Just the other day I was reading yet another blog entry that was claiming to teach 'the hidden secrets' of marketing online.  So I rolled my eyes and proceeded to read through the blog.  After all, if there's any secrets, I should know them, right?

Yet again, it was a promotion towards yet another empty ebook that explains basic concepts like 'you've got to have a dream, and you've got to sell products.'  What people need is real MEAT when it comes to marketing online.  So what I wanted to cover in this article is the ACTUAL principles that drive visitors to your website.  If you understand these foundational concepts, you'll never need another marketing ebook again.

1.  The first principle to be aware of when marketing your websites online is that it is absolutely necessary to have original, valuable content on your website, free of charge.  If your website looks the same as all of the other canned sales websites out there, no one will want to touch it.  If, however, you offer compelling, valuable content, people will WANT to come back for more every time they leave your site.

2.  The second principle I want you to understand is that what determines how a site ranks in Google is not how valuable it is, it's how many other sites link to it and how important those sites are.  This is called 'link popularity.'  So if you've got a whole lot more popular sites linking to you, your site is going to be seen far more often.  The fastest way of building link popularity is using a combination strategy of article marketing, social bookmarking, and video promotion.  The reason for that is because all three of those outlets rank extremely well in the search engines by themselves.

3.  The third principle of marketing online is making your page focus around a central theme.  Don't expect one page to rank for everything.  Work to rank one page around a few central keyword phrases, and then create niche pages within your website that you promote.  For example, my current main domain ranks in Google for over 100 niche phrases within the first five results, but those rankings don't all come from my front page.  It's the articles in my article directory that I promote individually for EACH niche.

That's it my friends.  If you keep those principles in mind, all you have to do is create MORE on topic content than your competitors and promote it properly!  Your mission online should be to get more niche traffic than any of your competitors, and to dominate every niche your in.  If you understand the principles that drive rankings, you'll get there ten times faster than if you don't.  Ranking is simple.  You simply get more relavent, quality information linking to niche pages within your site than anyone else, and you dominate.  It's that easy my friends.  I'll see you at the top.