On this page I am going to share the website promotion techniques that work the best. I have written extensively about this subject both on this blog as well as on numerous other websites. In fact, it is because of the amount of writing that I do on a regular basis, that I get so many interested readers like you on this site. Hopefully I can deliver exactly what you are looking for this time. Here it goes. These are not in any specific order.
Most Effective Website Promotion Techniques
1) Article marketing – Article marketing is a very popular and very effective way to promote your website. There are numerous places where you can post articles online for other people to read. You cannot expect everyone to find your website unless you spread the word about it. Articles are a great way to accomplish this. If you write well and are actually knowledgeable about your topic, then you will get people to follow the links in your resource box back to your website. These are really good visitors too. Chances are you are already part way there on gaining their trust. Anyone who is in sales understands how important trust is for making a sale.
Another huge benefit to article marketing is the number of links that the search engines will see pointing back to your website. If you are smart, you will use those articles to point links deep into your website. This helps ensure that your website gets more thoroughly indexed by the search engines. It also increases your link popularity which is a ranking factor for search engines like Google.
I advise you to find the best article directories for your industry and post your articles on them. You will gain more by doing that than you will by submitting them to a bunch of directories that get almost no traffic.
2) Link Exchanges – Reciprocal link exchanges are one of the more popular forms of link exchanges. In my opinion, you are far better off engaging in a different type of link exchange though. You are better off exchanging one way links. The way that you do this is to have the other person link to you. Then you go get them a link from somewhere else, like maybe another website or blog of yours. This is the best way to promote each other. Search engines prefer if you have one way links pointing to your pages instead of reciprocal ones.
You will find willing link partners for doing this if you ask enough. In fact, if you are interested, ask me on my contact form. I am more than willing to help spread the word about other people’s businesses if they are willing to spread the word about mine. It makes sense. It is a win/win scenario.
3) Become a blogger – You have two options here. You can either create a blog on your own website or host your blog somewhere else. It
usually doesn’t matter all that much. If your website is only a few pages though, you might be better off keeping the blog on the same original website.
Being a blogger can benefit you in numerous ways. For starters, it allows you to assert yourself as an industry expert. You can share all of the knowledge that you have gained over the years with other people who are interested in it. There are a lot of people out there who will use this information without ever even saying thank you. But, there are also other people out there who will thank you by linking back to your website from their blog. The more of this that happens, the better off you are.
By having all this extra information on your blog, your website is going to start ranking for terms that we in this business refer to as long tail keywords. Basically it means that you will get more traffic to your website. The more you write, the more traffic you will get. If you write well, you will find that people will get to trust you and become more likely to buy from you. Just make sure you write about topics related to your industry.
There is a lot more to blogging than this. There are so many things that you can do with it. I will write more extensively about this on another post.
4) If your website represents a business, you should try to get listed in two of the most popular search engine approved website directories. These two directories are the Yahoo Business Directory and the Open Source Directory Project (DMOZ.org). Google’s own website directory is an exact replica of the DMOZ directory. The DMOZ website used to be good at filtering out spam. Some of it slips through though now because of corrupt editors.
Staff members at Google have stated that they do like to see websites listed in directories like Yahoo’s business directory. Yahoo’s business directory is another human edited directory. Therefore, it is harder for spam sites to slip into the website. As a result, Google can place a higher level of trust on the websites that it finds listed on there.
If you belong to a chamber of commerce, you should definitely check to see if you can get a link form them to your website. Chamber of Commerce websites carry lots of trust and authority which both help your website rank higher in the search engines.
You should also try to get links from any other organizations that you belong to. Websites that end in .ORG tend to be more trustworthy than your typical .COM or .NET website. If you belong to any organizations that have a website like this, you should certainly ask them for a link.
5) Learn how to link properly from website to website for SEO (search engine optimization) purposes. People who don’t know better assume that a link is a link. This is not the case. Little things can make a big difference. If you want to get a page ranked high in the search engines for a certain phrase, then you should try to get people to link to you using that phrase as the keyword anchor in the link. In other words, if you wanted your homepage to rank high for the phrase “bed and breakfast in Virginia” then you would want people to use that phrase to point a link at your homepage. You don’t want them to just use the name of your business. You should naturally rank high for the name of your business so long as nobody else has the same business name as you.
There are exceptions to this rule. For example, suppose an article is published about the best bed and breakfasts in Virginia. In that case you would want your link to use your business name or the name of your website. You would not necessarily want the link anchor to use special keywords. This is also true for pages that contain lists of similar businesses. In those cases, using your business name or website name will be appropriate.
Sometimes people link just using the standard URL structure like http://their website.com. This is also fine when the link is on a page whose topic is directly relevant to what your page is about.
In general you would want to use the words that are most likely to cause someone to click on the link.
6) Pay Per Click Advertising – If you haven’t tried this yet then you should. Pay per click advertising is an extremely effective way to get visitors to your website. You are paying for them. It is okay though if you are running a business website designed to make you money in some way shape or form.
You can set really low budgets for your ad campaigns. You can set them so low that any business can afford them. How does $20 per month sound? I am telling you that this stuff works. I use it on this website.
The most popular pay per click advertising companies are the three major search engines, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. All three of them offer their own form of this program. Google’s service is called Adwords. You bid against other businesses for ad position depending on which keywords you want to target with your ads. These are very cost effective when combined with properly SEO’d pages. The better optimized your page is for a keyword, the less you have to pay for your advertisement.
Wikipedia logo is from wikipedia.org
7) Obtain links from high authority websites in your industry. This may be a little unclear to you if you aren’t a geek like me. Basically, it is better to get links from places that are well known in your industry. The more well known it is, the more valuable a link from them becomes. You can drive your website to the top of the search engines for a given phrase if you can obtain a link from the most authoritative website for your industry.
This kind of thing can be really challenging and frustrating for the typical business owner or webmaster. I have a knack for this sort of thing which is why I am in this business.
8) SEO (search engine optimization) – You will find that I talk about this topic an awful lot on this website. I am sorry to be so repetitive, but it is that important. One of the single most effective ways you can promote your site is to make sure it is well optimized for the search engines. This will help you rank higher in the search engines for important and valuable search phrases.
Of course, you also have to understand how to tell which phrases are the most valuable ones. That is a prerequisite to proper SEO. Learning how to do this or hiring someone who knows how to do this is a worthwhile investment. If you can properly execute this, you can stick your business right in front of people just as they are ready to make a buying decision. As you can imagine, this translate into sales in a big way. That is why so many companies are investing in it.
Summary:
As I said previously, this list was in no particular order. This list is not comprehensive either. There are many more ways to promote a website that actually work. I save some of the best ones for paying customers. Sorry about that, but I am in this to make a profit. This list is genuine though. These are many of the techniques that I recommend to customers and use myself.
If I had to pick the best two methods I would say it would be SEO and authoritative links. If you have a web page built around solid SEO principles and you also have properly anchored highly authoritative links pointing back at that page, your competitors will have a hard time outranking you. Getting your website to rank high in the search engines for the right keyword phrases is the most profitable and most effective website promotion technique that you can probably engage in.
