Okay, you built your website…but will they come? How are you going to get people in your niche to come to your web site? You know they want what you have because you’ve done the research. But how do you get in front of them? Here are three ways…

First of all, send an e-mail to everyone on your e-mail list. Tell them about all the cool stuff you have, all the special deals and new products. If you are not collecting the e-mail addresses of your visitors, START NOW! This is one of the most important ways you have to contact your customers, so don’t neglect it.

It’s easy to collect e-mail addresses from your clients. Auto responders are programs designed to capture this information automatically, saving you time and energy. You can also gather e-mails through valuable free offers we’ll talk more about that later in this article. Auto responders can also send sequential e-mails to your clients, building your business even while you sleep. Big corporations do this to generate huge sums of money with Internet business. harness the power of this technology, and you can do the same.

You can also attract visitors by paying for them. The next time you search on Google, pay attention to the small ads on the right side of the page. Those are Google AdWords. You can advertise your site on Google, selecting keywords based on your Internet niche. You only pay when someone clicks on that ad, which whisks them to your webpage. It only costs pennies per click, and you can set your own budget and search terms.

The third, and most effective, way to get lots of traffic is through search engines. If you have good information on your particular topic, search engines like Google, MSN, Yahoo, and Ask Jeeves will direct a flood of traffic to your site. This “organic” search engine traffic is free.

Search engines help you find information. You type in “keywords” based on your preferred topic. Web spiders then seek out the information you request. Of course, search engines often return thousands or even millions of potential websites. Websites that rank most highly are at the top of the list. Customers are most likely to visit those popular websites, so it is important to rank your site as highly as possible.

Your ranking depends on two things: your on-page optimization (what’s on your webpage), and your off-page optimization (things to do off your webpage). Today, we will concentrate on on-page optimization.

Use these three simple tips to get better search engine ranks:

1. Add your keyword to the “title tag” of your webpage. When you right click your webpage using your HTML editor, click on page properties. You will notice there is a space for the title tag. Simply type your keyword into that space. From then, the blue bar at the top of your browser will display your keyword to the world.

2. You know that keyword we used in step one? We are going to use it again. This time, we are going to add it near the top of your webpage. Your HTML editor will allow you to tag your keyword as either H1 or H2. By placing your keyword near the top of the page and emphasizing its significance, you make it easy for web spiders to find it.

3.Use your keyword throughout the text. Use your keyword once or twice in the first paragraph. Add a keyword to the second paragraph, and perhaps at the end. Use the word count feature on MS Word, and see how many times you’ve repeated the same keyword - if more than four to five percent of your text is keywords, you may be penalized by the search engines.

Using three easy steps, you can improve your on-page optimization and increase your rankings in the search engines. Join us next time for Part 2, when we will increase your rankings using off-page optimization strategies.