1. Prepare your audience. Basically, if someone does not want your email, it’s spam, plain and simple. Don’t try to trick anybody into giving you an email address! When you ask your readers to fill out a form, let them know what you are going to use the email address for. Specify whether your emails come out once per month or three times per day. Allow people to opt out before they opt in in the first place by being honest and upfront with them.

2. Use the double opt-in method. This means that a reader enters his email address on your site, then must click on an emailed link to confirm. Yes, it takes up an additional 10 seconds of his time, but it also prevents people from signing up their friends (or enemies) to receive spam.

3. Be professional. Use the same logo, signature and style on all of your email correspondence. Use basic fonts and effective color schemes. Think of your emails as an extension of your website or brick-and-mortar business, and design them accordingly.

4. Be relevant. Don’t email if you have nothing relevant to say. Keep your emails on topic, and make them timely: consider the season and the current trends in your business, and give your readers content that they can use now.

5. Be brief. A few paragraphs or a list of bullet points are probably all that your readers have time for. If your content needs to be more lengthy, split it up into more than one email, or provide a summary along with a link that your readers can click if they want more information.

6. Provide a prominent “unsubscribe” button or form. Don’t irritate people by making it a several-step process or, worse, by not including an opt-out form on every email.

7. Cater to your clients’ capabilities. Provide the option for them to receive their emails in plain text or HTML form. Another option is to utilize Multipart, which will allow those who can open HTML emails to view them that way, and will convert to plain-text when sending to devices that don’t support HTML.

8. Reassess your readers’ commitment after a period of time. Every six months or every year, ask your email recipients to click on a new “subscribe” button. Send the request more than once to those who don’t answer the first time.

9. Use other forms of social media, as well. Encourage your email recipients and readers to follow you on Twitter, like you on Facebook, and otherwise interact with you on social media sites. Being active in social media is a necessary part of marketing yourself in 2012, so don’t limit yourself to email interactions!

10. Take your readers’ suggestions seriously. Provide a space to list a reason on the “unsubscribe” form, and carefully consider every reason given. Periodically send out a survey about whether your emails are useful, and ask your readers what they’d like to read more about. Put up a poll on your Facebook page. In other words, ask for input, consider all comments, and make changes as necessary.

An email campaign may be just what your business needs, in addition to excellent search engine optimization and a strong social media presence. See maximum growth this year by taking every advantage of the technology available to you!

*Analyze what you already have. Use a tool like Google Webmaster Central to see the statistics on how many views each page has, how Google sees your site, and how many other sites have linked to each of your pages. Before you plan for growth in 2012, eliminate any pages that aren’t doing well, or that are not at the level of quality that you prefer. When your readers, as well as the search engine spiders, comb through your site, you don’t want to have them encounter pages with poor content or with broken links.

*Keep up with the times. In short, people are in a hurry. Many of your readers may be reading from iPhones and other mobile devices. Keep your content to the point and easy to read. Consider making an app for your website to make it accessible on smartphones and tablets, but this does add to the amount of maintenance you will need to do. In short, don’t forget about the large percentage of mobile device users who will be accessing your site.

*Don’t neglect the possibilities presented by social media. It has never been more important to have a solid social media presence. Your business should have a Twitter account, a Facebook page, or a Google Plus account… or all three! Use your social media pages to promote your website, as well as to gather a following of individuals who may become clients or customers. If you’re not familiar with the social media sites, consult with a social media expert for help.

*Commit to staying abreast of new trends. The future will undoubtedly bring new dimensions to search engine optimization and the nature of web-based business in general, and it’s important to stay informed. On the other hand, it’s also easy to get sucked into the daily fluctuations and the plethora of information available. Read about industry trends on a regular basis, but not to the point of obsession. As with anything, moderation is key.

Your website will survive the changes to the Google algorithms, and in fact, your business should thrive if you follow the new rules, which are really not very different from the old rules. Keep your content to the highest quality, don’t be afraid to eliminate what’s not working, and always be willing to make changes and tweaks to succeed in 2012.

Search engines work by using a software program called a web crawler, or spider, that searches the World Wide Web for terms that fit certain criteria –that is, the words in your search query. The most important thing to remember about these programs is that they are not human, and they do not see your search items in the same ways that a human would see them. Crawlers and spiders don’t see images or dynamic web page designs; they are text-driven, and they index results based on the content of an average of 20 billion web pages, including any tidbits related to the search criteria that might be incidentally included on any number of web pages. They are robots — designed to respond to explicit instructions. Robots, however, are controlled by humans, and they can be directed to target and retrieve information specific to your business or service. This is where search engine optimization comes in.

Keywords are the first and most basic tool in your SEO arsenal. Narrow, specific keywords achieve better results than broad terms. “Key lime pie recipe” would return more exact web offerings for your clients than would “pies” for your cooking site. Choose keywords that describe or relate to your content, and know your users and their needs or interests. Keywords can be inserted into page headings, titles, URLs, and other visible and hidden places on your site to increase hits.

Other ways to achieve the search results you desire, and increase traffic to your website include:

*adding links to additional informational sites or pages
*inserting links to other pages on your own website to the text
*adding your business to directories, such as Yahoo, Bing, and local “yellow pages”-type directories
*writing news announcements and press releases relating to your site
*joining or creating forums where you include a link to your site
*initiating or keeping blogs, or online journals
*creating a solid Internet presence through the use of social media websites, like Digg, Twitter, Google Plus, and Facebook

Ultimately, you must remember that content is what the user is seeking. Your content should be  practical, informative, and intriguing – capturing and holding the reader’s interest and imagination. Ideally, your web content should be concise and specific, devoid of spam and filler phrases, and  unique to your specialty.  Excellent content  should increase hits on your page, and should raise your search engine rankings in the process. It can also entice other website owners to link to your site.  Placing effective keywords and using good search engine optimization techniques is important, but remember: your goal is to not only maximize your search engine hits, but to attract real live humans, who can spend real money on your product or service, to your site.