Copyright 2006 Rasheed Ali

Your web site should be one of your most successful marketing tools, but many first-time online home business owners don't know how to use their web sites as effective marketing tools. Your web site isn't going to help you if you don't have any traffic visiting your site and learning about your products and services.

However, there are quite a few ways that you can use to drive traffic to your site and get people interested in your business. Using these methods can help you to build up your customer base and generate profits.

Here are just four simple methods.

Article Writing and Directory Submission

If you've ever searched for a topic online, you've probably found many articles written by other people with knowledge or experience with that topic. If you've read several articles by the same person, you come to regard that person as somewhat of an expert in that field and may visit his or her web site for more information. That's exactly why you should consider writing articles and submitting them to online article directories. When you publish your articles, potential customers will come to think of you as an expert in your field.

In addition, most directories allow you to include a resource box or short biography with each article you submit. You can use this space to provide a link to your web site with a short paragraph about your products and services. Submitting your articles to directories is a great way to drive traffic to your site.

Participating in Online Forums and Discussion Groups

If you've ever visited a forum or online discussion group, you know that they can be great resources for finding out information about specific topics from web design to housekeeping. If you sign up for one of these groups, you can answer questions from other users and make your expertise known. While some groups frown upon using links in your posts, you can invite people to call you for more information or you can provide your e-mail address so that people can contact you.

Keep your answers informative and simple enough for anyone to understand and you can increase the number of inquiries you receive.

Exchanging Links

Link exchanges are pretty simple to understand. You find businesses that provide products or services that can complement yours and ask them to place a link to your site on their site. In return, you help them market their products or services by placing a link to their web site on yours. If you run a writing business, you should consider asking people who provide complementary services to do a link exchange. This can include web designers, printers, graphic designers, and other complementary professions. One of the most important things to remember when you do a link exchange is to use many specific words as possible in the text for the link. More people will click on a link that says 'top ten income producing careers' than a link that says 'careers.'

Not only that but the search engines, although they never admit it'value the number of quality links you have pointing to your website. This serves as one of the major factors to where your website will rank in the organic search results.

Newsletter Distribution

People who visit your site want information, so give it to them. Put together a weekly or monthly newsletter with tips, tricks, and information that they can use and they'll be more likely to visit your web site and continue to visit over time. If you're not a great writer, you can find free content on many article directories or you can hire a freelancer to put together some articles specifically for your newsletter.

Internet marketing is one tool you should learn to use to promote your business and see your profits skyrocket. By using link exchanges, submitting articles, participating in discussion groups, and distributing a newsletter, you'll become known for your insight as well as your products and services.