You must develop and implement both short-term and long-term marketing strategies to bring a continuous flow of targeted traffic to your web site.

Developing a powerful strategy is a very important part of your success. However, unless your web site is specifically designed to sell, your efforts will be useless. You must look at the entire picture before you begin.

Short term marketing strategies are those that bring you a temporary boost in traffic. Although these techniques are very important to your over-all plan, they are only a temporary traffic source and must not be solely relied upon.

Short-term marketing strategies include:

Purchasing Advertising
This form of short-term marketing includes ezine advertising, banner advertising and classified ads. Although it is important to occasionally purchase advertising, it is short-term and will produce short-term results.

Bulletin Boards
Although sharing your expertise at popular bulletin boards can provide you with a boost in traffic, it is a temporary boost. It will not continue to produce results. Most boards only display a certain number of posts and the rest are archived.

Search Engines
Obtaining a high ranking in the Search Engines is a never-ending battle. You may have a top ten ranking one day and the next day your site may disappear. It is very important to submit your web site to the Search Engines, but trying to keep a top ten ranking is very time consuming — your efforts may be better spent on more effective marketing techniques.

In order to create a steady stream of targeted traffic to your web site, you must also market for the future. Long-term marketing techniques are those that will continue to produce results even years down the road.

So what are some of these long-term powerful techniques? Here’s a few to get you started:

Opt-in lists
Ask for your visitor’s name and email address. In return, provide them with a valuable publication, a free course or some other valuable information. By continuously building your opt-in lists, you’re creating a long-term database of potential customers.

Freebies
Give away something of value engraved with your name, business, product or service. Your freebie might be software you’ve created, a free ebook, or even a free course. The key to creating a long-term marketing freebie is to allow it to be freely distributed. If your freebie is good, it will quickly saturate the Internet and continue to circulate eternally.

Content
Provide the Internet community with free content. Content comes in a variety of forms such as articles, tutorials, tips, reports or whatever you’d like. Allow your content to be freely published in ezines and web sites. Content is a highly sought after commodity and can provide you with a great deal of free exposure for years to come.

A solid Internet marketing plan will include everything from your ad to your thank you and follow-up letters. Each process in your plan must perform a specific task.

1. Your short-term marketing strategies will drive traffic to your web site in intervals. Each time you place an ad, your traffic will increase. After a few days, your traffic will drop off.

2. Your long-term marketing strategies will drive a steady stream of traffic to your web site. Your traffic will continue to increase over time.

3. Your ad must draw your potential customer’s attention and create curiosity. It must lead them to click through to your web site.

4. Your web site will then take over and provide further information, while leading your potential customer to your order page.

5. Your order page will be packed with all of the benefits your product has to offer and call for action.

6. Your marketing plan will continue to be implemented by closing the sale with a thank you letter.

7. Your final step will be to send follow-up messages in the future to provide good customer service and introduce new products.

A marketing plan is an absolute must. If you have no direction, you’ll travel in circles and ultimately never reach your goals. Plan your work then work your plan. You may be pleasantly surprised with the outcome.

Error messages have numerous causes, such as misspellings, outdated links or internal server errors. When an error is encountered, your server will display specific generic error pages according to the error. These error pages are not only dead ends, but they are also very frustrating for your potential visitors.

When your visitors mistype your web address or click on an outdated link and receive the dreaded error page, they’ll most-likely click on their back button and never return. However, you can recover a majority of your lost visitors simply by taking the time to create some customized, user friendly error pages.

As servers run different types of software and do not function in the same manner, there isn’t a simple method for creating custom error pages that will work with every system. However, if you have your own domain and your site is hosted on a Unix/Linux server running Apache, this article will assist you in creating custom error pages.

If you’re not sure what type of server you’re on, visit the following web address to find out: http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/

Before we begin, keep in mind, editing your server files is serious business. Even one small typographical error can wreak havoc — make sure you make a backup copy of any file you’re planning to edit.

Guidelines for creating your error pages:

1. Create your error pages in standard HTML — just as you would create any other web page for your site.

2. Don’t alarm your visitors. Never include the word “ERROR” in large, bold text. Your visitors may immediately become alarmed and think they’ve done something to cause the error. Instead, be apologetic and encourage your visitors to click on the navigational links to locate additional resources and information.

3. Your error pages should look just like the rest of your web pages. Each error page should contain good navigational links, a search feature, and provide information in regard to the specific error they received.

If you’d like to see an example error page, visit the following web address:
http://www.web-source.net/error.htm

Once you’ve created an error page, save it as the error name. For example, if you’re creating a customized error page for a 400 Bad Request error, your page should be saved as 400.html.

Here are some of the more common errors:

400 Bad Request
401 Authorization Required
403 Forbidden
404 File Not Found
405 Method Not Allowed
500 Internal Server Error
501 Method Not Implemented
502 Bad Gateway
503 Service Temporarily Unavailable

Once you’ve created your pages, you’ll need to access your server via FTP and create a new folder called “errordocs” where you store your HTML files. Upload your new error documents into your new folder.

Your next step will be to locate your .htaccess file and download it to your computer. (If you use FrontPage to publish your web pages, you cannot customize the .htaccess file, as FrontPage uses the .htaccess file. Editing the file may cause errors in your configuration.) The .htaccess file should be located on your server where you store your HTML files.

If the .htaccess file isn’t visible, you can create one within a plain text editor. However, you must first make sure your server isn’t configured to hide the file. Your FTP program should enable you to choose to display hidden files and folders on your server.

Once you’ve downloaded your .htaccess file, open it within a plain text editor, such as Note Pad, and add the following lines below any other text that may be present:

ErrorDocument 400 /errordocs/400.html
ErrorDocument 401 /errordocs/401.html
ErrorDocument 403 /errordocs/403.html
ErrorDocument 404 /errordocs/404.html
ErrorDocument 405 /errordocs/405.html
ErrorDocument 500 /errordocs/500.html
ErrorDocument 501 /errordocs/501.html
ErrorDocument 502 /errordocs/502.html
ErrorDocument 503 /errordocs/503.html

If you’re creating your own .htaccess file, open a plain text editor and add the above lines.

When typing in the information, make certain you type it exactly as it appears above. You can include the error documents of your choice.

Once the file is complete, save it as .htaccess and upload it to your server, via FTP in ASCII mode, where you store your HTML files.