already.  It they do have one, my next recommendation is to start writing in it consistently.  Make the style all your own and don’t stress over getting everything perfect.

A couple of blog tips:

• Blog posts can be one sentence or two pages, it depends on your content and purpose.  Write concisely and build your post around one central theme.  Try to stay on track so you don’t lose your reader half way through the post.
• Blogs are not full length articles or EBooks.  Most blog posts are 300 to 700 words.  They can be longer (the one you’re reading certainly is!)  if the message you’re conveying simply takes more words to get across.  The point is to let the post be done when you’ve finished covering your topic. Don’t set measurements like, “I’m not gonna finish this post until I’ve written at least 800 words.”  When you’re done, you’re done.
• Make your blog easy for your readers to share (look in the upper right hand corner of this post for the “share/save” button) and also easy to subscribe to (now look to the right and you’ll see “Subscribe to RSS Feeds” and also “Find Us On Facebook.”

3. Participating and Getting Involved

Keeping your ear to the ground and being actively involved in the conversation has never been more important.  It turns out, whether you’re participating or not, the conversation about you, your company, product, service and competition is going on anyway.  Want some influence?  Get involved.

Here’s how:

• Start commenting on relevant blogs in your industry and/or where your prospective customers are hanging out.  You can find great blogs by visiting Technorati or Alltop and typing in related keywords to what you’re looking for.  Learn how to Claim your blog on Technorati by reading a previous post.
  • Become familiar with some of the higher authority blogs that allow comments by reading them for a week or two.  You’ll learn who you like and who you don’t pretty quickly.
  • When adding comments, what you don’t want to write is, “great post,” and that’s it.  Even worse is, “great post, now come look at what I’m selling by clicking here.”  What you DO want to do is add to the post; extend the conversation by adding your own thoughts and unique take on the author’s topic.  Even disagreeing or throwing in a little controversy is a great way to go, as long as you’re not being controversial just to get a rise out of everyone and you have a good reason for why you feel the way you do.

• Create Profiles and become active in a few social bookmarking sites.  Namely, Digg, StumbleUpon and Delicious.  Reddit is also great.  Doing this will ensure that your website gets indexed by the search engines almost immediately if it hasn’t been already.  It also builds high quality, one way links back to your site which improves your SEO and can really drive a bunch of traffic as well.  Having unique and interesting content on your site will naturally earn you additional links from other websites and blogs that will want to link back to you.
• Create a Facebook Fan Page, optimize your profile and get involved in the LinkedIn community and start building a following on Twitter.  Each of these are immensely important to your success online but require much more time than we have here to go through in detail.  To start… get started.  Any questions on moving forward after that let me know and I’ll be happy to help.
• Use Twitter Search to type in keywords to find out what’s going on…right now. Again, participate in the conversation, comment, and get involved.  Twitter search is a great tool, take advantage of it.

For small business owners the world over, the Internet has proved to be a tremendous marketing tool for helping them find new customers.  Of course, that only applies if you are a small business owner that has taken advantage of this opportunity.  If you have not, it cannot possibly be due to budget constraints; internet marketing costs a fraction of traditional marketing and delivers much more targeted and measurable results.  The only obstacles to moving forward then, would be lack of knowledge, and time.

The single most important online marketing strategy a local business owner can employ to improve her website’s standing with the search engines and drive more traffic to her site is by encouraging complementary sites to link back to hers.  It does take a bit of time to do this, or you can hire a professional to do it for you for very little money and be sure it’s being done correctly.

Thanks to the World Wide Web, there are no more barriers to entry.  This article will provide you the basics of building links back to your site… so knowledge will no longer be an obstacle either.  Remember, the financial investment is minimal, if anything, and the time it takes to implement these strategies is small investment to make for growing your business in this new world of e-commerce.

A fundamental truth in online marketing: If your have unique quality content then other websites will naturally start linking to your website. Subsequently, the search engines (Google, Yahoo, AOL, others) will give a higher ranking to your website.  This attracts greater targeted traffic and a better prospective customer coming to your website.

Just waiting for others to link to your site is time consuming. Simple actions can be made to speed up the linking process.

Here are the five top strategies for building momentum in actively acquiring links to your site.

1. Optimize Your Website Copy

Make your website copy interesting, informative and interactive. You can divide your articles, or information pages into three sections.

• In the introductory paragraph tell your visitor what you are going to tell them. In other words, give a taste of what the page on your site is about it. Make them want to read more. Hook them right away so they are tuned into your message and curious about what they will learn by reading further.
• In the next two to three paragraphs, tell them what they expected to read after getting an overview in the first paragraph. This is extremely important. Your content must flow naturally and with relevancy from one paragraph to the next.  Also, keep in mind a good sales letter or web copy focuses on only one point at a time. Don’t try to talk about everything and sell the whole store on this one page. If you do, you’ll lose your customer. Keep the writing tight, concise and focused. Respect your reader’s time.
• Finally, sum up with a conclusion. Recommend a solution or specific next steps.

Simple, straightforward language appeals to all. Focus on one or two keywords per page. That’s it. For instance, if you are dealing with home insurance then focus on a one or two keywords related to your home insurance products on one page and if you sell auto insurance talk about that on a completely separate page. Do not combine the two.  Focusing on one idea per page makes your website friendly to Google.

Moreover, keep an eye on what is referred to as your keyword density. Though there is a difference of opinion regarding the keyword density somewhere between 2% and 5% works well.  What that means is the main keywords in your website copy should comprise about 5% of the total website.  If your page copy is 300 words, use your keywords about 15 times.  The placement of the key words is also important. Try to get your keywords used early on, towards the top of the page if possible.  It also helps to make use them in titles, with a bit bigger font and even use bold type face occasionally. Just don’t over do it.

2. Meta Data: Create an Effective Website Meta Title Tag, Meta Description Tag, and Keywords Meta Tag

A definition of Meta Tags: This is a special HTML tag that is used to store information about a Web page but is not displayed in a Web browser. For example, Meta tags provide information such as what program was used to create the page, a description of the page, and keywords that are relevant to the page. Many search engines use the information stored in Meta tags when they index Web pages.

A Meta Title tag is the most important part of any website and is like an ad copy since it is used by Google in its listings. A short, descriptive readable title limited to 10-12 words works best with Google. Use your main keywords in your title tag.

If your Meta Description Tag that tells your potential customers what they want to hear, you will definitely get an added advantage over others in the Search Engine Results Page (SERPS).

Keywords Meta Tags do not have near the impact that they once have but many industry insiders still believe using them help improve your overall search engine rankings.

3. Create Quality Back Links to Your Website

Top TIP:  More important than anything else is how many relevant, complementary websites have a link on their website linking back to yours.  A link from an authoritative site, such as a .edu or .org carry even more weight.  The more “link backs,” the more popular and credible Google will believe your website to be.  Search engine rankings are sometimes referred to as a popularity contest, and to make it simple the more other sites link back to yours, the more popular your site becomes.  Higher search rankings equal more traffic.
4. Use Local Directories Effectively

A website directory is a website that lists hundreds or thousands of subjects, along with links to Web sites about those subjects.  Directories are excellent ways to build quality one way links back to your website.  The Yahoo Directory is the most famous example and the Open Directory is the highest rated free directory submission site.

If your prospective customers are local, make excellent use of local directories. For example, if you are in San Francisco, then go to Google and search for, “directory” + “San Francisco.” A list of all the local directories in San Francisco will be displayed in a few seconds. You could even try searching for, “Dog food ” + “San Francisco,” if you are dealing with dog food.   Submit your website to all suitable directories.  Or, to save time, it is very cost effective to hire a professional internet marketing company to do this for you.  You can get listed in hundreds of directories, both local and national, in a very short time frame.

Another tip:  If you hire out the work, make sure the submissions are being done manually, not automatically.  This is extremely important to improve your chances of having your site accepted to the directory.
5. Create a Proper Site Map and Google Site Map

Site maps are a directory of all your site’s pages with links to every single page and should be updated whenever a new page is added.  Sitemaps are extremely useful for humans and for search engines alike it makes the task of navigating your site simple.   A Google Site Map allows Google to instantly “see” your site and evaluate it. It also works well in getting Google to index (crawl, review) your site faster than it would otherwise.

Using the above strategies yourself or hiring out the work to an internet marketing company will have a dramatic impact on your website.  Increased traffic, greater visibility and more popularity can be yours in a short period of time if you start now and take these strategies one at a time.  The benefits are well worth the time commitment.

With compelling content and the above link building strategies you can make Google, and your customers, fall in love with your website. And after all, isn’t that the whole idea?