Dr. Michael F. Wilson, an internet marketing consultant and who has written a handful of useful resources on search engine optimization, has come up with six categories of internet marketing strategies. The first is search engine optimization, and the means to achieve this strategy are numerous. Launching contests is one, and it ranks up there with careful selection of keywords, quality content (not those you can get for free) and how to use meta tags, headers, links and directories efficiently.

Starting good SEO practices early in web design demonstrates heightened sensitivity to the developed intelligence of the major search engines like yahoo, Google and msn. To market your product or service successfully, you need the search engines to be your best friend. But you have to play by the rules.

For example, Google has devised a way to gauge link popularity. This measures how much quality and quantity links provide incoming traffic to your site. It ties in with their mechanism called PageRank. Your web site will fetch a good rank score based on the number of visitors to your web site - quality visitors that translate into points of sale.

How contests contribute to SEO if youre selling a product or service, you will want to target your niche audience. By launching a contest, you derive valuable demographic characteristics of this niche audience. You tweak your web site in accordance with consumer profiles. Contests also provide product and brand awareness and help develop consumer loyalty. They improve online dialogue long after the contest has ended. As we all know, word of mouth can be a powerful tool (hey, did you know that theres this SEO contest organised by http://www.ambatchdotcomseocontest.us )

Contests will also enable you to track participation in terms of sellers and territories. Needless to say, if the contest turns out to be a mutually satisfying interaction between the contest sponsor and the participant, just think how many repeat visits that would bring to your web site.

So get ready for the spiders and robots that the search engines send out regularly to prowl the Net. Give vent to your creativity and start a contest!