When contemplating web design function combined with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies it is important to understand that virtually all elements of marketing are connected and interdependent. Each component may serve its own unique function, but is enhanced through the blending (mashing) of the various marketing strategies available. The combination of various strategies adds to the idea of a big picture point of view.

Let’s run through a few strategies to see how marketing elements can work together to create something bigger than you would have thought possible.

Social Media – this generally non-intrusive marketing tool can provide the possibility of blogging, video streaming and podcasting all in one convenient and highly viewed location. This off site page can also be used as a powerful backlink that can direct potential customers from your social media page to your primary website in one easy click.

Forums – this element provides a mechanism for customers to talk together about your products or services. It allows you to obtain free marketing research. The microcosm of a forum may not present an entirely clear picture, but it can forecast certain trends within your customer base. Customers enjoy a variety of third party viewpoints for consideration.

RSS Feeds – Real Simple Syndication can be a positive in alerting those most interested in new posts in blogs as well as any updated content on your primary site to any new audio or print material. RSS has to syndicate something so it makes sense to use this feature in traffic building strategies by syndicating your own unique content for general consumption.

Autoresponders – this marketing tool helps keep those interested in your site in tune with your site longer. It provides access to dynamic knowledge based information and can be directed to the customer at the point of greatest interest – and it does so hands free and instantaneously. It is most often put into action once a customer completes a transaction.

Email Marketing – when using this tool you are attempting to improve traffic to your site and convert visitors to buyers. Email marketing is best developed in conjunction with a solid website filled with useful consumer-centric information. If you provide solid email marketing, but have not developed a comprehensive site you essentially defeat the purpose of this form of marketing, so make your website stellar.

Ezines – you can use email marketing or RSS to alert consumers to new ezine editions. Ezines can feature PPC advertising for residual income and the ezine can be used to point customers to specials, discounts or freebies – and your primary sales site.

Traffic Building – virtually every aspect of the features listed in this article are designed to improve traffic to your site in an environment of trust. Social media and the use of blogs, video streaming, podcasts ezines, email marketing, forums, and RSS feeds all contribute to traffic building.

You can mix and match marketing ideas, but the more you can add to the mix the more opportunity you will find in the midst of improving SEO and affiliated marketing strategies.

In recent years the concept of SEO has gained a lot of importance. The terms White Hat SEO and Black Hat SEO have emerged universally as a marketing strategy to increase a website’s relevancy and ranking in the search engine results pages (SERPs). The SEO industry uses various techniques which can be ethical or unethical depending on the approach SEO professionals wish to adopt for optimizing pages.

White Hat SEO uses strategies which are considered ethically correct and legitimate by SEO’s as well as search engines while spidering a site. It would be best to use this tactic as a means of achieving top ranking in the search results and also boosting real time traffic to your website. These tactics will not lead to penalties which are generally imposed when Black Hat SEO is used and even though it may take some amount of time to reap the rewards of the White Hat SEO process, it will surely bring in promising results in terms of high rakings and also rank stability.

The whole idea behind White Hat SEO is to ensure that the content a search engine indexes and subsequently ranks is the same content a user will see. The content that you would find on the webpage would not be solely for the search engine but also keeping the visitor in mind.

White Hat SEO Tactics:

Internal Linking

A simple way to hinder a good website ranking on the search engine is by making it tough for the search engines to spider and index pages. Several websites may use scripts to provide fancy drop down navigation and so on but unfortunately these scripts will not be crawled and indexed by the search engine bots. They will go unnoticed by the search engine spiders since they are mainly text driven and are oblivious to images, scripts, frames, directories, etc.

Creating a site with scripts and fancy navigations may enhance the look of your website; however, it will prevent the spidering of your site. Therefore, it is essential to add text links at the bottom of your landing page linking to your most important internal pages including the sitemap.

Reciprocal Linking

Building reciprocal links is another White Hat SEO technique where you exchange links with other sites to get additional incoming links to your website. However, you must remember the following points when linking to other sites:

1. Link to sites that are relevant to yours

2. Consider linking to sites which have content that will appeal to and interest your visitors

3. Link to sites that have keywords you wish to target

Since this process is tedious and time consuming, avoid randomly linking to any site that you come across. This will not only lead to wastage of time and effort but also not bring in any results in terms of achieving a high search engine ranking.

Creating Content

This is an important part of the SEO process where compelling text has to be created that will attract more visitors to your site and add more value to your web pages. Creating a content rich website will not only boost visitor traffic to your site but will also lead to better recognition and indexing of your pages. Also, there would be many webmasters out there who would want to link to your site if they find it to be a good resource on their subject. Though content creation may take a lot of time, it will be worth the time and effort in the future.

Optimizing Your Website

This is another White Hat SEO technique which has gained a lot of popularity in recent times. Optimizing your site to improve its layout, structure, presentation, and content can help you gain better visibility and exposure.