Building links has the sole purpose of getting high rankings in search engines, increase in traffic and getting conversions. “Writing for the web” is still a fantastic way of building links, getting exposure and directing laser-targeted traffic to your products/services. Although most folks say article marketing is dead, we are not talking here about mass article submission and so on but creating unique and researched content that attracts people.

If you feel you are not so familiar with writing articles than you should probably hire a professional article writer. Watch out when choosing them, nowadays there are thousands of so-called article writers that have no clue about writing content!

The first question is what you should write about or what you should pay your writer to write about? It is very easy: if you plan on getting at least 1 article published per week you should do some analyses with Google Keyword Tool, Question and Answers websites and even Google’s related searches. You will notice that most articles should be answers to what people are searching for. Tip: always take notice of what questions your customers/prospects ask and create articles based on those. If they want an answer to that, there will definitely be other hundreds, maybe thousands searching online for that very answers.

Once you article marketing strategy is up and running you should start searching for places to publish your work. Whether we are talking about creating Squidoo lenses, publishing on Ezine or even going with guest blogging, this strategy can definitely bring you some laser targeted traffic and not only – you will get as much as possible online exposure and you can (and will) become an expert in your field, whether we are talking about SEO, dog training or wedding planning.

Retail businesses are obviously always on the look out for ways to boost footfall in stores and increase traffic on-line. So you have to hand it to high street chemist giant for their latest idea.

The company – which has both a high street presence and a strong e-commerce brand – is thought to be considering allowing other retailers to use its 2,600 stores as pick-up points for customers who shop on-line.

The theory is that while there are many retailers with great offers, particularly in sectors such as fashion, they don’t have a good customer reach. However, Boots boasts more than 2,600 stores and in many remote or smaller towns, which means it could offer a great geographic spread of pick-up points for other on-line companies.

A spokesman for the store added that 40% of its online orders during the festive period were collected in-store.

At the same time, the health and beauty retailer has agreed a deal with Mothercare to design and sell a range of children’s clothing for Boots UK and Ireland and is also considering getting together with other retailers to expand its multi-channel click-and-collect service.

These initiatives would clearly provide a potential sales boost for Boots as they will drive increased drive footfall into its high street stores.