Website Promotion Article

Website Promotion
What works and where do you start?

By Elizabeth McGee
Promoting your business online can be a large undertaking that offers little direction. There are thousands of ways to promote your site with new and creative ways popping up each day. But without the know-how and experience where do you start and what tactics actually work?

When I first began marketing on the web, website promotion sounded so easy. The popular advice was to set up a signup form on my site to obtain those opt-in email addresses. Great advice so I got right to it.

I also loved the idea of affiliate marketing. Affiliate merchants suggested I put their links on my web site. Simple, so I got right on that.

Did I get sign-ups from my website form? Nope.
Did I get affiliate sales? Nope.
But Why? Because I had no traffic coming to my site. Duh!

If you've entered the web world within the last few years and are trying to
promote your site then you know what I'm talking about. Just because you
have a website out there doesn't mean you'll have visitors. Those days are
long gone. Today it's up to you to drive your own traffic. How do you do that? Well, there are several ways.

First of all, understand that there is no magic answer. There are literally thousands of ways to get traffic to your site and what worked for me may
not necessarily work for you. So don't expect to find the perfect formula,
there simply isn't one.

There also are no secrets. If you were to do all the research you would find those so called "secrets" too, it's all out there. The difference between those
that have the secrets and those that don't is research and experience. If you don't have the research and experience behind you here are a few tips to help you get started.

Submit Your Site
Start off by submitting your site to the major search engines which are Alta Vista, Alltheweb, Google, Inktomi, Lycos and Teoma. Submitting to the
search engines is probably the easiest and most straightforward. Don't use search engine submission programs as most search engines don't like them. It's better to submit them yourself. Many of the search engines with the exception of Google, charge you a fee but this is generally good for a year
and is a very worthwhile option, even for Yahoo! if you can afford to do it.

Optimize your Site Pages
Next, if you're depending on your site being seen when users type in relevant keywords you need to optimize it for the search engines. Search engine optimization is not easily done without a little expert help, however there are
a few basics that will give you a great head start.

Find the best keywords and keyword phrases that apply to your site.
Once you find the best keywords and phrases; use them in your Title and Description meta tags. Use a tool that will build these tags for you, there are several free ones out there. When selecting keywords, use words that relate
well to your site. Again, do some keyword research; there are plenty of free
tools to help you out.

Once you've decided on a few choice, targeted keywords, scatter them throughout your text as well. Be careful not to compromise the quality of your text by over saturating it with keywords. Place your keywords carefully while maintaining quality and readability. It is also good to place articles on your
page that relate to your keywords.

Limit your graphics, the search engines can't read graphics so even though
they may look nice, they don't offer a benefit for getting your site seen.

This process should be done for each page of yours site.

Link popularity
Proper linking techniques help weave you into the web. It's the process of getting your website on pages of other websites. The more popular you are
out there the more the search engines consider you a part of the web.

There are several ways to achieve link popularity. One popular way is to
request links from other "like" sites. This can be time consuming as the
process consists of requesting that a site put your name on their site and
you do the same for them on your site. There are products such as Arelis or
Links Manager that can help you with this, but if your budget is slim then the
old fashioned way will work just as good.

Always select sites that have the same topic as yours. For example, if you
are a gift basket site don't exchange links with gambling sites. It can confuse the search engines.

Avoid FFA (free for all) sites. These sites maintain a list of links to websites
that are constantly modified as new links are added. When you submit to
FFA's your site is put at the top of the list and as others get added you get pushed down the list until you are dropped off which could take a few weeks
to a few months. These FFA sites do not provide you with visitors, however
they will send lots of spam your way as they collect your email address and
add it to bulk emailing lists. Stay away from the FFA's.

When linking, I recommended that you request links from sites that have a
Google page rank of 3 or more. This is not a must but the more page rank 3
or higher sites you are on, the better. Note that the page itself should be a 3
or higher, not just the site's home page.

Don't link to sites that have no page rank. That's not to say you should completely rule out these sites as there are many quality sites that are not ranked, however, sites that have spammed the search engines are often
penalized by not receiving page rank. If you link to those penalized sites
you risk being penalized as well. Therefore, it's important that you take precautions and consider your links carefully.

Advertising
Advertising is the final step in website promotion and is the most crucial.
There are literally thousands of ways to advertise your site, however if you're going to advertise my experience is that you put your efforts into quality paid advertising.

When was the last time you sifted through free advertising line items?   I also don't recommend traffic exchange sites or surfing for credits. These have
wasted my time considerably and left me very frustrated.

Targeted Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising can yield positive results. This, in
my opinion, is the best way to get your site noticed. You simply bid on relevant keywords that apply to your site. When someone enters your keyword into
the search engine, your ad will display on the screen and you only pay when someone clicks on your ad.

The best search engines for pay per clicks are 7Search, ah-ha, Kanoodle, Search123, Searchfeed, Google, Overture, and Findwhat. There are others moving up the ranks but these are the best to get started with. PPC advertising provides you the flexibility to determine just how much you want to pay per
each click. You also have the option to stop it or change it at a moments
notice. You can set up your own daily budget and obtain daily reports of expenses. It's a perfect way to get some notoriety or a few quick sales.

A trick that has helped me in the past is to develop a sales web page that
gives away something free in exchange for the visitor's email address to your newsletter signup. Submit just this page to the PPC search engines, do your keyword research carefully and you could obtain quite a few sign-ups.

When you work with PPC's be sure to understand your return on investment
or (ROI). The basic calculation is % ROI = (benefits / costs) x 100. Do some research in this area and make sure it's not costing you more than what you
are getting in return.

Now that you are armed with the above, you should be able to get that
newsletter email list at least started, but remember your most important
strategy will be patience. Don't expect too much too soon. As you become more and more experienced with search engine tools and pay per click advertising you will begin to become proficient at it. You will learn tips
and tricks that can help you make sales and promote your site.

My best advice is keep reading. Find out what your competition is doing
and do it better. Expect to spend some money. The internet still has some great bargains but you will have to do some wise investing in your business.

Avoid get rich quick schemes; they'll disappoint you every time. Study the
sales tactics of others and expand on them. Don't be flashy, offer quality
content and information. Be honest and to the point. And always, always respond to your customers in a positive, supportive way.

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About the Author:
Elizabeth McGee is the owner of Pro-Marketing-Online, the Expert Marketing Tools site. If you wish to learn more about how to market online from the
experts and find expert tools for promoting your site and website promotion
then please visit Pro-Marketing-Online.

Visit the author's site at http://www.pro-marketing-online.com

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