With the advent of Macromedia Flash and Shockwave, online arcades have seen a rampant rise in popularity. Instead of visiting the local arcade in the mall, people are now able to play games on websites from the comfort of their own computer. If you own an arcade site, or are thinking of building one, there are a number of things you can do to promote it. If you type in "online arcades" into any of the search engines, you will find that there are already millions of sites dedicated to arcade games. When you see this, it is easy to become discouraged. However, there are a number of things that you can do to successfully promote your site. If you visit most online arcades, one of the first things you'll notice is that many of them don't have much content. Many of the webmasters who own these sites simply add games, and they feel that this is sufficient. However, content is one of the best ways to promote your site. When you have a site that is rich in content, you will begin receiving traffic from the search engines for various keywords. While many of the people who visit your site will simply want to play games, others will be interested in reading the content you have to offer. Another way you can promote your arcade site with content is through the use of article directories. You can write articles which are related to various games or the gaming industry, and then you can take these articles, add hyperlinks to them, and submit them to the article directory sites. Once you do this, webmasters who like your work will begin publishing your articles on their sites. Once their visitors read your articles, all they need to do is click on the hyperlink to be taken to your homepage. Article directories are excellent because they promote your site, increase your link popularity, and they increase your traffic. By using article directories, you will avoid the fierce competitions that is often necessary to reach the top of the search engines for competitive keywords. The next thing you will need to decide is the type of games you want to add on your site. The arcade games that you put on your site will basically fall under two categories, and these are custom games and non-custom games. Custom games are games that are unique to your site. They are often designed by you or a programmer that you hire. The advantage to creating custom games is that your site will have unique content, and people will have to come to your site to play the games. However, creating custom games will require you to either have programming experience, or the resources to hire a programmer. Non-custom games are typically games that other webmasters allow you to use on your site. Generally, you will simply paste the HTML code on your site, and then you will publish. It is a fast way of adding games of content to your site. However, these games are being used by other webmasters as well, so your site won't be unique. Also, you are limited to the control you have over the games. You can't sell the rights of these games to anyone else, because you are not the creator.