Given enough money a specialist medical professional could do blood tests sufficient to tell you exactly which vitamins and minerals you should be taking and in what quantities you should be consuming each of them. A highly optimized vitamin regimen is preferred but in the absence of the necessary funds or time or both, a good multi-vitamin is far better than nothing at all. Such is the case with your website value developement. A costly, well-tuned plan to improve your site’s placement in the SERPS would be great but if you lack the time or money then here’s a good multi-tactic plan to feed your website.

Target Market Needs

The first thing to do is find out what your target market needs. Makes no difference what you think they want; what they’re looking for right now is what you should focus your efforts around.

Do some keyword research through some of the free keyword tools out there and find out what they’re looking for. Then you’ll know what kind of content to program for, and what kind of links to pursue, etc.

Determine Other Sites That Would Be Interested In Your Content

Other websites need good quality websites to link to as supporting arguments for their own content. Who are they? Identify a handful of related sites with a good PR and make sure they know your site exists. You can do this via email to their webmaster. His email address is usually on the website either in the Contact Us page or usually at the bottom of the page in the fine print somewhere.

Find A Few Blogs To Work With

Bloggers write a lot of content. Bloggers need other good quality sites to link to in support of their statements. Bloggers like to have their content mentioned in other blog posts and website content. If you have a blog then you can mention someone else’s content in your post and/or create what’s called a “Track-Back” in your WordPress blog, which is a clever way of notifying another blogger that you’ve
linked to him. This technique produces a link back to your site specifically where your mention is located.

Forums Can Produce A Lot of Good Quality Links and Traffic

Their are Forums frequented by people that would be interested in your content. Identify a couple and frequent them. Make sure that you respond to questions posed by the forum visitors and that your responses have a link to your relevant pages included in your forum signature. This is allowed in most forums.

I get more traffic from the WordPress Forum and the CRM forum that I frequent than you’d ever imagine. Pick the right forums though so that your traffic is relevant to your content or it’s wasted traffic.

Produce Content For Your Market’s Interests

Your tired, shallow content with the highly marketized spin is of little value to the researching consumer (be they consumers or business operators). Find out what questions they’re asking (see above) then write or have written content which addresses those concerns. Simple enough.

You can write this material yourself or have a relative do it for you but you’ll encounter several inevitable problems with this approach: your brother-in-laws son doesn’t know how to write keyword optimized content for the web, and make no mistake here, there is an art to it. This is the same kid that can’t keep a marshmallow on the stick at the annual family reunion campfire, remember? You willing to place the progress of your business in his hands? Please say, “No”. Anytime the opportunity comes up to chase a girl your ongoing project will drop to the bottom of the priority list and you know that’s right.

Learn how to properly produce an article so you’ll recognize one when you see it. Then outsource it to someone on elance.com or similar sites that exist for just this purpose.

Submit Your Site To Local Directories

The sole purpose for local directories is to drive local traffic to your website. So make sure your website is submitted to as many as possible. These directories typically have a higher PR than your site will and so, will place better in the local search results than will your site.

Submit Content To Article Directories

Keep your best content for posting on your site or blog. Submit the non-first-rate content (not trash, just the stuff that only got a B+ from the teacher)to the article directories to drive folks from the directories themselves, and sites that have posted your content to their sites, to drive that traffic to your site.

Article directories, like all others, exist to make money. This is America for crying out loud. Filthy luecher is the medium of exchange here. We chastise those that have a lot of it and deride those who have none. It’s the American Way. What’s left?? For another column…..

Article directories are extremely popular with site operators that need content. They come to article directories to get a copy of your article, the one with your link at the bottom in the Resource Box, and post it on their site! This is what you want!! ezinearticles.com is the king of the hill when it comes to directories
of this type.

Videos That Link To Your Site

Produce a couple of inexpensive marketing or sales videos. This might be something your nephew-in-law could help you with. Somebody in the family has a camcorder and if not you can buy a used on on Craigslist for cheap. Storyboard it, script it out then shoot the darn thing. Do a little editing in one of the many free editing softwares out there then show it to a few of your friends.. If you have no friends
show it to your wife or one of your customers and get some feedback. Re-edit if need be then open an account on YouTube and post it there.

You now have a link from the video on YouTube, a high ranking site, back to your website. That doesn’t hurt. You also have an asset that your sales reps can use to sell something. Produce a handful of decent videos. It’s just not that difficult and your prospects and customers will think you’re a marketing genius. (Let them think what they want to think, please!!)

Related Posts:

• What is Page Rank?
• Directories Explained
• Local Directories and Why You Need Them!
• What’s The Most Important Page On Your Website? (Dallas, TX)
• Local Search: Are You Doing It Right? (Dallas, TX)
• Will These 4 Questions Help Your Business Grow? (Dallas, TX)

Phillip Crum is the Chief Idea Officer of MarketingMeasure located at 2414 Arbuckle Court Dallas, TX 75229, and is committed to the idea of helping small business owners do a better job of finding their next customer or client. He and his two sons,Tyler and Preston, also own a Sir Speedy Printing franchise and employ those additional capabilities in the overall marketing services menu of offerings. Phillip can be reached at 214-213-7445, or pcrum@MarketingMeasure.com.