The most robust online businesses are the ones that use viral marketing techniques. Most certainly health is wealth in this instance. This simple yet effective method is mind-boggling in terms of:

• Traffic generation
• Brand building
• Link building
• List building
• Profits

And it all happens at practically no investment. How can any Internet marketer not consider viral marketing tactics as part of his arsenal? And more importantly, viral marketing is not a new phenomenon. It is as old as time itself – and just as important.

There are a number of viral marketing techniques that can be harnessed to your business advantage, and with the advent of Web 2.0, it has become even more easy – and fun – and productive to make use of these techniques. What can be nicer than creating a powerful message – and then sitting back and letting others do the work for you? All you need is a memorable message that is exciting enough to have the immediate urge to spread like wild-fire..

Let us consider some viral marketing techniques that are doing the rounds very successfully:

1. Ebooks and reports are among the most used viral marketing tools. It costs almost nothing to create an ebook. You can either offer it for free in various ways or sell it. You can let your recipients rebrand it and sell it as their own. You can offer resale rights. The main thing here is to ensure that you provide a link to you on each page so that all those who receive it in the chain can come back to visit your website.
2. Free optin ezines are used as a viral marketing technique to build targeted lists which is a must for any online marketing business. By creating a useful ezine that's either html, email, web or blog based, it reaches the hungry information seekers on the internet who can then sign up to continue receiving it and also tell others about it.
3. Offering viral articles for reprint is another effective viral marketing tool. The beauty of this is in its simplicity through a well-written article, optimized for the search engines, with the author's resource box that provides a link and a call to action. This can also be reprinted for free, so long as it is reproduced in its entirety – resource box and all. As the article makes the rounds on the article directories and gets posted on various related websites, the traffic pours in through the link in it.

Today, Social marketing sites and blogs serve as a gold mine for generating targeted viral traffic. As part of the Web 2.0 platform, they allow the Internet marketer to effectively use viral marketing techniques in an interactive way to reach his prospective customers.

Link building is a key activity for any website owner, since it brings together two benefits that can mean the difference between success and failure of the site. One is a better search engine ranking and the other is targeted traffic.In the link-building equation, back links are considered most important because every time someone clicks a link to your site, the search engines view it as a plus to award you a high rank. Therefore, in your search engine optimization strategy, the focus must be on building as many back links as possible. The more the back links, the better your positioning with the search engines. When the search engines rank you highly, your targeted audience will find you more quickly, which in turn, will mean better conversion rates from visitor to customer for your website.

How To Go About Effective Link Building

One-way link building can be done in many ways:

1. Through link exchanges with related blogs and sites
2. By making useful comments on other websites and blogs so that people click your link to your site
3. Posting in related forums and newsgroups
4. Through article marketing where you put your link in the resource box
5. By posting free resources on your website so that other websites can link to them

These are just some of the ways. Natural one-way link building is the best since they are the most valuable in terms of high search engine ranking as they measure your website's link popularity by counting the number of one-way links coming into it.

Beware Of Bad Links

Please note however that it is important to be cautious in the link building process. You shoud stay away from mass linking to a lot of link farm websites – since that will guarantee that the search engines will eventually ban you. Also always keep in mind that links must be with websites that are related to yours. If you are in the music instruments business you will obviously look odd connecting to a food-related website and most likely your website will be penalized by the search engines.

Another point ot note is when your website suddenly receives a spate of back links over a short period of time, this can appear suspicious to the search engines. There are several webmasters that trick the search engines into ranking them highly.

The best way to go about link building is through providing excellent content on your website and also distribute it in the form of articles via article marketing, blogging, etc. Quality content wins bringing you quality links, raising the link popularity of your site.

It would simply be an ideal situation if visitors started flowing in as soon as you set up a website and put some content on it. Isn't that the best way to make money online? If only!When starting out on an online business crowd pulling content is not the toughest thing in the world, neither is it the easiest. Any reward requires some effort effort and making money online is no different. It requires focused planning and strategizing to be successful in the long term. Requirements such as setting up a website, registering with the search engines, deciding on promotional approaches and setting up a system to build your list and get targeted traffic are just part of the continuum. Among these, the single most crucial part is to bring traffic, as without a market for your product or service, you will not be able to make any money online.

A key aspect of online success is ensuring that good content is served and frequently. All the gurus and ebooks that talk about profiting from an online business and how to make money will inevitably describe the criticality of website content as it is one of the key ways to establish oneself as trustworthy and credible. One simple yet effective way to good content is article writing. As an online marketing technique there are few methods that work as easily and effectively as article marketing. Aligned to the right audience, focused content via articles is an efficient way to reach your niche market.

In this context, the million dollar question is how to create good content that your visitors will be excited to read?
Here are some quick tips:

1. Articles especially of the ‘how-to' kind. Examples: How to be successful online? How to get your visitors to read your content? You get the idea.
2. Short nuggets or tips – Examples: seven tips to get free traffic; five mistakes to avoid while designing a website; three tips to get the best out of a product.
3. The top ten lists – ten tips to choose your affiliate product; ten ways to succeed in affiliate marketing; ten ways to make money online; ten article writing tips.
4. News you can use – the latest news, forthcoming events, new product launches, etc.
5. Transcripts or video clips of interviews – could be with customers, with reknowed industry experts, testimonials.
6. Ebooks, reports on how to make money online
7. About us page on the website that tracks your success timeline and achievements, future plans
8. Articles highlighting new products, addition to product lines

You can also get readers to your website content through interesting polls, forum, humorous information, etc.