Time to let you in on our little secret. You are probably wondering why we gave away such valuable information and some of our secrets to quality web design for free. In two words, Creative Marketing. Be unique, be different. One of the most important goals in web design is making your products and services irresistible. You want to drive new business and increase revenue. The more web traffic, the more opportunities.

Creative Marketing can give visitors a reason to bookmark your site and return again and again. We're not just referring to discounts, sales or product specials. We mean an Idea Virus. Have you ever received an e-mail with a funny joke or comic? Was it forwarded on from numerous people? Did you continue the forwarding chain? That's what we're talking about.

Create pages that are fun and entertaining or have a value-add and even contain hard to find information or links to complimentary services. Come up with an idea(s) that your competitors and industry haven't thought of. Once you find something that works, make sure to update it and keep it fresh as often as possible.

It's all about the numbers. You're looking for as many hits as possible. You never know who may have come to your website because of word-of-mouth, then realize that they need your products and services too.

As you review your website and spell check and read the text aloud for catch grammatical errors, make sure your site is search engine friendly. Edit your text to repeat your key words and key phrases as much as possible. Double check that you have the proper META tags and that your title is more than just your company name. The page title is a major factor for search engine positioning and definitely one of the most overlooked.

Use the image alt="" tag and put in keywords instead of the graphic's name. If possible, use hypertext links at the bottom of all pages that point to all the other pages even if you have button navigation. This helps the search engine *spider* your site easier. Include a robots.txt file especially if there are some sensitive areas you do not want indexed.

Once you feel you've eliminated spelling errors & silly mistakes, made your site interactive & inviting and your site is search-engine ready, submit it to as many legitimate search engines and directories as possible. High rankings in one search engine can help you in the others.

A few years ago, search engine submission would've required it's own class- it was that important. It is still important and can be a good source for web traffic but unless your site is the next eBay™, free search engine submissions are not going to make you a millionaire. Consider paid Internet advertising as well. It's easy, flexible and very inexpensive compared to other advertising media.