Creating your first (or 10th) website is always an exciting time! You work hard to ensure your web site is alluring to your potential customers. Your images are up and your content is first rate. Now you ask yourself, "How am I going to get people to notice me? How can I promote my website?"

Marketing is an age-old process. Most likely even the first humans strove to market themselves or their goods to each other. It's a basic human instinct to want to tell others what we have, what we've created.

To effectively market your web site takes persistence, determination, and the ability to do repetitive tasks over and over - daily, weekly, and monthly. The central theme when approaching marketing (versus advertising) is to strive for the flood of potential customers typically found in the search engines. This type of traffic is considered "warm marketing," because those doing the searching already have a basic understanding of what they intend to find.

Even the big players on the net, like Wal-Mart, Amazon, and others actively seek the traffic derived from search engine searches. During the holiday season, a 2006 statistic shows Wal-Mart relying on 12% or more of its own traffic to come from active searches online. You may be thinking, "But I'd just type in their url myself." You would be wrong. Many a looker-turned-buyer start their way to your online business using a search engine.

Getting into the search engines is one thing, however, getting to the front of a search-returned result is the ultimate challenge all business owners face.

Knowing the value of keyword and keyword phrases designed specifically for what you are offering is invaluable. Many business owners make the mistake of going for "broad" terms, words and phrases they have no hope of getting decent search engine placement for. Pick too broad a term and you are going up against the biggies online. Their sites are at the top and at the top for a reason. Don't optimize for a word that is out of your reach.

Be picky. Be specific.

Once you have determined how you are going to go about your battle to the top, you must use a variety of methods to get there. The most difficult task a web site owner faces is sticking to a system. Haphazard marketing results in haphazard sales (if any).

Be diligent. Be wise. Know your strengths and weaknesses. Often outsourcing tasks can be the wisest option for those without the skill level, resources, and time needed to effectively promote a website.

With that in mind, the following are just some methods that have stood the test of time in terms of promoting your web site:

Article Writing

Writing is an extremely effective way to gain search engine recognition. You must be willing to write articles (or have someone write for you) on a weekly basis (at a minimum). Once written, your articles need to be distributed to as many directories as humanly possible - each and every week.

Setting up an onsite article reference area of your own is also a good internet business marketing strategy. But don't stop there... create a blog and/or rss feed and post your articles to them, too.

One Way Backlinking

Search engines love authority sites. To have your web site recognized as an authority means that everyone on the net points to you, without you having to "point back." The greater the number of incoming links, the higher your online business appears to the eyes of search engines and their spiders. Ineffectively done, backlinks can cost a small fortune and take up a huge chunk of your time to create. Gaining backlinks from high-ranking sites (in the eyes of the search engines) is very important. Backlink by linking forward whenever possible.

Reciprocal Linking

Once upon a time the be all and end all of having an online web site meant finding as many other web site owners as possible to link to your own site. Most of the time this meant, "I'll post yours if you'll post mine." Reciprocal linking is still advisable, but in the correct proportion. Your web site needs to have more incoming links than outgoing. In addition, for any reciprocating arrangement, you want to swap with complimentary sites, not competitive ones. Being selective is the name of the game with reciprocal linking.

When it comes to promoting your website, marketing is a non-stop process that must be executed wisely. Internet marketing also must be approached aggressively to rise to the top of the search engines for terms relative to your online business.

Too often when someone thinks, "I will promote my website!" they fail to realize just how non-stop that process really is. Gaining the first foothold and moving to the front for returned results is just the first step. Keeping and holding that position means never letting down your guard. Never give your competition the edge to move right past you.