Buy a text ad in an e-mail newsletter.

Small text ads in e-mail newsletters can give you real bang for your buck. Look for e-zines that are targeted at audiences that overlap with your target market, and shop around for attractive rates. Because most e-zines are run by small publishers and nontraditional publishers, they are less-sophisticated about their rate structures and you can find low-priced ad space. This space is another great opportunity to provide a link to your site, concise information about what your company does, or even current promotions and offers. Use your web metrics to calculate your ROI on ads run in email newsletters and e-zines. If one ad doesn't seem to be generating high site traffic, shop around for a new source in your target market.

Perform a competitor keyword analysis to identify room for differentiation.

Use your web site analysis tools to examine how your competitors use keywords in their web sites and ads. Look at the specific keywords that your competitors are using in their PPC campaigns and natural listings: are they the same as yours, or different? Are their sites and ads above or below yours in the various search engines? This will give you some insight on how their keyword strategy is working relative to your own. If they are applying different keywords than you are, and are performing better, consider adding those keywords to your content. If you are using the same keywords and you want to get more qualified visitors, consider adding descriptive positive or negative keywords to the mix. If you are unsure about how to go about gathering the information you need for this analysis, talk with a company that specializes in PPC and SEO

Build links to create a network over which information about your products and services can travel.

One way to increase your traffic and improve your visibility is to build an online version of the old-fashioned Rolodex: word of mouth (or link!) and smart networking will reinforce your other marketing efforts, and can be a good place to start if you have a very tight budget. Build inbound links through reciprocal link exchanges to promote your web site. These links will direct users to your site from other, relevant sites, increase your company's visibility to your potential customers AND to search engines, and potentially save you some money that you can then use to focus on longer-term goals, such as search engine optimization. Building an effective link network takes time and research, however. You need to find good link partners, make link requests, wait for responses, manage those links, and check to see if your links are posted and operational. These are all straightforward tasks, but require careful thought how to build those links. Use site tracking analysis tools to track how many visitors you get from each link, and use that information to fine-tune your link building strategy.

Apply due diligence when choosing marketing tools and partners.

The online marketing landscape is saturated with companies that make big promises about how much web traffic they can generate for you. To make the most of your online marketing efforts, it is important that you identify which partners can both deliver on their promises and help you meet your specific goals. Before you sign up with an e-mail service, do some research on what kind of audience they target. If you target young adults who like gaming, it won't really help you to have your e-mails distributed to a middle-aged audience looking for luxury goods, and vice versa. If you find a Pay Per Click engine that you've not heard about before, ask them for testimonials before signing up with them. Finally, beware of deals that sound too good to be true – they usually are.

Distribute targeted press releases to relevant media outlets to increase visibility.

When your company launches a new product or site, or wants to share intellectual capital, write an article and distribute it to magazines, newsletters, web sites and other media that are likely to be interested in it. If you can, tailor the release to meet the needs of different audiences – for example, you might provide more detailed company information to investors and more detailed product information to customers. Be sure to include your company's URL and contact information in the press release. Keep track of when and to whom you release this kind of information, and use your analyze your web site traffic in the following days and weeks to see if there is a noticeable increase in traffic, and from where. This information can confirm your choices of distribution or inform you that you need to re-think your press release strategy.

Install a "Signature" in your e-mail program.

Most e-mail programs allow you to create a "signature" that automatically appears at the end of each message you send. Use this signature to reinforce your “elevator pitch” – provide your company name, address, phone number, URL, e-mail address, and a concise description of your business offering. This will be a great summary of your value proposition for people to whom you send direct marketing e-mails, it will reinforce your value for visitors who have opted to receive e-mails from you, and it can support viral marketing efforts – providing your information to third parties to whom your target audience might forward the e-mails. Using tracking and web metrics tools throughout this process is incredibly important. All too often a new website will try a myriad of techniques to increase traffic without the web metrics analysis to truly gauge which campaigns are successful.

Avoid superlatives, and support your claims.

An extension of the idea that there should be truth in advertising, ad services will be wary of overstatement in your ad titles and text. Avoid the use of terms like “Best” and “Greatest,” and if you can authentically claim to be “Top Rated,” be prepared to provide verification. Finally, if you compare your product or services to those of competitors, support for your claims must be displayed on the landing page of your ad. This consistency is important not only in developing a trusting relationship with your potential client, but in securing the success of your campaign. Track the effectiveness of the ad with web site visitor tracking to make sure you are communicating to your customer base and bringing in qualified buyers.

Create a search engine submission budget.

While free search engine submission (or registration) is still available, there has been an increase in "paid participation" programs offered by search engines. Using paid participation often speeds up the posting process, and does tend to generate more engine-driven traffic for your web site. Therefore, you ought to establish a search engine submission budget to ensure that your site is covered. This budget does not have to be extensive – Yahoo!, for example, charges about $300 for a year of coverage, with incremental charges for expedited service. Do take into consideration, however, which sites you want to have a pay to submit to. Yahoo! and Google are among the largest, but if you have a more niche site, you might want to consider other directories and crawlers. Keyword tracking, web site analysis, and your previous campaign results that your have captured using web tracking tools to gauge which directories and engines you want to target.

Create special URLs that let you track promotions and understand ROI.

Tracking URLs will help you to maximize your Pay Per Click Return on Investment. Place a code that includes your keyword and the PPC search engine you've used at the end of your URL so that you can track results of your campaign with your web statistics program. This will help you track which keywords and which search engines are generating traffic and sales, information that you can use to drop ineffective keywords or poorly performing engines, allowing you to better allocate your marketing resources and maximize ROI.

Submit your URL regularly and judiciously.

Once you have developed your content and coded your title, meta, and meta description tags, submit your pages to search engines. Pace your submissions – more than five pages per day per site will exceed most engines' maximum, and limit submissions to only a few times each week. Note that search engines regularly discard submissions without processing them. As you re-submit pages, you increase the probability that your submissions will be processed. Also, some search engines give preference to newer submissions, so you should update your site regularly. Use these regular updates to leverage the information gathered through your web site analysis, improving content, keywords and design to keep the site as fresh and relevant to your customers' needs as possible.