For most people that are starting out with a website, setting up the site can be a challenge.  Not only are websites in a different language than regular English, but when you try something new it may be difficult.  Most people do manage to get something setup for their website and then expect the visitors to come.

But they don’t.

One of the most overlooked aspects of website creation is the marketing of a website.  If making the site is hard, most people don’t really have an idea of where to start when it comes to marketing.  Sure, you could go to a forum and read how to do it, but in most cases that still doesn’t help.

An increasingly popular option instead of doing the link building yourself, would be to hire a company that offers SEO services like SubmitEdge.com.  What they do for you is take care of the marketing of your site so that you can focus on building your business and making the money.

They can help you out by building back links through their directory submission service, or help you to establish yourself as an expert in the online community through their article submission services.  No matter what service you do use, they will help you develop a presence online, get traffic to your site, and generate as sales – which should be your goal right?

I was reading some financial articles the other day, as I am preparing to write some of my own and I wanted to get some examples of other people’s writing. I was pretty impressed with the knowledge of many of the authors and felt a little bit out of my league. But, I was determined to make the best of it.

I had received a Visa gift card for my birthday and I decided to use that money to help further my websites. It is a rather new venture for me and I am enjoying it immensely, and I was happy to have the extra money to use for advertising.

It has actually been a good year for me so far. My tax rate has gone down (I just didn’t make as much last year), so I have decided to use that extra money I am saving, to help promote my websites. As it is just a hobby for now, I do not have to use any out of pocket money. It is working well.

I am a website advisor for quite a few different people. It is a new thing for me, but as for creating and running websites has become one of my greatest hobbies, I thought I may as well help other people who are interested in starting, as I was a few years ago.

One of the big things that I push with my clients is keyword research. This is what will get you to the top of a search engine and it is one of the very best ways to promote your site.

Some of my clients have sites just for personal use and don’t care to promote it, but I offer them SEO services anyway. What they decide to do with the information is up to them, but I don’t think it hurts to promote something, even if it is not for business purposes.

I am also starting to offer article sites for my clients that would like to post articles that they have written, with links pointing towards their websites. This is new for me and some of my clients are learning right along with me, but it is more fun that way.

I was in search of some very cool websites with information on endangered animals. This is a passion of mine and I like to gather as much information as possible. It is so much more than a hobby.

At first, I was very disappointed, as I was pulling up sites that were full of just stupid stuff. Half of their information was incorrect and it looked like it was thrown together by people who did not know anything about the subject.

I decided to go in search of the sites that had received the best reviews for my particular category. I did a quick search on these and came up with quite a good list to start with.

I did find some sites that were full of just cool stuff on the topic. I even found one that would let me know, by email, anytime and animal was added or removed from the endangered species list. The site was exactly what I was looking for. Too bad it was so hard to find.

As we learned while we were growing up, everyone wants to be number one.  But the sad reality of this is very few people ever get to the number one position.  This can be in work, play or even for your website.

In fact, the goal of Internet marketing is both to drive traffic to your website and to rank in first place for certain keywords on the search engines.  Now, this isn’t very easy to do – especially if you are competing for very popular terms.

But thanks to the new advances in the past few years, you no longer have to depend on article marketing alone.  In fact, using other online media such as video and audio, you can get higher search engine rankings – and more traffic to your site.

Perhaps the biggest secret of getting better search rankings is this:  build links to your site everyday.  If you do this, first place will be a lot closer than you could ever imagine.

Most people remember to backup their data on their computer.  Things like documents and photos are the first things that people backup.  But what about those bookmarks you have made in your web browser?  Did you remember to back them up?

Sadly, most people forget and find themselves trying to remember the website addresses of their favorite sites.  It would be sad to forget how to get to your banking site, or where you found those fun websites that your grandchildren like to visit right?

Thankfully there are ways that you can backup your bookmarks online.  You see there are social bookmarking websites that allow you to save your bookmarks online so that you do not lose them if your computer crashes.  You can even submit website ratings for your websites and compare them to what other people think.

And for those of you who own websites, you can even stir up some Internet buzz by bookmarking your own sites.  If others find your sites interesting too, you will find a lot of traffic heading your way.

So, be sure to take advantage of the online services that allow you to save your bookmarks online.  Who knows when your computer might crash.

I want to start this off by asking a question:  why does everyone like to go shopping at the mall?

Because everything is in one place.

That is why I like it when I find a website online that has everything in one place.  Not only is it more convenient, but I don’t have to waste my time "traveling" between websites to find what I am looking for – most things would be only a click or two away.

That is why I was so excited to find ratingzone – it was a site that had everything that I was looking for.  First off, I am a big reader of net gossip – who doesn’t want to know what the celebrities are doing right now?  Okay, so maybe everyone doesn’t want to know – but for me and my interests that is what I want to read.

Not to mention my need to read the entertainment reviews about upcoming movies.  As an avid movie goer and with the high prices, you want to make sure you spend your money appropriately and only go to those movies that are worth going to.

Lastly, I like to read music reviews.  Though I don’t buy a whole lot of CDs anymore, I still like to know if an album is worth buying before I buy it – if most people say it sucks, I keep my money in my pocket.

So do I like everything in one place?  You bet – it makes my life easier.

Well, let me ask you this:  If I build a restaurant in the middle of the desert, will anyone come?  The quick answer is no – unless I do some marketing.

The same thing applies to websites – if you don’t market them, no one will ever visit.  Sure, if you pick a name like the name of this site, where someone might just type it in, you could get traffic, but if you don’t, well, no one will come.  So, in an effort to get a little more traffic to this site, I have been reading about link building strategies to better promote the site.

Some of the link building ideas have been common sense such as forum signatures, directory submissions and article submissions.  Now, these have been the staple way of getting links for quite some time.  But I wanted to find some other link building techniques that would give me higher search engine ranking and a higher page rank.

I found out that you could get high value links by commenting on other people’s blogs that have page rank.  Now, you don’t want to contribute something that is useless, rather, you would post a useful comment and get the benefit of a free backlink too – I had never thought of this before.

So, I will be adding blog commenting to my marketing efforts – I will let you all know how it works out in a later blog post.

Now, I know that most of you are skeptical about things that are free.  We have all been duped by someone offering us something for "free" but then we are supposed to buy something else.  What really bothers me is that when we do run across something that is legitimate and free, we usually don’t take it, because we are afraid that there is some catch.  What I want to offer you today is something I found that is free that has no catch.  Keep an open mind as you read this article.

The other day I was submitting my site to a general directory and I noticed a sponsored link on the sidebar.  I usually look over ads as I really don’t care for most of the things that are being advertised.  But this one was something different that demanded that I take a look.  It read: "8000 Web Directory Listings".

I was shocked!  Now, I was sitting here working off my list of just 150 directories and there was a site that had a list of 8000?  Needless to say, my small list ended up in the garbage.  I had to click on the link to check it out.

What did I find?  Well, I ended up at a links directory resource site that had listings for a lot of free and paid web directories.  They had reviews, and a list of the best ones to submit your site to.  Would you like to know how much it cost?

It was free.

I know I am going to take advantage of this free traffic resource, and you should too.  This is one of those times that you do get something good for free.

I can remember when I first started promoting my first website, it was a lot of work.  You had to optimize your pages, do free directory submissions, add your site to your forum signatures, and add your site to your signature in your email software.  And that was just the beginning.  I found myself writing articles, participating in groups and pretty much anything else I could do to promote my site.  It was very stressful!

Learning from my past experiences I realized that it wasn’t very smart to do everything myself – there had to be a better way to do it.  While promoting one of my blogs, I came across a blog directory submission service that offered just what I needed.

Now, I still had to do a little bit of work coming up with titles and descriptions for my sites, but beyond that, I didn’t even have to submit my site to any free directories – they would do it for me.  The time that I ended up saving from each site, allowed me to work on building websites instead of marketing them.

So, you stressed out website owners out there, reduce your stress, and pay someone to market your site for you.