Web 2.0 is beginning to change the way Internet users and web developers view the World Wide Web. Just five years ago, web pages were much like pages in a book that we viewed at our leisure. Blogs, forums, intranets and community portals like Youtube were primarily for techies and early adopters. Now, almost everyone who has used a computer has participated in one of these interactive environments.

Article marketing is a vital part of any website promotion strategy. The articles that are published by directories bring qualified traffic to your site. A well-written, informative article helps to build your credibility in your subject area. The active links in the article resource box effectively help to optimize your site for the search engines.

Without a doubt, one of the best seo techniques for any website is to list the website in a popular online directory. If the directory is viewed as highly "trusted" by the search engines, then a link to your website will confer some of that trust on your website. In simplest terms, the more high value links you have from web directories, the greater value your site will be perceived to have.

Promoting your website doesn't have to be costly or boring. One of the more effective ways of promoting a website is by participating in an online forum. How, exactly, does participating in a forum promote your website and increase your traffic? Let's examine the ways.

Participating in a forum can increase one-way backlinks to your site via the signature file.

There is no question that backlinks are heavily weighted when ranking websites in the search engine results. Google has stated that their PageRank algorithm is based on the number, quantity, and relevance of links to and from a given web page. Increasing your position within the search engine results pages (SERP), can be achieved by increasing the number of related links to your web pages.

With more than 6.5 billion users worldwide, there is no doubt that the Internet is experiencing phenomenal growth. The total number of webpages online is in the tens of billions. Using a single directory to find what you need used to be sufficient. Now, with the enormous size and complexity of the World Wide Web we need directories for all those directories!

Exactly what is a directory of directories? It is simply a website that lists directories by their content.

No matter how you look at it, the best way to increase traffic to your site AND rank high in the search results is to have more targeted links pointing to your website. Notice that I said "targeted" links. There are several different methods of generating backlinks to your site. If you have cash to spend you can pay for links on a high PR site with lots of traffic or pay for featured placing in a good directory.

Internet marketing has become an exciting industry with the potential for anyone to earn a healthy living. You can easily get a website with your own domain and have it up and running within a day. The challenge is to create something that (1) you are knowledgeable enough to operate and (2) will bring in enough visitors to start making you some money.

Do you operate your own article directory? If so, you may benefit from some specific knowledge about better optimizing your directory for the search engines. Almost all article directories have the same components: database (MySQL or similar), backend software (ArticleMS, Article Dashboard, or something similar) and customizable templates for different pages of the site.

It is true that it's easier and cheaper than ever to establish yourself on The Net. But it is also true that the competition for website visitors and potential customers is fierce. This can be seen in the exorbitant bidding price of some hot keywords in Google's popular Adwords program. If you don't have the marketing resources of some of the big guys, don't worry.