A web site can be a fantastic promotion and marketing tool that you can use to increase sales and revenues in your business. According to current research, the Internet is growing at a rate of about 2 million new users per month. These are awesome numbers and the marketing potential is fantastic... if you know how to do it.

The Internet, operates on the same natural laws that traditional Advertising and Marketing have followed for hundreds of years. To sum it up, it's all about attracting and continuing to attract attention to your products and services. The more attention you attract the more well off you typically become! It goes without saying that you also must be providing a valuable product or service that is perceived as having more value than the dollars and cents your customers are going to have to shell out for what you are offering.

So, how do you attract attention on the Internet? Well it requires some ingenuity and thoughtful planning and a multi-pronged approach. With over 3 billion pages currently indexed by the leading search engines, the chances of someone accidentally stumbling onto your web page are slim to none. Heck, if they knew who you were it might still be difficult for the average user to find you, if they didn't actually have your full web address.

There are several established methods used in marketing your web site on the Internet. Here is a summary of the major ones:

• Search Engine & Directory Listing: You need to get your site listed with all of the major search engines as well as key directories. Search engines and directories are the most common ways people find things on the Internet. If you're not available in these sources, you're essentially invisible on the Internet.

• Search Engine Optimization: Your web site and the text content of your web pages can be designed so that when a search engine analyzes your site, it will get ranked as a highly relevant site. A search engine will then generally display results in order of relevancy, to the term(s) searched. Obviously, your goal is to be as close as possible to the very top of that page.

• Traditional Channels: You can easily start by giving your web address out to your existing client/customer base, by putting it on your letterhead & business cards and putting it on all of your print advertising & press releases.

• Link Exchange: Often referred to as “reciprocal links”. This involves finding web sites that you think your target audience might be frequently visiting and requesting a link on that page, back to your site. You then create a page on your site where you list a link to their site. Your best results will initially be from smaller sites that are also looking to network and increase traffic to their sites.

• Paid Advertising/Paid Inclusion: Just like you can pay to advertise in print publications such as the Yellow Pages, there are relevant on-line publications where you can also actively advertise your products and services. In fact you can even pay to be included at the top of Search Engine results as a paid sponsor.