You can never have too much traffic. After all, what good is it to have a website if nobody ever sees it? There are several proven ways to get more people to look at your pages.

Some traffic building methods are totally free, other than the time involved, and some require a little cash investment and some quite a bit. Regardless of anything else, the most important factor in attracting more visitors will be to give them something of value to look at.

You must have interesting, quality content on your site. Having great content gives people a reason to return again and to refer the site to others. Information should be offered that is helpful and useful. People only visit any particular place on the web because they want to find news, solve a problem or to be entertained.

Creating good content should always be the first priority. It should also be updated as frequently as possible to keep it fresh in order to develop a following of return visitors.

If you are not comfortable with writing your own ad copy, consider outsourcing the work. Find a friend or colleague with writing talent who might want to contribute articles. There are many dependable Internet sources that will write original content for a nominal fee.

Never copy material from another website for your own use and always be original. The major search engines are very sophisticated these days and will spot duplicate content immediately, sending you to the bottom of the engine listings. No matter what other forms of promotion you may use, you will still want to get in on the action that comes from search engines. This is where most people will look first for information.

Improve your search engine ranking through the use of keywords in your content. This is what is known as SEO, or search engine optimization. For example, if you sell dog food, be sure that those words appear in your page titles, first paragraphs and throughout all your articles, without over doing it.

Use words that people commonly think of when they want your product. Saying, “Gourmet canine cuisine” may be clever, but it will not be the first thing people will search for.

Another very important strategy to increase your traffic is the use of back links. These are links on other websites that link to yours. Using the previous example, if you are able to get a link on a site that sells dog collars or other related accessories, people will find you there.

Just as important, search engines rate sites on popularity and this will get you noticed and can bring you closer to the top of the list. Naturally, the best way to get others to link to your site is to offer to link to theirs.

Another way to get traffic and valuable back linking is through article marketing. This is where you place relevant articles on the various directories about what it is that you do.

When these are read, the reader will have the option to click on your main page for more details. This not only creates instant traffic, but also helps boost your engine rankings.

Finally, if you have a budget, consider buying advertising. The first listings you see when you do a search are not always there because they are the best. They paid for that position. The most popular programs are known as pay per click.

Companies like Yahoo, Google and others will give you better placement, for a fee. When you have someone click on your listing, you are charged a certain amount. This absolutely demands having good content, since you pay every time someone looks.

In short, HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language. It’s a language designed to create webpages. However, in regards to webpages, HTML allows for the creation of document-type structure by denoting structural semantics for text. This allows for things such as headings, paragraphs, lists, links, quotes, as well as other items.

HTML enables you to embed things such as images and other objects like videos or third party interactive tools etc. HTML elements in the general form in which the language is written. This language consists of what are called tags, surrounded by angled brackets, within a webpage’s contents. It is this format that helps write scripts, which in turn runs the page itself, factoring in appearance, layout and more when in regards to overall design and performance.

However it is more common now a days and much more practical to use CSS to separate the style or layout of the page from the content, so HTML styling elements are no longer considered good practice.

You can learn HTML online through how to articles and sample code etc. One of the best resources is w3.org. Practice creating a simple HTML document and learn only as you need to do specific things for your website for example. In time you’ll find that you will start to feel like you have a pretty good grasp.

No matter what learning path you choose in how to learn HTML, it is generally a good rule of thumb to focus one step at a time and start with the basics and take it from there. Many tend to rush, winding up more confused than is necessary, although there are plenty of resources available where you can practice coding.

There are many important factors you should understand and learn in order to get your website ranked high on the result pages of a search engine. And it pays (literaly pays) to learn more about the most effective promotion method, search engine optimization (SEO).

Most important tip on how to promote a website is that you should and must understand how to improve your website’s ranking when an organic (natural) search is made. This is different to paid advertising which is another method of making your website more visible. You can do this by incorporating search engine optimization (SEO) strategies in your webpages.

First strategy is that for each webpage that you create write a title that is keyword rich. A title must consist of between five and eight words. A provocative title will certainly help in getting better results.

Secondly, create descriptive META tags. This is a description of your page and should be a sentence that describes what the content of your webpage is about. This sentence should be no longer than 255 words and the first sixty should be made as attractive and provocative as possible.

Next, create headers that contain your main keywords. These will help you get your page ranked higher on a search engine. It is also important to position the keywords in the first paragraph of the main text of the webpage. Search engines will look here to see whether there are any vital keywords in the webpage. However, be sure not to try and stuff the keyword artificially and also remember that more does not always mean better.

When creating an ALT Attribute of the image tab, make full use of keywords that are relevant and very descriptive. This will give the search engine clues about your website and it also helps to get the page ranked higher with the search engine. And name your images using keywords related to the page in which you display the image on.

When using hyperlinks, include some keywords in them as the search engine will always look for clues to find out what the main focus of the webpage is.

It is also necessary that visitors to your website find it easy to navigate around your website. In addition, to learn how to promote a website, also requires understanding the importance of making the website navigation system as search engine friendly as possible. Try to minimize use of Flash and JavaScript which are good for human visitors but not very helpful when it comes to search engines.

Develop a site map which has links to different pages on your website; this will help visitors and search engines find your pages easily, and this can be especially handy as you website grows.

Finally, develop keyword focused webpages relevant to your overall site’s theme. Avoid drifting too far from your website’s theme. Search Engines will be confused and won’t know what you site is about and therefore can effect your website’s ranking. The more closely related your webpages are the better.

Before we look at these applications lets have a quick look at what a web site is and how it works. Web sites are basically no more than documents that contain all the text, graphics, flash animation objects, and links that you see on any website you open.

These documents are stored on the servers (computers) of the relevant Hosting company such as Bluehost or SBI, both of which are great hosting compaines. So if your website is hosted by Bluehost your web document with all the relevant goodies lives on Bluehost servers.

A website needs a domain name which is no more than an address for your web document. This consists of a numerical identifier and a name that you choose. This name should ideally contain some strong reference to what your site is all about as it is one of the most powerful “map points” that attract traffic, or people browsing the net, to your site. So a domain name of lawnmowers.com is not going to be very effective if your site deals with carpet shampoo.

The content or text on your site is the other powerful business magnet in your web document. If this text contains many relevant “key words” such as carpet, carpet shampoo, carpet cleaning etc than the mechanisms (search engines) that allow potential customers to find you will be able to do so easily.

Just remember, the net is a very densely populated place and you want people to find your carpet shampoo before they discover the competition so SEO (How to Optimize a website) is an important part of structuring your web content.

Now this is all usually driven by blocks of HTML (hyper text markup language) code which is a scary way of saying a programming language that all web browsers understand. Normally you would have to have at least a working knowledge of HTML coding to build a website. This has changed though and with the advent of programs such as Adobe Dreamweaver, FrontPage and GoLive which make the job far easier.

Both Bluehost or SBI for example offer tools and automated systems that build the site for you so you can focus on creating your content and your business. Both of them make building a website so easy that you will be left wondering why you didn’t do it long ago.

These systems use drag and drop protocols that allow you to simply create a design custom to your business. It will automatically generate all the necessary HTML code in the background for you. SBI for example goes as far as optimizing each page for you.

Web site design is a huge subject that would require a novel style instruction manual, but the good news is that with these website hosting companies these days, even a total novice with no knowledge of how to design a website can get the job done just fine. You may not have the raw power and flexibility to build a site from scratch, but you can still get a result that looks great and is optimized.

However, you can also learn how to optimize your website and in fact with the help of a few basic tips, it is easy to learn how to optimize your website.

To start off, you should begin targeting one keyword for each webpage. Create keyword focused pages or posts on you website. Avoid making a very common mistake which is to cram too many keywords into each page. The right way is to focus one keyword per webpage which has the effect on focusing attention on just one topic.

Include that keyword within the first hundred words on your webpage and also in the title of the webpage. But don’t overdo it in this first 100 words. Once is enough and only if it makes sense in the context.

The keyword must also be placed in headers within the text on your website. The page must start with a headline and this headline is considered to be the most important part of your webpage. This is why you need to include the keyword in the page headline but without making the headline and headers too long.

The next thing would be your Meta tags. An HTML Document has a head tag at the top of the source code. Within this head tag you can insert a page title, a description and a keywords. These are Meta tags and are very relevant to Seach Engines. Each of your webpages should have a main keyword and up to 4 additional keywords. Adding and tweeking the Meta tags requires modifying source code (the HTML code).

Make sure you insert the main keyword into title tag. In addition to the title tag add the main keyword to the description as well. Also include it in a list in the keywords. You can combine it with 4 other similar keywords which are synonyms or related keywords. But don’t add more than 5 keywords to this list.

Once your page is done and is optimized using the tips above, you must list all the vital keywords into back links to your website. It is normal for search engines to factor in the words that are used in title tags of links that are pointing to your website or webpage. This applies to internal links (links from within your own site) and external links (links coming from another website). So, by judicious use of keywords in back links it is possible to get your website optimized for all the major search engines.

As long as you follow these simple steps, you will be able to not only learn how to optimize your website but also get good results by using all the tips mentioned above.

The more components there are and the larger the components are, the more time it takes to load the page. So the best way to speed up website load time would be to reduce the number and size of objects and components per page.

There are several ways to reduce the number and size of objects and components on a website.

1. Combine CSS and Script files into one file instead of multiple files. By combining files you reduce the number of requests which in turn speeds up the load time.
2. Reduce CSS file size to less than 20K. Delete white space that’s not needed and use containers efficiently by targeting large chunks of HTML and avoid the need to use extra classes and styles.
3. Optimize your images by reducing the size of the image. Reduce the file size of any image to less than 100K. Anything over that will slow down load time.
4. Reduce the number of images per page. Combine multiple images to image maps if possible. The total size of the image map maybe the same, but there will be fewer HTTP requests.
5. Eleminate navigation images by using CSS techniques to achieve colored backgrounds, borders, spacing, roll over effects etc. avoid using images for navigation whenever possible. This can greatly improve your website load time, especially if you have lots of navigation items.
6. When an image is embedded into an HTML document with the img tag, this can increase the size of the HTML file. Sometimes this is very necessary. But avoid this for images that are displayed on all of your pages. Instead use the background property in CSS to display the images.

By reducing the number of files and reducing the size of your files you can reduce the number of HTTP requests and improve your website load time.

A sitemap is basically a list all pages on your site, and other information about each page such as: when each page was modified, how often a page is modified, and how important the page is to the overall site.

Does your site need a site map?

If your site is new and you have no links or very few links pointing to it then yes you need a site map. Search engines follow links from one page to another to find your site and your web pages.

So if your site doesn’t have any links from other sites then it’s hard for search engines to find and index your site.

If your site is mature and has many links pointing to it, a sitemap may not be that helpful but it won’t hurt. If you have a lot of content pages and they aren’t linked well then a sitemap can be helpful.

How do you create a sitemap?
The best thing to do is create a sitemap that follows or adheres to sitemap.orgs protocol. This is used by all the major search engines: Yahoo, Good, and MSN.

You can create your sitemap manually or use an automated service to create your stemmap.

Creating Sitemaps Manually

The following is based on sitemaps.org protocol. which is the accepted format for Yahoo, Google and MSN and any other members of sitemaps.org.

1. Create a new text file and name it with “.xml” extension. For example cbw-sitemap.xml
2. Add the following 2 lines of code to the top to the file.
   <?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>

   <urlset xmlns=”http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9″>

3. Then add the url for each page of your site including the index or home page ..
   
   

   <url>
   
   <loc>http://www.yoursite.com/ </loc>
   <lastmod>2009-10-01 </lastmod>
   <changefreq>monthly </changefreq >
   <priority>1.0 </priority>
   </url>

   For more details on the above xml tags visit sitemaps.org.

4. Then add the closing urlset tag to the end of your file.
   

   </urlset>

5. Save the file and upload the it to your site. Make a note of the url. Example: http://www.yoursite.com/your-sitemap.xml .
   
   Then submit the sitemap to each of the main search engines.

You can spend countless hours just looking for the right solution and then end up even more lost and confused. But the best way is not by research but by trying it out yourself. So to save you some time, I’ve put a list of the best 4 carts here at the end of this page.

This list comes from my experience as a developer and setting up, installing, configuring and showing clients how to use the system. I also get a good amount of feedback from clients.

So here is my suggestion and this is the one I make to all of my clients. If you have just a few items to sell, let’s say 10 or less and you don’t plan on adding any new inventory, then the best and easiest solution would be Paypal.

Now Paypal has a few different option. The easiest one would be Paypal Standard. You can create “Buy Now” buttons and “Add to Cart” Buttons for each of your products directly in your Paypal account. Then you simply copy and past the code they provide to your current website. You need a Paypal Business account and a website to do this.

Make sure you customize your web pages to give your visitors easy access to your Paypal buttons. Display the price and any pricing details like shipping etc. prominently so there are no surprises. You can also ask an expert to help you customize your page for the best response.

Now lets say you have more than 10 products and you will be adding to your inventory on a regular basis. In this case you need a shopping cart software that will give you some flexibility and control.

Below are some of the top open-source e-Commerce solutions that give you features to help you manage your inventory, orders and shipping all without any technical knowledge. They are all almost too good to be free. You’ll need an hosting service and domain.

The reviews here are based on my own experience and feedback from my clients. These are all fairly easy to install and setup.

1. CubeCart. This is by far one of the most user friendly in a technical and not technical sense. Clients who I’ve set up CubeCart for find it very easy to manage and use. It’s just intuitive. I spend less time teaching them how to use it because they can easily figure things out. Customizing the look and feel is also pretty easy to do. It’s full featured and is very flexible.

   Cubecart has a paid and free version. The paid version does offer some additional features and depending on your needs the license fee can be well worth it.

   The only downside to the free version is that you have to leave the Cubecart logo on the footer and you can’t disable the login requirement.

2. Magento is also a good one. It looks great and has some excellent features. The downside is that many people report that it is slow in performance, even on dedicated servers. It’s not easy to manage and customize like some other carts out there. Beginners find it difficult to use. It’s just not very intuitive.

3. Zen Cart has all the features you need to manage inventory, but it’s a little lacking in customizing. And it just doesn’t have a very user friendly layout. It’s easy to use and manage though.
4. OSCommerce is a great one with full functionality in managing and also customizing but it is one of the harder ones to use. It really requires some good technical know how to set things up and configure the thing. Once it’s all setup though it’s easier to use and manage. It’s probably one of the best free carts out there.

Is it something that’s in demand?  How much do you love your site theme, not jut like it, but love it.  This will be very important in the long term.  If you don’t love it you will be more likely to give up on it.

So Before you start creating a website, determine what your site theme is and make sure you love it.

Once you have a clear idea of your site’s theme, you’ll need to do some keyword research to determine if it has enough demand to build a site around.  Are there enough keywords?  And are these keywords in good demand. To find these keywords and other data, you’ll need some type of tool like Wordtracker, or Google adwords keyword tool.

These tools will provide you with a list of keywords related to your site’s theme and  search volume.  Search volume is the number of times that particular keyword was  searched for per month or year.   The results depend on the tool you use and their network of search engines.

Usually the higher the number or searches the more competitive the keyword.  So try and choose more specific keywords and avoid the broader terms.

Try to come up with a list of 50 or more related keyword phrases to build your site around.  Once you have a list,  organize them into a site layout. Start by choosing 5 to 10 navigation items or categories and which keywords belong in what category.

So for example if you’re site theme was “recipes” (this is probably too broad), you would type in recipes in your keyword tool.  I typed it in Google’s keyword tool and came up with 5 terms for the navigation.  There were many more and you can definitely have more than 5.

I chose the terms below just as an example.  When choosing take into consideration the number of searches and also your level of interest and knowledge about the term.

I like Chicken, pasta, beef, vegetarian, and desert recipes.  Or I was just hungry while writing this .

5 navigation items for site theme on “Recipes”

1. Chicken recipes
2. Pasta recipes
3. Vegetarian recipes
4. Beef recipes
5. Desert recipes

Then go to your keyword tool and type in each of the above keywords one at a time. If I type in chicken recipes in Google adwords keyword tool I get a list of keywords.  Here are some examples.

baked chicken recipe

chicken salad recipe

chicken pie recipe

chicken casserole recipe

And so on.

Now you take the keywords and layout a site map or site plan for your website.  Once you have your plan then you can begin creating a website.

1. Chicken recipes
   1. baked chicken recipe
   2. chicken salad recipe
   3. chicken pie recipe
   4. chicken casserole recipe
2. Pasta recipes
   1. Pene Pasta Recipe
   2. Angle Hair Pasta Recipe
   3. Shrimp Pasta Recipe
   4. Crab Pasta Recipe
3. Vegetarian recipes
4. Beef recipes
5. Desert recipes

Once you have a nice blueprint of 50 or more keywords laid out and organized as above, and you feel good about your theme then you can start creating a website. The next step would be to find a good domain name and choosing a hosting plan.