Get A Better Ranking With These Website Promotion Tips.

When it comes to internet marketing, you definitely need to get the word out there on the web what your website is all about and so gain the amount of traffic that you want. For that to happen, you may want to follow some of the best marketing on the internet and website promotion tips around.

And so for you to be able to attain your goals, I have presented here some of the promotion techniques that you may want to give a shot.

You should first try the top social networking sites particularly Facebook and Twitter. These are great places to send the word out about your website as well as nice place to build your network of friends and colleagues. There are even many instances of join ventures getting started because website owners get to know each other through these sites. On the other hand, do not be as active to the point that you start to annoy people. How? By saying almost nothing else but just about your own site.

You should get your hands on Google’s AdWords. It is the main source of Google’s revenues and for a very good reason. People are always using this search engine to look up for almost anything that they can think of. And when they are looking at the search results, that is the place where you would want to advertise your website. While you can do search engine optimization and get your website to the top of the rankings, doing SEO is not really free because there are still some expenses tied up with it.

Go into article marketing. This is actually quite an easy thing to do, the only hard part of it that I can think of is writing the actual article. If you are not a good writer or you simply do not have the time to do it yourself, hire someone to write your articles for you. Then you can submit your articles to the top article directories particularly EzineArticles. Just do not forget about the resource or author’s box where you can leave a link or two to point people to your own website. This is actually an old method of promotion but it still works wonders as claimed by many successful internet marketers.

Be active in the forums. Choose a few forums that are related to the theme or topic of your website and contribute there. Just like with anything else, do not spam the forums or you will risk getting the boot there. So why should you spend time there? Because for one thing the people there share the same interest as does your website so they are the ones that can help you get the word out about it. Another is that you will be allowed, depending on the requirements that you first need to fulfill, to place a link or two in your signature. So while this is one of the best website promotion tips, it is also a good way to build high PR backlinks to your site.

These are the essential website promotion tips that you should start working on if you want your website to succeed. There are many other methods or SEO services that you can try but try the ones mentioned here first and you will eventually see the results that you want.

Promoting Your Website Online and Offline.

A good website that can impress your prospect client is the first and the most important stage for your business. However after your website is developed, the next step is Promotion of your website to your target market. These can be done online or offline as follows:

1) Conventional print method:

Print your website address on business cards, company leaflets, company sign board, sticker, print on your t shirt, your vehicle as well. It will be good if the color scheme of the print matches with your website as it will create unique branding for you.

2) B2B online directory

There are numerous useful online directory sites where you can list for free. Among others are justdial, IndiaMart.com, tradeindia.com in India and and most nations now has some sort of online business directory specific for their country.

3) Email marketing

Email promotion is one of the most effective solutions to promote your website to your target market. Extensive email contact detail can be derived from B2B online directories. This B2B online directory can give a good information that is sorted according to your target market demography, hence your email marketing will be more focused. What is important is a carefully draft of your promotion email so the recipients is impressed and subsequently visits your website.

4) Search Engines Listing

People mostly search information on Internet by using search engines. All search engine list search results based on content of website and popularity of the site. So pls ensure your website content is written in a search engine friendly manner so search engines could easily find your site. You can also proactively submit your website to major search engines such as google, Bing, Yahoo, MSN so that they recognize your site as important. Your site may not be in top 10 ranking for famous keyword but in the worst case you people can search your business if they remember your specific brand, business name, or your easy to remember site address.

5) social book marking

Nowadays facebook and twitter is well know among many people to increase their social networks. It also can help to promote your website if you have one among your friends and friends of friends.

6) SMS

SMS is another method to promote your website. There are many sms marketing service provider who has large amount of mobile number database. You just need to briefly describe your product and request them to visit your website.

Top 5 methods to promote your website.

Don't make the mistake of ignoring website promotion. Every website is selling something, be it a product or a service, or maybe simply trust or a brand. This means you need visitors; the more targeted, the better. Simply creating a great site isn't enough, although it's an excellent first step. You need to be out there actively promoting it if you truly want to achieve revenue through your site.

1. Web Catalogs & Directories

Taking out annual subscriptions in one or more of the major web catalogs (e.g. Inktomi, FAST, AskJeeves, etc.) and business directories (e.g. YellowPages, Superpages) can help garner some immediate traffic for your website. Web Catalogs tend to work well for new sites, as they get you some all important links in the early stages. Business directories work for virtually any business as they put a listing (or ad) for your website right in front of people looking for exactly what you're selling.

2. Link Exchanges

This is a fantastic way to increase the importance of your website in the eyes of the search engines. The rationale that the search engines use is that if other sites are linking to yours, then your site must be important. A link from another site to your site is considered a "vote" for your site. The more of these votes, the better; to an extent, of course. Steer clear of such black hat techniques as link farms and free for all (FFA) sites. I recommend starting by asking your vendors, suppliers and customers if they could link to your site in exchange for a link to theirs. You could then branch out into related businesses that service a different audience (e.g. a competitor in another city that you don't service).

3. Search Engine Submission

This step is critical for any brand new website. You'll want to let the major search engines know that your new site exists, and prompting them to visit it with a search engine submission campaign is a great start. Don't bother buying a big 1500-engine submission package � there's only about 7 to 10 major search engines worth worrying about, and once you're listed on these, the other 1490 will pick you up (not that they'll send you any measurable traffic�). The controversy here is whether or not to continue a submission campaign. Does it help an established site? Does it hurt it? Our research indicates that it doesn't hurt. As to whether or not it helps � for some engines yes, for others no. A big tip to give you here is to be sure to work hard to get your site listed in the important directories like DMOZ and AltaVista.

4. Electronic Newsletter

An electronic newsletter is a fantastic method for staying in touch with not only existing customers, but potential customers as well. Provide useful, interesting information on a regular basis and be sure that people can subscribe and unsubscribe easily. Utilizing a good tool (e.g. Constant Contact) will make your life easier and allow people tor promotions.o forward the newsletter to their friends and colleagues (known as Viral Marketing). You can also use the newsletter as a vehicle for announcements or specials. Never charge anything to subscribers, and build your list by running contests 

5. Pay-per-click

I saved this one until last as I believe it is the single most important item in this list. If you remember nothing else from this article, remember pay-per-click (or PPC). By paying for visits from people who are searching on keywords related to your product or service, you are almost ensuring that your website will generate more revenue with a higher conversion rate of visitors to customers. The more popular programs include Google AdWords, Overture Content Match and Site Match, as well as smaller players like FindWhat, Kanoodle and Mamma.

Link Building-The Best Way To Promote Your Websites

Link building is one of the simplest yet effective ways for you to reach out to the desired audience. In the present scenario every company which owns a website, wants it to be as popular among the internet users as possible and get maximum number of hits on the site. Link building enables you to be just a finger tips away from a potential customer.

Link building is a process where in number of inbound links to your website are formed. This way you’ll have more chances of your website ranking higher in the search engine through multiple sources and also ensure more internet users visiting it.

It is noticed that more than 85% of the customers use the web to shop for something, tend to use the search engine to know the product / service so that they could get a segregated. Hence it becomes imperative for the website to be promoted in such a manner that the internet user finds it on top of the search results. Niche link building could prove as a blessing in disguise for a business that is striving for popularity and consistent internet traffic.

Are you reaching the customer?

Every entrepreneur wants to maximize the profits by increasing the internet traffic to the business website. It is therefore very important to properly link to the websites which are relevant to the same field. For this very purpose there are companies which offer services through which your website is easily in the proximity of the potential customer.

Winning the race

In order to win this race with your competitors, you need to find a company that gives consistent performance through which the client’s search engine ratings climb gradually to the top. It is always wise to find a company which that has good experience in placing your articles or links in the directories that can boost the internet traffic. Guaranteed directory listing plays a crucial role in doing so. It is one of the most reliable and effective ways to achieve higher search engine rankings.

Stand out in the crowd

With hundreds of websites trying to get in as much internet traffic for themselves as possible, you need to find a proven method in order to ensure substantial traffic is diverted towards your business consistently. You need to have a proper strategy to pull internet traffic and thus boost your profits. You could be different from hundreds in the crowd by opting for an effective link building service which can prove worthwhile in terms of generating greater revenue.

Before selecting a link building company, care should be taken to do proper homework on the credentials of the company. A good choice can help you promote your website / business tremendously thus encouraging hundreds of customers to make business with you. Promote your business in the best possible way and see reap in the benefits.

8 Simple Strategies for Web Site Promotion

Without the right planning, you can easily spend a lot of time and money creating a website that doesn’t perform as well as you expected. So, whether you’re just creating your website, or you want better performance from your current one, here’s 8 Simple Strategies you must use to improve your website sales and profits.

No 1. Find The Way To Be Unique

Understand your unique selling points (USPs). Then you can make sure that you highlight them in your website copy. Many sites look very similar and the more unique you can make yours, the more people are likely to remember and buy from your site. Give your visitors what they are looking for and tell them why you are the person they need to provide it

No 2. Have A Strategy To Drive Traffic to Your Website

People will not just arrive at your website and buy your products, You have to have a continuous strategy to drive traffic to your website. Some ways you can use to drive traffic to your website are:

• Pay Per Click Advertising
• Optimization For Natural Search Engine Listings Mutual Linking With Other Relevant Sites
• Article Marketing and Ezine Advertising
• Having An Affiliate Program
• Advertising Offline

No 3. Always Get Your Visitors’ Details

Always get your visitors’ names and email addresses. Then you can send them relevant articles and information regularly. Providing you send them useful and interesting emails, you will build their relationship with you and your products and make future sales more likely. Typical ways you can collect visitors’ names and email addresses are to:

• Use an opt-in box on each page, offering a free sign-up incentive.
• Use pop-ups, pop-unders or exit pop-ups, either in addition to the opt-in form or instead of it.
• Offer a trial or demonstration of your product. Free access to a short extract from an ebook or audio, or maybe a two week free trial of a software product.
• Offer something specially produced for the sign-up incentive, like an audio recording or a PDF report.

No 4. Use Compelling Headlines

Your readers will use your headline to determine whether, or not, they want to read the rest of the page. So, your headline must be dynamic and attention grabbing and express the benefits of the product. Internet users generally skim through sales copy and you need to make it easy for them to find key points. Keep paragraphs short and easy to read and identify main points with sub headlines.

No 5. Make Navigation Easy

Making navigation easy for visitors will improve your website sales and profits. If your site navigation is confusing, visitors will leave. Specific points to note are:

• Clearly guide visitors to the action you want them to take.
• Use text rather than graphics, or graphics with text instructions. Then what you want visitors to do will always be understood.
• Keep your links in the same place on pages. Be consistent throughout your site.
• Make sure your links show up easily against the background. Dark text on dark background is always difficult to read. Check the color after the link is clicked as well.

No 6. Use Graphics With Caution

Flashing animations or graphics, irrelevant to your site, won’t enhance your visitor’s experience, they just make it harder for them to read your content. Although they are great at getting people’s attention, limit graphics to uses where they enhance the content or clearly highlight an action to be taken.

No 7. Demonstrate Your Trustworthiness

Internet users are often cautious when buying anything online. Some good ways you can demonstrate why they should trust you are:

• Include testimonials from satisfied customers.
• List your contact information, including telephone number.
• Display photographs of you and your products.
• Use well known payment facilities like Worldpay.
• Offer a guarantee and always honor it.

No 8. Set Up Visitor Statistic Tracking

Tracking website statistics is essential. Basic statistics you need to be monitoring are:

• Website daily traffic statistics.
• Opt-in or email sign up rates.
• Sales conversion rates
• Average visitor value

From these basic statistics you can monitor changes to your site and evaluate their cost effectiveness.

If you’ve already got a working site, use these 8 essential points as a check list. And if you’re currently putting your site together, make sure that you incorporate these simple website strategies to improve your website sales and profits from the very start.

Website Design for SEO

Simple Strategies for Web Site Promotion

When you want to spread the word about your web site, you need some tips on web site promotion. Denver area businesses are often wondering whether they should follow their competitor's advertising strategies or if there's a simpler way to get the word out. Luckily, you don't need to spend a lot of time or a lot of money on web site promotion. Here are some simple ways that you can generate a buzz without creating a dent in your business budget.

The first way to promote your web site is to create a blog. These journaling web sites are easy to set up, simple to use, and are often more visited than larger web sites. You can find many blogging systems to be free of charge and with a little study, you can make them as complicated or as simple as you like. In terms of web site promotion, Denver blogs work well because they address the reader on a more casual level. Instead of trying to force information onto someone, the goal of a blog is to create a discussion that will entice readers to want to find out more - and then you add a link to your site. Here are some things that you can add to your blog:

· Links to your business web site

· Links to related informational web sites (as long as you as permission)

· Comments feature that will allow readers to interact

· RSS feed so that readers can get instant updates whenever you add an entry

· Quality content that allows readers to learn more about your product or business

Another simple way to begin to advertise your web site is to add a small link at the end of all of your emails - both personal and business. This will help to spread the word about your website, even if the reader is not interested. Often enough, people will forward e-mails instead of writing new ones, so your web site link will be able to travel far without any help from you. In terms of web site promotion, Denver businesses find this method to be the simplest, but not always the most effective.

For some of the best web site promotion, Denver businesses like to use forums to help introduce themselves to potential customers. What you'll do is register on a forum that will include people that are interested in your business topic and then begin to make regular postings. This isn't the time to necessarily promote your business, but rather you should try to establish yourself as an expert on the topic. And by subtly adding your web site link under your signature, you will entice people to click on the link if they appreciate the knowledge you do demonstrate.

In terms of web site promotion, Denver businesses understand that it's not necessarily the biggest things that make the most impact. It's knowing how these small tips work to reach the customers that will be interested in your product - that's the key to your success.

Promoting Your Web Site.

Creating a successful Internet presence involves much more than designing a great web site or having the "perfect" product. Listing your web site with the Search Engines is your first step; however, you must not solely rely on the Search Engines to bring you traffic.

You must design a complete promotional strategy and work it every day. If you're launching a new web site, your first step will be to submit your site to the Search Engines and Directories.

Although there are many auto-submission software programs available on the Internet, make sure you manually submit your site to the main Search Engines and Directories:

Google http://www.google.com/addurl.html (Although you can submit your site map to Google, you will receive a higher ranking by allowing their robots to find your pages on their
own.)
The Open Directory Project http://dmoz.org/add.html
AltaVista http://www.altavista.com/addurl
Lycos http://www.lycos.com/addasite.html
Hotbot http://hotbot.lycos.com/addurl.asp

Once you've manually submitted your main pages, visit SelfPromotion.com http://www.selfpromotion.com to automatically submit your pages to a number of additional Search Engines and Directories.

A good way to organize your promotions is to set up a web page, for your personal use, that will contain your complete strategy. This page should be stored on your hard drive and not uploaded to your server. Your page should contain four sections.

1. Daily Promotions
2. Weekly Promotions
3. Monthly Promotions
4. Miscellaneous Promotions

Each of these four sections should contain the appropriate information for each of your promotional resources, such as web site name, user ID, password (if applicable) and hyperlinked web addresses for each web site you plan to use for your promotions. This will enable you to open your web page each day and visit the sites you have listed.

-> Daily Promotions
Discussion Boards

Visit some popular discussion boards and share your expertise. Although you may not advertise on discussion boards, you can include your signature file with your post. Before you begin posting to discussion boards, make sure you lurk a while and see exactly how the board functions.

Visit http://www.web-source.net/web/Discussion_Forums/ for a complete listing of some of the top discussion boards.

-> Weekly Promotions
Ezine Advertising / Ad Swaps

Your weekly promotions should consist of placing a paid ezine advertisement and/or arranging ad swaps with fellow publishers.

Visit the Directory of Ezines for a complete listing of hundreds of publishers and contact information for advertising. http://www.web-source.net/cgi-bin/t.cgi?l=doe

To organize your ad placements and swaps, place the publication names, publisher names, ad dates and hyperlinked web addresses within your weekly promotions list.

-> Monthly Promotions
Your monthly promotions should include writing an article in the area of your expertise, promotional exchanges with similar web sites, and offline promotions.

To organize your monthly promotions, place the names and hyperlinked web addresses for each of your promotional resources within your monthly promotions section.

Writing Articles
Writing articles that may be freely published with your bylines is one of the best promotional methods online. Your article may be published in hundreds of ezines, on web sites or even in magazines.

For further information on writing articles, visit:
http://www.web-source.net/write.htm

Promotional Exchanges
Cross promoting is a powerful technique used by many Internet marketers to increase the exposure of their products, services or publications. You simply decide what type of promotional exchange you would be interested in and contact fellow marketers to discuss an exchange.

The most effective technique used in cross promotions is recommendations. By providing each other with a personal recommendation you can increase your response rates tremendously.

Here are some popular cross promoting techniques you can use to boost your business:

Link Exchanges
Exchange links with web sites similar to yours, but not in competition. Many Search Engines are now utilizing a system that tracks and ranks sites according to the number of quality links pointing to a particular web site. By exchanging links with similar web sites, you will not only increase your Search Engine ranking, but you will also increase your web site traffic.

Ezine Ad Swaps
Exchange subscription ads with other ezine publishers. Ezine advertising is one of the best forms of advertising on the Internet. By swapping ads with fellow ezine publishers, you can run your ad in other publications free of charge.

Subscription Exchanges
Exchange subscription information with fellow ezine publishers. Provide recommendations within your ezine's welcome message, thank you page and even on your multiple subscription ezine form.

Ezine Column
Partner with a similar publication and provide content for each other. This may be a weekly tips column, question and answer column or whatever you'd like.

Ebook Exchanges
Partner with fellow Internet marketers and create free ebooks to freely distribute. The ebook should mutually benefit and promote both of you, while providing valuable information for your visitors.

Ride Alongs
A ride along is any extra information (advertisements) sent along with a direct mailing. You can use this same technique with any ezine solo mailings you may run by including an exchange recommendation within your mailing. In addition, you can include recommendations within your thank you letters you send out when you deliver your products.

Up sells
An up sell is used when your customer is in the process of ordering your product. Another product is introduced, for a small additional cost, just as you're closing the sale. This technique is used with many infomercials when the customer calls in their order. The operator will introduce an additional product for a minimal extra charge. You can use this same technique on your order page by trading product recommendations with fellow marketers.

A quality recommendation will pull a much higher response rate than just a link or banner. Cross promote with individuals you truly respect and believe in, as your professional reputation is on the line.

Offline Promotions
Promoting your web site offline is another great way to increase your traffic. Below are several resources to assist you:

IDit Plates http://www.web-source.net/cgi-bin/t.cgi?l=idit Put your web address on your vehicle. IDit Plates are a great way to continuously promote your web site. They're triple chrome plated and blend in well with your vehicle.

Visit iPrint http://www.iprint.com for your printing needs. From business print items to promotional items, iPrint has it all.

Place ads in newspapers, magazines, on the radio, or on TV. Visit these links for complete listings:

Gebbie Press http://www.gebbieinc.com
Newspapers Online http://www.newspapers.com

For even more promotional products, PromoCity can add your logo to any one of over 500,000 items. http://www.promocity.com

-> Miscellaneous Promotions
Your miscellaneous promotions might include paying for traffic, text and banner advertising.


Once you've implemented your promotional strategy and continuously work it each day, you'll be amazed with the results of your efforts. Consistency will be the key to driving massive traffic to your site.

How to Promote Your Website – Everything You Need for Success.

We already talked about promoting your blog and your website in general, we covered a few things you can do to increase the incoming traffic to your website. SEO is the best way to go in the long run, but there are dozens of different things you can do to get immediate traffic to your website and to also increase your traffic in the long run, as well as your rankings in the SERP.

In this post we will go over a large number of ways in which you can promote your blog or website, so make sure you bookmark this page as you will want to get back to it later on.

promoting your website

Start with Freebies

Whether you have a new website or a seasoned one it is always a good strategy to give out something for free, that always attracts a great number of visitors and returning users to your website. So here are a few ideas to help you promote your website with free stuff:

-      Free report on your niche or a certain topic

-      Free Ebook

-      Free plugin or app

-      Free sample product if you have one

-      Make sure your free products, ebooks and reports are featured in your emails and on giveaway events and promote them through other blogs as well

Social Connections and Brand Marking

Free stuff always attracts people, but in order to keep your visitors and to get known throughout the internet and your niche in particular you need to utilize the power of social media. The first step is to create accounts and promote your brand with the same images and same approach so that people will remember you or your brand, here is what you shouldn’t miss:

-      Build a fan page for your website or brand on Facebook

-      Create a Twitter account and engage with your niche and niche leaders

-      Do the same with LinkedIn

-      You can also start a group on Facebook

-      Create social profiles on sites like Ning, About and even Soup

Be Creative and Use Everything You Can

Yeah, free stuff helps, having a known brand is the key, but these are just two examples out of many, so here is a large list of things you can do to promote your website and increase your brand awareness and most of all, your incoming traffic and profits.

-      Create a banner for your website that people can easily copy, supply a copy and paste HTML code on your website. This is a great way to promote your website and to build links at the same time.

-      If you business deals with clients, whether that is a product or you provide services make sure to include testimonials on your website. Also try to get links from the people that gave you testimonials and to have your banner featured on their website. Giving testimonials is also a way to go about it.

-      Of course if you have some money to invest advertising is always a good idea. You can use Adwords or other advertisers like Bing and Facebook. Advertising on blogs and websites in your niche is the best way to go about it, so always think about direct advertising.
-      Make sure that everything new you do or publish like a new product or a new service or even a new event that is about to happen is featured in a press release. There is nothing good for traffic like creating a good newsworthy buzz.

-      One of my favorite methods is guest blogging. This is a great way to get some in-content links and get some immediate attention to your website as well.

-      One of the basic ways of promoting is to organize an online event or a giveaway. A contest is also a great way to get great amounts of traffic and also create a buzz around your brand name.

-      You can also use the easiest tactics of them all, simply ask your visitors what they want to see on your website in the future and then act on the feedback received. On that note, if you have any suggestions or questions, requests, feel free to leave a comment and I will make sure to either answer directly in the comment or write a post about it.

-      Create a useful video. Videos are the easiest way to attract new visitors, people like media, they don’t like to read much, so videos are a great way to offer them something and get them to visit your website.

-      Always add clearly visible bookmarking applications to your website. You don’t have to overdo it. Facebook, Twitter, Digg, LinkedIn and StumbleUpon will suffice, maybe a few more related to your niche. Make it easy for your users to spread your content.

-      We mentioned testimonials, but make sure if you have a product or a service to ask other bloggers in your niche to review your product or services. You may have to offer them for free, but hey, it is a form of advertising that brings great traffic, so don’t be shy about it.

-      Write useful guides for your specific topic, that always attracts visitors and people that want to learn more about your market.

-      I forgot to mention, if you have a product or a service you probably offer some discounts, if not make sure you have a few. Once you have them make sure to include those discounts and coupons on various websites like RetailMeNot.

I won’t mention the obvious SEO methods as they are already listed on this blog, link building and onpage SEO are a must, but these are some of the best ways to directly promote your website and get immediate results.

Promoting Your Website Using Feeds.

One of the ways to promote your website is by providing fresh content regularly and announcing it by the use of feeds. Feeds are a very useful way of distributing fresh content to your visitors and attracting their attention when new stuff is added. They consist of a file (or more) in which you put a summary of the latest content on your website, using a specific format (the most used are RSS and Atom), that allows you to add more information like icons, dates of addition, summaries, URLs, etc. All this information can be read by feed readers, which will alert their users when the content has been updated.
 

The Goodies

Using feeds will have several side effects that will affect the incoming traffic of your website. Besides getting the visitors back when your content is updated, feeds will enaable your website to be listed in hundreds of feeds directories. While regular directories list only one link per website, feeds directories will display one link for each item in your feed (usually from 10 to 15 items in all).

Among the most popular formats you will find Atom and RSS. You may be asking yourself: “By picking one of these formats will I reach a bigger audience? Will I get more users if I use the three of them?”. The answer to both questions is no. Every modern reader and/or aggregator is able to read the two formats, and speaking of directories, only about a 2% of them is only accepting the RSS format.

So now you have to pick one to use in your website… which one will it be? In my opinion, the best option is Atom. RSS is an older format that was born from the RDF (Resource Description Framework) standard. It’s been updated several times and presented important incompatibility issues in each update. Even its name has been changed many times (as well as the people who maintained it): Rich Site Summary for version 0.91, RDF Site Summary for versions 0.9 and 1.0, and Really Simple Syndication for version 2.0 (take note that the versions are not consecutive). All these facts speak of a very conflictive standard.

On the other hand, Atom was born with one objective: to put an end to years of conflicts, dificulties and inadecuacies in the feeds formats (primary RSS). For this reason (and many others that come as a result of this) I believe Atom to be the most appropriate standard for feeds.

Creating feeds using feeds generators

Feeds have another good side: they don’t have a bad side! The effort of creating a feed can be conveniently replaced by the use of feeds generators. Better yet, you can find many FREE feeds generators online and generate your feeds with just a few clicks. For example, Feedity.com offers a free service of feeds generation that can create your feed in a couple of minutes.
Submitting your feeds to directories

Once your feed is up and ready, one thing you can’t overlook is to submit it to the feeds directories. The submission process is pretty much like the submission to other directories.

Create a list of directories

Search in your favorite search engine for terms like “feeds directories”. Among the results, you will find some pages with lists of feeds directories which you can extract and add to your own personal list. Once you think you have enough directories in your list, you’re ready to take the next step.

Prepare some information

Every directory is different as different are the persons who built them, but speaking in general, they will ask for more or less the same information. Having this is mind, there is a set of data you can prepare in a text file to make things easier at the submission time:

• The URL of the feed.
• Its title (brief and accurate).
• A description of its content.
• A set of related keywords.
• Your contact information (name and e-mail).
• Other information related to your website (not to the specific feed) like URL, title, description, etc.

The submission process

Once you gathered all the necessary information and using the list of directories you have collected, you can start submitting one directory at a time. Once you enter a directory you will have to find how to access the submit form to fill it out with the information it requests.

Feeds are another method to promote your website.Even if they don’t take you directly to the top, they will certainly move you a step forward into that direction.

37 Ways to Promote Your Website

This article is designed to introduce you to website promotion, getting visitors to come to your website. It gives you the basic information, which you can then explore through dozens of links to other resources, much of it entirely free. As one of our most popular articles, this was revised most recently on April 19, 2011.

Business lunch about Web marketing and e-commerce     

How can you get more visitors to your website? What can you do to stimulate traffic? Here's a checklist of 37  items you need to consider. Many of these may be doing already; others you meant to do and forgot about; still others you've never heard of. Of course, a great deal has been written about this. You'll find links to thousands of articles about website promotion on our website.

While I'm not breaking any new ground here, I've tried to summarize some of the most important techniques.

Search Engine Strategies

Perhaps the most important -- and inexpensive -- strategy is to rank high for your preferred keywords on the main search engines in "organic" or "natural" searches (as opposed to paid ads). Search engines send robot "spiders" to index the content of your webpage, so let's begin with steps to prepare your webpages for optimal indexing. The idea here is not to trick the search engines, but to leave them abundant clues as to what your webpage is about. This approach is called "search engine optimization," abbreviated as SEO.

1. Write a Keyword-Rich Page Title. Write a descriptive title for each page -- rich in keywords you want people to find you with -- using 5 to 8 words. Remove as many "filler" words from the title (such as "the," "and," etc.) as possible, while still making it readable. This page title will appear hyperlinked on the search engines when your page is found. Entice searchers to click on the title by making it a bit provocative. Place this at the top of the webpage between the <HEAD></HEAD> tags, in this format: <TITLE>Web Marketing Checklist -- 37  Ways to Promote Your Website</TITLE>. (It also shows on the blue bar at the top of your web browser.)

Blue bar at top of web browser containing the Title

Plan to use some descriptive keywords along with your business name on your home page. If you specialize in silver bullets and that's what people will be searching for, don't just use your company name "Acme Ammunition, Inc.," use "Silver and Platinum Bullets -- Acme Ammunition, Inc." The words people are most likely to search on should appear first in the title (called "keyword prominence"). Remember, this title is your identity on the search engines. The more people see that interests them in the blue hyperlinked words on the search engine, the more likely they are to click on the link.

Competiton for search engine ranking occurs every day2. Write a Description META Tag. Some search engines include this description below your hyperlinked title in the search results. The description should be a sentence or two describing the content of the webpage, using the main keywords and keyphrases on this page. Don't include keywords that don't appear on the webpage. Place the Description META Tag at the top of the webpage, between the <HEAD></HEAD> tags, in this format:

<META NAME="DESCRIPTION" CONTENT="Increase visitor hits, attract traffic through submitting URLs, META tags, news releases, banner ads, and reciprocal links.">

The maximum number of characters should be about 255; just be aware that only the first 60 or so are visible on Google, though more may be indexed.

When I prepare a webpage, I write the article first, then develop a keyword-rich title (#1 above). Then I write a description of the content in that article in a sentence or two, using each of the important keywords and keyphrases included in the article. This goes into the description META tag.

Next, I strip out the common words, leaving just the meaty keywords and phrases and insert those into the keywords META tag. It's no longer used much for ranking, but I'm leaving it in anyway. I think it may have some minor value. So to summarize so far, every webpage in your site should have a distinct title and META description tag. If you implement these two points, you're well on your way to better search engine ranking. But there's more that will help your ranking....

3. Include Your Keywords in Headers (H1, H2, H3). Search engines consider keywords that appear in the page headline and sub heads to be important to the page, so make sure your desired keywords and phrases appear in one or two header tags. Don't expect the search engine to parse your Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) to figure out which are the headlines -- it won't. Instead, use keywords in the H1, H2, and H3 tags to provide clues to the search engine. (Note: Some designers no longer use the H1, H2 tags. That's a big mistake. Make sure your designer defines these tags in the CSS rather than creating headline tags with other names.)

4. Position Your Keywords in the First Paragraph of Your Body Text. Search engines expect that your first paragraph will contain the important keywords for the document -- where most people write an introduction to the content of the page. You don't want to just artificially stuff keywords here, however. More is not better. Google might expect a keyword density in the entire body text area of maybe 1.5% to 2% for a word that should rank high, so don't overdo it.

5. Include Descriptive Keywords in the ALT Attribute of Image Tags. This helps your site be more accessible to site-impaired visitors (www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/glance/) and gives additional clues to the search engines. The ALT attributes do help get your images ranked higher for image search (see #12 below).

6. Use Keywords in Hyperlinks. Search engines are looking for clues to the focus of your webpage. When they see words hyperlinked in your body text, they consider these potentially important, so hyperlink your important keywords and keyphrases. To emphasize it even more, the webpage you are linking to could have a page name with the keyword or keyphrase, such as blue-widget.htm -- another clue for the search engine.

Promoting your website through search engine optimization (SEO) helps business.     

7. Make Your Navigation System Search Engine Friendly. You want search engine robots to find all the pages in your site. JavaScript and Flash navigation menus that appear when you hover are great for humans, but search engines don't read JavaScript and Flash very well. Therefore, supplement JavaScript and Flash menus with regular HTML links at the bottom of the page, ensuring that a chain of hyperlinks exists that take a search engine spider from your home page to every page in your site. Don't set up your navigation system using HTML frames (an old, out-dated approach); they can cause severe indexing problems.

Some content management systems and e-commerce catalogs produce dynamic, made-on-the-fly webpages, often recognizable by question marks in the URLs followed by long strings of numbers or letters. Overworked search engines sometimes have trouble parsing long URLs and may stop at the question mark, refusing to go farther. If you find the search engines aren't indexing your interior pages, you might consider URL rewriting, a site map, or commercial solutions.

8. Create a Site Map. A site map page with links to all your pages can help search engines (and visitors) find all your pages, particularly if you have a larger site. You can use a free tools, XML-Sitemaps.com (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/xml-sitemaps.htm) to create XML sitemaps that are used by the major search engines to index your webpages accurately. Upload your sitemap to your website. Then submit your XML sitemap to Google, Yahoo!, and Bing (formerly MSN), following instructions on their sites. By the way,  Google Webmaster Central (www.google.com/webmasters/) has lots of tools to help you get ranked higher. Be sure to set up a free account and explore what they have to offer.

9. Develop Webpages Focused on Each Your Target Keywords. SEO specialists no longer recommend using external doorway or gateway pages, since nearly duplicate webpages might get you penalized. Rather, develop several webpages on your site, each of which is focused on a target keyword or keyphrase for which you would like a high ranking. Let's say you sell teddy bears. Use Google Insights for Search (www.google.com/insights/search/) or the free keyword suggestion tool on Wordtracker (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/wordtracker.htm) to find the related keywords people search on. In this case: write a separate webpage featuring the keyword "teddy bear," "teddy bears," "vermont teddy bears," "vermont bears," "the teddy bears," teddy bears picnic," "teddy bears pictures," etc. You'll write a completely different article on each topic. You can't fully optimize all the webpages in your site, but for each of these focused-content webpages, spend lots of time tweaking to improve its ranking, as described in point #10.

10. Fine-tune with Careful Search Engine Optimization. Now fine-tune your focused-content pages and perhaps your home page, by making a series of minor adjustments to help them rank higher. Software such as WebPosition allows you to check your current ranking and compare your webpages against your top keyword competitors. I use it regularly. WebPosition's Page Critic tool provides analysis of a search engine's preferred statistics for each part of your webpage, with specific recommendations of what minor changes to make. The best set of SEO tools is Bruce Clay's SEOToolSet (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/clay_seotoolset.htm). You can find links to many SEO articles (www.wilsonweb.com/seo/) on my site.

Frankly, this kind of SEO fine-tuning is time-consuming, painstaking work that takes a lot of specialized knowledge. For this reason, many small and large businesses outsource search engine optimization. If you'll explain your needs to me on my online form, I can refer you to appropriate SEO firms that I know and trust (www.wilsonweb.com/recommendations/seo-services.htm).

11. Promote Your Local Business on the Internet. These days many people search for local businesses on the Internet. To make sure they find you, include on every page of your website the street address, zip code, phone number, and the five or 10 other local community place names your business serves. If you can, include place names in the title tag, too. When you seek links to your site (see #15 below), you should request links from local businesses with place names in the communities you serve and complementary businesses in your industry nationwide.

Also create a free listing for your local business on Google Places for Business (places.google.com/business), Yahoo! Local (local.yahoo.com), and Bing Local Listing Center (https://ssl.bing.com/listings/). That way your business can show up on a map when people do a local search. For more information, see articles on local marketing (www.wilsonweb.com/local/) on my site.

12. Promote Your Video, Images, and Audio Content. Google's "universal search" displays not only webpage content, but also often displays near the top of the page relevant listings for images, videos, local businesses (see #11 above), and audio clips.  Therefore, consider creating such content appropriate to your business and then optimizing it so it can be ranked high enough to help you. For example, if you were to get a top-ranking, informative video on YouTube (www.youtube.com) that mentions your site, it could drive a lot of traffic to your site. For more information, search on "optimizing images" or "optimizing videos." You can see how I use videos to promote my business on my Web Marketing Today YouTube Channel (www.youtube.com/WebMarketingToday).

Linking Strategies

Links to your site from other sites drive additional traffic. But since Google and other major search engines consider the number of incoming links to your website ("link popularity") as an important indicator of relevance, more links will help you rank higher in the search engines. Google has a measure called PageRank that reflects the quantity and quality of incoming links. All links aren't all equal. Links from trusted, popular sites help your site rank higher than links from lower traffic sites. You'll find articles on linking strategies (www.wilsonweb.com/linking/) on our site.

13. Submit Your Site to Key Directories, since a link from a directory will help your ranking -- and get you traffic. A directory is not a search engine. Rather, it is a hierarchical listing of sites sorted according to category and subcategory. Be sure to list your site in the free Open Directory Project (www.dmoz.com), overseen by overworked volunteer editors. But if you don't get listed right away, don't be impatient and resubmit, or you'll go to the end of the queue. A link in this directory will help you a lot.

Yahoo! Directory (dir.yahoo.com) is another important directory. Real humans read submission, so be careful to follow the instruction given. Hint: Use somewhat less than the maximum number of characters allowable, so you don't have wordy text that will tempt the Yahoo! editor to begin chopping. Yahoo! Directory Submit (https://ecom.yahoo.com/dir/submit/intro/) requires a $299 annual recurring fee to have your site considered for inclusion within seven business days. Other paid business directories that might help are About.com and Business.com.

14. Submit Your Site to Trade Organization Sites and Specialized Directories. Some directories focused on particular industries, such as education or finance. You probably belong to various trade associations that feature member directories. Ask for a link. Even if you have to pay something for a link from the organization, it may help boost your PageRank.

Marginal directories, however, come and go very quickly, making it hard to keep up, so don't try to be exhaustive here. Beware of directories that solicit you for "upgraded listings." Unless a directory is widely used in your field, a premium ad is a waste of money -- but the (free) link itself will help boost your PageRank and hence your search engine ranking.

SubmitWolf (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/submitwolf.htm) is a directory submission tool I've used with good success . You complete a listing form in the software interface. Then they submit your listing to all the appropriate directories they know of, plus links to sites that require manual submission. It's a timesaver and works well. Just be careful to submit only to actual directories, not "linking sites."

15. Request Reciprocal Links. Find websites in your general niche and request a reciprocal link to your site (especially to your free service, if you offer one, see #24 below). Develop an out-of-the way page where you put links to other sites -- so you don't send people out the back door as fast as you bring them in the front door. Your best results will be from sites that generate a similar amount of traffic as your own site. High-traffic site webmasters are too busy to answer your requests for a link and don't have anything to gain. Look for smaller sites that may have linking pages.

Check out Ken Evoy's free SiteSell Value Exchange (sales.sitesell.com/value-exchange/). It (1) registers your site as willing to exchange links with other sites that have a similar theme/topic content and (2) searches for sites with similar topical content. Additionally, two automated link building software programs stand out -- Zeus (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/zeus.htm) and IBP Link Builder (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/arelis.htm). Both of these search the web for complementary sites, help you maintain a link directory, and manage reciprocal links. However, use these programs to identify the complementary sites, not to send impersonal automated e-mail spam to site owners.

When you locate sites, send a personal e-mail using the contact e-mail on the site or to the administrative contact listed in a Whois Directory (www.networksolutions.com/whois/). If e-mail doesn't get a response, try a phone call. Warning: Only link to complementary sites, no matter how often you are bombarded with requests to exchange links with a mortgage site that has nothing to do with your teddy bear store. One way Google determines what your site is about is who you link to and who links to you. It's not just links, but quality links you seek. Reciprocal linking as hard, tedious work, but it doesn't cost you a dime out of pocket! Keep working at this continuously, a little bit at a time. Patience and persistence will get you some good links, so keep at it.

16. Write Articles for Others to Use in Websites and Newsletters. You can dramatically increase your visibility when you write articles in your area of expertise and distribute them to editors as free content for their e-mail newsletters or their websites. Just ask that a link to your website and a one-line description of what you offer be included with the article. This is an effective "viral" approach that can produce hundreds of links to your site over time. You'll find lots of information on how to do this from the most popular article marketing site, EzineArticles.com. When you create a free membership account, they begin sending you instructions and ideas each week.

17. Issue News Releases. Find newsworthy events and send news releases to print and Web periodicals in your industry. The links to your site in online news databases may remain for several months and will temporarily improve traffic to your site and increase link popularity. Use a online news release service such as PR Web (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/prweb.htm). Placing your website URL in online copies of your press release may increase link popularity temporarily.

Two additional linking strategies, discussed below, are to ask visitors to bookmark your webpage (#20) and to develop a free service (#23), which will greatly stimulate links to your site.

Social Media

Our next type of website promotion comes from the mushrooming field of social media, in which people are encouraged to interact with each other, and respond to each other's blog postings and comments. You should be aware of four types of social media: (1) blogs, (2) social networking sites, (3) social bookmarking sites, and (4) forums. Don't be upset if the distinctions between types of social media tend to blur. Social media help promote your site by sending direct traffic, producing links to your site, and generating awareness. The subject is too diverse to go into detail here. You can learn more in our social media articles (www.wilsonweb.com/newmedia/).

18. Begin a Business Blog. Want links to your site? Begin a business blog on your website, hosted on your own domain. If you offer excellent content and regular industry comment, people are likely to link to it, increasing your site's PageRank. Consistency and having something to say are key. If you have a blog on a third-party blog site, occasionally find reasons to talk about and link to your own domain.

19. Become Part of a Social Media Community. Some of the best online communities for business include Facebook (www.facebook.com), LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com), and Twitter (www.twitter.com). In addition, you may want to participate in a social bookmarking community in which members share with each other information about websites, articles, or news items that they like (or don't like). These include Digg (www.digg.com), Delicious (www.delicious.com), StumbleUpon (www.stumbleupon.com), and Google Bookmarks (www.google.com/bookmarks/). Search engine spiders troll these sites looking for links to something new and relevant. You can usually place a link to your website in your profile, but the biggest gain comes when other people mention you (which generates traffic to your site), link to you (which increases your PageRank and brings traffic), or bookmark you (which increases your PageRank and brings traffic, see #21 below).

One important reminder, don't join a community to spam them or talk incessantly about your business. Like any community you must listen, comment, and make a genuine contribution for the good of others. Don't hog the conversation. Otherwise, your self-serving links and comments will hurt your reputation. By the way, to get started, why don't you visit my social media pages and become a Facebook fan (www.facebook.com/pages/Web-Marketing-Today/85187746383) or a Twitter follower (www.twitter.com/ralphwilson) -- please! Thank you!

  

20. Promote Your Site in Online Forums and Discussion Lists -- "old school" social media. The Internet offers thousands of very targeted e-mail based discussion lists, online forums, and groups made up of people with very specialized interests. Use Google Groups (groups.google.com) to find appropriate groups. Search online for blogs or other forums.

Don't bother with groups consisting of pure spam. Instead, find groups where a serious dialog is taking place. Don't use aggressive marketing and overtly plug your product or service. Rather, add to the discussion in a helpful way and let the "signature" at the end of your e-mail message do your marketing for you. People will gradually get to know and trust you, visit your site, and do business with you.

21. Ask Visitors to Bookmark Your Site. It seems simple, but ask visitors to bookmark your site or save it in their Favorites list. I use a widget called AddThis (www.addthis.com). When you put the AddThis JavaScript on your webpage, it automatically determines the title and URL of that page. When visitors click the button on your page, they are automatically taken to a page that allows them to choose which bookmarking service they prefer, and then pre-populates the appropriate form with the title and URL of your webpage. I use AddThis throughout my website, as well as in my newsletters. If you have good content that people want to bookmark, this can generate hundreds of links to your site and significantly raise your rankings.

While you're at it, would you be so kind as to bookmark this page using the button below? Thank you!

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

Traditional Strategies

Just because "old media" strategies aren't on the Internet doesn't mean they aren't effective. A mixed media approach can be very effective.

22. Include Your URL on Stationery, Cards, and Literature. Make sure that all business cards, stationery, brochures, and literature contain your company's URL. And see that your printer gets the URL syntax correct. In print, I recommend leaving off the http:// part and including only the www.domain.com portion.

23. Promote using traditional media. Don't discontinue print advertising that you've found effective. But be sure to include your URL in any display or classified ads you purchase in trade journals, newspapers, yellow pages, etc. View your website as an information adjunct to the ad. Use a two-step approach: (1) capture readers' attention with the ad, (2) then refer them to a URL where they can obtain more information and perhaps place an order. Look carefully at small display or classified ads in the back of narrowly-targeted magazines or trade periodicals. Sometimes these ads are more targeted, more effective, and less expensive than online advertising. Consider other traditional media to drive people to your site, such as direct mail, classifieds, post cards, etc. TV can be used to promote websites, especially in a local market.

24. Develop a Free Service. It's boring to invite people, "Come to our site and learn about our business." It's quite another to say "Use the free kitchen remodeling calculator available exclusively on our site." Make no mistake, it's expensive in time and energy to develop free resources, but it is very rewarding in increased traffic to your site -- and a motivation to link to the site! Make sure that your free service is closely related to what you are selling so the visitors you attract will be good prospects for your business. Give visitors multiple opportunities and links to cross over to the sales portion of your site.

E-Mail Strategies

Don't neglect e-mail as an important way to bring people to your website. Just don't spam, that is, don't send bulk unsolicited e-mails without permission to people with whom you have no relationship. Many countries have anti-spam laws.

 I'll mention just a few important elements here. You can learn more from our articles on e-mail marketing (www.wilsonweb.com/email/).

25. Install a "Signature" in your E-Mail Program to help potential customers get in touch with you. Most e-mail programs allow you to designate a "signature" to appear at the end of each message you send. Limit it to 6 to 8 lines: Company name, address, phone number, URL, e-mail address, and a one-phrase description of your unique business offering. Look for examples on e-mail messages sent to you.

26. Publish an E-Mail Newsletter. While it requires a commitment of time, creating a monthly e-mail publication is one of the most important promotion techniques. It could be a newsletter ("ezine"), list of tips, industry updates, or new product information -- whatever you believe your customers will appreciate. This is a great way to keep in touch with your prospects, generate trust, develop brand awareness, and build future business. It also helps you collect e-mail addresses from those who visit your site, but aren't yet ready to make a purchase. You distribute your newsletter inexpensively using e-mail marketing services such as: iContact (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/icontact.htm), Constant Contact (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/constantcontact.htm), and AWeber (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/aweber.htm). If you have a very small list, some of these services let you use their services free until you grow larger. Blogs are very popular, but don't really replace e-mail newsletters. You have to go to a blog to read it, while an e-mail newsletter appears in your inbox asking to be read.

If you haven't already, would you please sign up for my free newsletter, Web Marketing Today (www.wilsonweb.com). It is published weekly and will keep you up-to-date in the fields of Internet marketing and e-commerce. Thank you!

Three free e-books Subscribe to our free e-mail newsletter — Web Marketing Today®, published to 108,000+ confirmed opt-in subscribers worldwide. Just to encourage you to take this step, I'm including three free e-books that you can download and read: The Web Marketing Checklist: 32 Ways to Promote Your Website, 12 Website Design Decisions Your Business Will Need to Make, and Making & Marketing E-Books, each worth $12 -- just for subscribing. No catch.RSS feed

First     Last

E-mail   

Country     (2-letter abbreviation)

Preferred Format     Plain text

HTML   

We respect your privacy and never sell or rent our subscriber lists. Subscribing will not result in more spam! I guarantee it!

27. Aggressively Ask for E-Mail Sign-ups. If you want to get subscribers to your e-mail newsletter, you'll need to work hard at it. Include a subscription form on every page of your website. Promote sign-ups through free whitepapers, e-books, or other products. If you have a local business, ask customers to sign up for your e-mail list to get "special Internet only offers." Also ask other businesspeople when they give you a business card if you can send them your e-mail newsletter. While only the e-mail address itself is necessary, I always ask for a first name also, so I can personalize the newsletter and the e-mail subject line with the recipient's name.

28. Send Transactional and Reminder E-Mails. A transactional e-mail is sent to an existing customer to initiate, remind, confirm, or thank the person. Be creative. If you keep careful records, you can send e-mails to customers on their birthday to remind them to return to your site. Subscription confirmation e-mails can also mention several popular products. You might remind customers that it has been three months since their last order and ask if it's time for a refill. Thank you for your purchase e-mails can offer a coupon to bring your customer back for a future sale. Use your imagination, but don't pester your customers. You're there to serve them, not the other way around.

29. Send Offers to Your Visitors and Customers. Your own list of customers and site visitors who have given you permission to contact them will be your most productive list. Send special offers, coupon specials, product updates, etc. They often initiate another visit to your site. If you have a regular newsletter, you can include many of these in your regular e-mailing.

30. Exchange E-Mail Mentions with Complementary Businesses. You might consider exchanging e-mail newsletter mentions with complementary businesses to reach new audiences. Just be sure that your partners are careful where they get their mailing list so you don't get in trouble with the anti-spam laws in your country.

I'll mention renting e-mail lists in #37 below under Paid Advertising approaches.

Miscellaneous Strategies

Here are a couple of strategies that don't fit elsewhere.

31. Announce a Contest. People like getting something free. If you publicize a contest or drawing available on your site, you'll generate more traffic than normal. Make sure your sweepstakes rules are legal in all states and countries you are targeting. Prizes should be designed to attract individuals who fit a demographic profile describing your best customers.

32. Devise Viral Marketing Promotion Techniques. So-called viral marketing uses existing communication networks to spread the word exponentially. Word-of-mouth, PR, creating "buzz," and network marketing are offline models. Promotion strategy #16 above, "Write Articles for Others to Use for Website and Newsletter Content," is a kind of viral approach.

The key to the best viral marketing, however, is create something that generates buzz and is so cute / fascinating / fun / bizarre that it gets passed by viewers to their friends via e-mail and social networks -- thousands of times -- so that it propels more and more people to your website, and, hopefully, helps enhance your brand, produce sales, and ultimately boost profits. Internet marketers often seek to launch viral campaigns on Digg (www.digg.com) or YouTube (www.youtube.com). Digg is a social bookmarking site with such power, that if enough people "Digg" you, you appear on the Digg front page and receive a huge number of visitors in a few hours. If your video goes viral on YouTube, you could get tens of thousands of visits to the site you promote in the video. However, viral marketing is difficult to do well.

Paid Advertising Strategies

None of the approaches described above is "free," since each takes time and energy. But if you want to grow your business more rapidly, there comes a point when you need to pay for increased traffic. Advertising is sold in one of three ways: (1) traditional CPM (cost per thousand views), (2) pay per click (PPC), and (3) pay per action (PPA) or cost per action (CPA) approaches. Examples of the latter are affiliate program and lead generation programs. Banner ads get such a low click-through rate (0.2%) that I don't recommend paying much for them. Banner ads typically cost about 50¢ to $1 per thousand page views, except on targeted sites.  Do some small tests first to determine response. Then calculate your return on investment (ROI) before spending large amounts. Here are some methods to explore:

33. Advertise in an E-Mail Newsletter. Some of the best buys are small text ads in e-mail newsletters targeted at audiences likely to be interested in your products or services. Many small publishers aren't sophisticated about advertising and offer very attractive rates.

More effective (and more expensive) is to send out an appropriate solo e-mail to the targeted list's subscribers. These often get a good response.

34. Begin an Affiliate Program. Essentially, a retailer's affiliate program is a CPA program that pays a commission to other site owners whose links to the retailer's products result in an actual sale. The goal is to build a network of affiliates who have a financial stake in promoting your site. If you're a merchant, you need to (1) determine the commission you are willing to pay (consider it your advertising cost), (2) select a company to set up the technical details of your program, and (3) promote your program to get the right kind of affiliates who will link to your site. Software and service companies are available to facilitate the process. The problem is getting enough affiliates who will actually work hard to promote your products or services. These "super affiliates" will probably consist of only 1% to 3% of your total number of affiliates.

35. Purchase Pay Per Click (PPC) ads with Google AdWords (adwords.google.com/select/), Yahoo! Search Marketing (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/overture.htm), or Microsoft AdCenter (adcenter.microsoft.com). This strategy is way down the list, but it is vitally important. Most Internet businesses will want to explore using Google AdWords to drive targeted traffic to their websites.

These PPC ads appear on the search engine results page, typically both above and to the right of the organic or natural search engine results. Since they are keyword-driven, they can be quite relevant to what a searcher is trying to find. Your ranking in this list of paid text ads is determined by (1) how much you have bid for a particular search word compared to other businesses, (2) the click-through rate on your ad, and (3) your Quality Score, which reflects the relevancy and quality of your ad and the landing page it points to.

PPC ads can be a cost-effective way to get targeted traffic, since you only pay when someone actually clicks on the link. But I strongly recommend that you study this carefully and expect a learning curve before you invest large sums of money in PPC advertising. You can find articles on Paid Search on our site (www.wilsonweb.com/paid-search/).

36. List Your Products with Shopping Comparison Bots and Auction Sites. If you're an online merchant, you'll want to consider this. Shopping bots compare your products and prices to others. Some work on a PPC (Pay Per Click) basis, others on a CPA (Cost Per Action) basis, perhaps with a listing fee. Bots to consider include mySimon (www.mysimon.com), BizRate (www.bizrate.com/), PriceGrabber (www.pricegrabber.com/), and Shopping.com (www.shopping.com). Shopping sites that include comparison features include: eBay (www.ebay.com), Yahoo! Shopping (shopping.yahoo.com), and Amazon Marketplace (www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=1161232). You pay to acquire first-time customers, but hopefully you can sell to them a second, third, and fourth time, later on.

37. Rent targeted, commercial e-mail lists. The last website promotion technique I'll mention is renting targeted e-mail lists. We abhor "spam," bulk untargeted, unsolicited e-mail, and you'll pay a very stiff price in a ruined reputation and cancelled services if you yield to temptation here. But the direct marketing industry has developed targeted e-mail lists you can rent -- lists consisting of people who have agreed to receive commercial e-mail messages. These lists cost $40 to $400 per thousand or 4¢ to 40¢ per name. Do a smaller test first to determine the quality of the list. Your best bet is to find an e-mail list broker (www.google.com/search?&q=e-mail+list+broker) to help you with this project. You'll save money and get experienced help for no additional cost. Realize, however, that due to the high cost of renting lists, many businesses won't generate enough businesses to justify the cost. Run the numbers before you invest.

Whew! That's it. We certainly haven't exhausted ways to promote your site, but these will get you started. To effectively market your site, you need to spend time adapting these strategies to your own market and capacity. Right now, why don't you make an appointment to go over this checklist with someone in your organization? Make this Checklist jump-start for your new Internet marketing strategy.