It never ceases to amaze me how often new webmasters set about their online business at the start without actually having clearly defined strategies on how to market and promote the website and the product.

Now this article is for internet marketing newbies, so the strategies for website promotion are fairly basic therefore experienced internet marketers are under no compulsion to proceed.

If you are a newbie, however, please pay attention as these website promotional strategies are what you will need to employ over and over again every time you have a new product to promote. Apply these basic techniques and the bedrock of success is laid for you.

Remember, no traffic, no sales.

Free listings in Search Engines: Everyone loves to get something for free. The same applies to free traffic. Consider building a keyword list related to your product before you build your website. This way, you write your website content crafting in those keywords for which the site needs to be optimised. Dont overdo it though as the search engine are becoming too smart and may think you are attempting to trick them. The more pages you have, the easier it is to have your site optimised for your chosen keywords.

Pay Per Click Advertising: Here the search engines list your site based on your bid for a particular keyword(s). Your position in the search listing strongly depends on how much you are prepared to pay for those keywords and the bidding price is also dependant on the popularity and competitiveness of your niche. This Pay Per Click (PPC) listings are the ones you see on the right side of your screen in the search results in, for instance, Google and Yahoo who now own Overture. Its always a good idea to know your website statistics especially conversion rates to determine how much you will be prepared to pay for those keywords what I call your bid price affordability. This way you dont operate your PPC Campaign at a loss. Know Your Numbers!

Ezine Advertising: You search for popular ezines (these are electronic magazines or newsletters) in Google or Yahoo by entering Keywords ezines directory. Visit these directories and look out for ezines that fit your products and also the subscription base of those ezines. You then choose to place Solo ads, Sponsor ads or Classified ads on ezines of your choice at an agreed price. The choice of which type of Ad and what ezine(s) to place your Ad would depend on your personal preference and your budget as well.

Linking Your Website: You need to set out linking strategies that can boost your business in two ways. First is that the more links you have, the more the search engines will rank your site and consequently your position in the organic search engines. Secondly, you get traffic deservedly from your link partners website. Im sure you will welcome targeted free traffic from any source.

Affiliate Marketing: Affiliate program are a great source of free traffic and income at no cost to your good self. Affiliates are business partners who sign up to sell your product for an agreed commission. You can make a fortune on the internet from a great product if you have tons of affiliates working for themselves and you. An affiliate software is necessary to track your affiliate sales, visitors. Dont forget to provide your affiliate with marketing tools and training materials to assist them.

Offline Advertising: This is quite often ignored. Just because your business is online does not mean you cannot generate traffic offline. You will be surprised at how potent this weapon can be. Write Press Releases about your product, Product review etc and send it to editors of newspapers and magazine. The one I love most is what we refer to as web ad. Here you use classified ads in newspapers and magazines to drive traffic to your site.

These are basic strategies you must have mapped out before commencing work on your website. This way you can start marketing the very day your website goes live. Always think marketing first.