John Reese, a very established Internet marketer, just released part 3 of his Traffic Secrets 2.0 pre-release videos.  The purpose of these videos is to build hype for his new traffic building e-course.  Personally, I rarely spend money on those kinds of Internet marketing products, but that's not the point of my post. 

All three videos are light on specifics, but they do explain some of the general tactics that his course is based on.  If your current marketing techniques are starting to not work as well as they used to, take a look at these videos as I think they do a nice job of summarizing what I believe are the most current techniques that are still working to promote sites and improve search rankings.

Unique And Useful Content Is King

Without a doubt, unique and useful content is the very best way to drive traffic to a site.  Now when most people hear that, they think about coming up with something funny or informative to blog about.  However, from my experience, the very best content that truly drives traffic virally are tools and widgets that perform unique and useful functions.  This is what the Traffic Secrets Video #3 is about.

I gotta say, as I hang around some of the popular webmaster forums, I'm always amazed at how few webmasters actually know how to code!  To me, that's like being a car salesman in a foreign country where you barely know the language.

Of course, good quality written content will always get noticed, I don't think that will ever change.  But it's just so easy to start blogging these days that it's sometimes hard to be heard above such a large (and growing) crowd.

OK, I Lied A Little

Alright so no, right now programmers are generally *not* the best Internet marketers, but I think that's quickly changing.  As overall content on the web continues to improve, the so-called SEO experts that charge for sprinkling keywords into their clients pages and 'building links' by linking to their clients from directories and link exchanges will finally become obsolete.  Replaced by creative folks that know how to code, know how to create value and know how to virally spread the word about what they've made.

I really think the future is very bright for those programmers that are able to find a niche and then use their creativity and coding skills to quickly fill that niche with a free online tool, Facebook widget, Wordpress plugin, etc. etc.   More and more, they will be the ones that are really driving the viral traffic, getting the links and making the money.

...at least I hope so... ooooor maybe Google will come out with a tool that makes web programming so easy that anyone can do it and we'll all end up like the guy in the picture. ;)