Web Site Promotion Basics

Web site promotion is the most important step in making your business succeed online. To help you promote and maintain your web site, we have dedicated a whole section of our web site to site promotion. We hope that you will find these articles, guidelines and tips useful.

Some people mistakenly believe that as soon as a site is on the Internet, the search engines will automatically index their site and people will start visiting their site from Day 1. This is not true. Once your site is live (i.e. uploaded and accessed through the Internet) you need to concentrate on web site promotion. This is the step that will really give you a powerful Net presence. It's easy and it's fun so let's jump right into it.

Let's start with the basics

There are many methods that you can use to promote your web site. But one rule remains the same. Make sure that your web site is 100% ready to be submitted before you begin with promotion. You don't want to give anyone a chance of rejecting your web site and you don't want to disappoint visitors who come to your site.

1. Submitting to Search Engines
   
   The first and most important method of promotion is submitting your web site to search engines and directories. The webmaster fills out a form that tells the search engine or editor (in case of a directory or site) to visit and index the suggested site.
   
   
   1. Preparing your web pages - Meta tags
      You must submit your web site only after you have prepared your web pages for the search engines. This means you have to insert appropriate meta tags on all your web pages (keywords, description and title).
      
      
   2. Web site Optimization
      For your site to score high with search engines, you will need to optimize your web site (improve your HTML, load time, browser compatibility and other factors to cater to search engines). Only after optimization should you submit your site.
      
      
   3. Finally, it's time to submit!
      After optimization, it's time to submit your site. We recommend submitting to all the major search engines, since search engines generate approximately 90% of web site traffic. Top search engines have a form for site suggestions. A link to this form can usually be found from the home page; it may say "Add a site" or "Suggest a URL." You can jump to our article which has links to all submission forms and tips on submission, so you don't have to spend hours looking for them.
      
      
2. Submitting to Directories
   Once you have submitted your web site to all the top search engines, it is time to submit your site to the important directories, like Yahoo, Looksmart, AOL etc. Submitting to Directories is different from submitting to Search Engines as human editors review your site and accept or reject your site according to its quality. Before submitting to Directories, you need to make sure that your site is 100% ready. You also need to carefully follow their guidelines while you submit your site.
   
   Note: There are a number of free search engine submission tools available but I suggest that the first time you submit your web site, do it manually. And never use these free tools while submitting to Directories. This must be done manually. Don't worry, submitting to search engines is very easy. It's only preparing your web pages with the appropriate meta tags that takes time.
   
   
3. Other Internet Marketing Techniques
   You need to know that web site promotion is an ongoing process, as there are thousands of web sites being added every day and the competition is getting tougher by the minute! Most of the sites listed on the search engines are getting lost as there may be 100 -10,000 other web sites in the same field. We all know that most people don't look at more than 2-3 search result pages. The web sites that are not found in these pages are lost in the competition. New promotion techniques are coming out every day to get around this problem. We will discuss these new promotion techniques soon. Some of them are as follows:
   
   
   1. Link Popularity
      This is a very important Internet marketing technique which is rapidly gaining importance. The term "link popularity" refers to the number of sites that are linked to your site. Search engines check your link popularity and based on how popular your site is, give you a higher ranking. Try getting as many quality links as possible to boost your search engine position.
      
      
   2. Writing Quality Articles
      Get visitors flocking to your site by writing quality articles. Write articles that are related to the content of your site. Most people come to the Internet for quality information. Articles build your credibility and reputation and your visitors may use your services in the long run. You also get more links to your sites through this method.
      
      
   3. Publish your own ezine or newsletter
      Ezines (or e-mail newsletters) are the latest buzz for marketing on the Internet. Everyone is talking about how you should publish your own ezine to increase traffic, hits and sales. Popular ezines usually give current information and resources that will keep subscribers informed and updated. Ezines are also a great way to keep in touch with your visitors.
      
      
4. More Internet Marketing Tips Coming Soon! We will continue to update this page so don't forget to bookmark it for your future web promotion endeavors.

Internet Marketing

What You Need to Know About Internet Marketing

Your business now has an online presence. How do you drive more traffic your way? How do you go about the web of Internet marketing? What are the options and how do you find the right one for your business?

Affiliate Programs

Affiliate programs are essentially organized groups of businesses that create ads to appear on websites of complimentary businesses. For each click generated for abc.com from xyz.com, ABC Company might pay four cents and XYZ Company might be paid three cents. The remaining penny is given to the affiliate program managers.

The benefit of affiliate programs is the low cost. Clicks are usually only a few cents each, so they don’t make severe cuts into profits. Look for an affiliate program that offers bidding on keywords so you can choose how much you’re willing to pay for each click based on a specific keyword. Some also offer budgeting tools so you can set a budget cap daily, weekly, or monthly.

Email Marketing

Land-based businesses send direct mailers to their potential customers. Online businesses can send email marketing mailers. To create an effective email marketing campaign, follow these quick tips:

• Address recipients by name
• Write the email in a professional tone – avoid $$$, WOW! and other terms you wouldn’t use in an email to the president of a company

• Don’t waste time sending solicitations during the holidays
• Call your customers to action. They need a reason to visit your site right now. Why do they need your product or service immediately?
• Make sure your email marketing campaign design flows with your corporate design and website.

E-Newsletter Marketing

Offer a free weekly or monthly e-newsletter. Fill it with interesting facts about your industry and related businesses. If you are a real estate agent, include articles about recent changes in property taxes and increased prices for water taps. Add an invitation to an upcoming open house.

Offer freebies to customers who read your newsletter. Add a link to a sweepstakes page in your newsletter, encouraging readers to visit your website and enter to win something for free. Consider a book on the industry or something else of value.

You can also include reader questions and a call for more questions. Anytime a user contacts you is another chance at a sell.

Find a template you like and use it consistently. Familiarity with your newsletter will help your users look forward to receiving your emails because they won’t have to search for what they want. They’ll know exactly where you place the comic and where your tip-of-the-week will be.

Post Articles on your Website

The more information – and the greater variety – you have on your business website, the more it will be crawled by search engines. And the more it’s crawled, the higher up your relevancy will go. That means your site will work its way up search results, without additional cost (like pay-per-click programs.)

Either hire a writer who is savvy to the SEO (search engine optimization) rules and has experience writing keyword inclusion articles or look for SEO articles available for purchase. The more original the content, the better it will score with the search engines. If you don’t want to hire a writer, look for content available for full-rights purchase. Full rights, or exclusive rights, guarantee the content will be yours alone.

Search Engine Submission

Besides having your site crawled whenever they feel like it, you can submit your website to search engines for priority crawling. Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL and most of the hundreds of little-known search engines offer search engine submissions. This takes just a minute or two and should be done every time you add new content.

Other Internet marketing options include hosting online events and promotions, adding blogs and forums for user comments, and swapping links with other businesses. There are a multitude of Internet marketing options available depending on your budget and scope of campaign.

Find Marketing Resources

In order to sell your product or service, you have to let potential customers know who you are, what you offer, and how to contact you. In a nutshell, you need to market yourself. So, how do you find quality marketing resources?

Creating a Plan

Before you start looking for marketing resources, you need a plan. A business plan will give you an idea of who your customers are, why they will buy what you’re selling, and how you might advertise. For information on creating a business plan, do an online search for “business plan.”

Low Cost Advertising Options

Once you know who your customers will be and why they want what you’re offering, start looking at ways to advertise. Consider these free and low-cost marketing resources:

• Put up a website. Along with a website, make sure you register a number of email addresses that include your business name. If your business is Mary’s Masks and you register the site www.marysmasks.com, create email addresses like mary@marysmasks.com and questions@marysmasks.com. Use those email addresses for everything – business and personal.
• Get out into the community. Attend Chamber of Commerce meetings and events, small business association meetings, and other organizational gatherings that might attract clients.
• Ask for a business card from anyone you speak with and follow up with a phone call or email. Even if they can’t use your services or product, they might know someone who does. Add them to your e-mailing list.
• Offer a useful freebie of some sort and don’t leave the office without some. A pen with the business name and contact info or a 2 page booklet about your industry with your address and phone number are great low-cost advertisements.
• Partner up with complimentary businesses. If you make masquerade masks, contact party supply houses and costume shops with a joint-venture proposal. What other services or products would compliment yours?
• Write letters. Whether to the editor of the local paper or a business magazine, write interesting, newsworthy letters. Don’t forget that all-important contact information and your website address.
• Create a monthly e-newsletter. Find interesting stories and trivia about your industry and include information about new products or services. Email it to all of your contacts.
• Barter with others. Offer your goods or services for free or very low cost in exchange for other services or goods. A mask maker might swap a few masks to decorate the walls of the local office supply store in exchange for printing flyers.
• Utilize press releases. You can send press releases to newspapers and television stations they may opt to print in their publication or online.
• Offer to speak. Speaking engagements cost nothing but time. Find groups for people who might purchase your product and offer to speak at their next meeting.

More Costly Advertising Options

If your budget allows for a little more, your options include:

• Direct mailings. Whether you choose postcard, flyer, or informational newsletter mailings, these are a great way to get your name out. Choose a catchy hook that will make the recipient want to read more.
• Take out a radio or TV commercial.
• Create a print ad for a newspaper or magazine.
• Rent a space at a trade show.
• Go for a unique business card, like a small pad of paper with your contact info on it.

To get ideas for other marketing resources, look at purchases you’ve made. What made you buy that last widget? Where do you look for gadgets? You are a consumer and so are your potential customers. Don’t forget to look at what your competition is doing and research the success. There is nothing wrong with gaining inspiration by watching those around you.

Web Site Marketing Promotion

Web site marketing promotion is one of the things that you almost consistently have to do if you are going to make money online. Web site marketing promotion is of course in addition to any search engine optimization that you might do to receive search engine traffic online. Web site marketing promotion and search engine optimization sort of go hand in hand, and can enhance the efforts of each other.

There are a number of ways that you can do web site marketing promotion, and many of those are paying options –meaning that you pay for them in money. An example of web site marketing promotion for which you pay to get traffic is pay per click programs such as Google Adwords or Yahoo Overture. Another example is the purchasing of classified or ezine advertising.

Now, for me personally, I like to use article marketing for my web site marketing promotion. Why?

1) It is highly effective, and also doubles as an attractor for high natural search engine results.

2) It is low cost – costing only my time, unless I choose to pay someone to submit the articles, or write the articles for me.

So how do I do web site marketing promotion using article marketing?

1) I write articles that are related to the themes of my web sites.

2) I add links to my articles that feed back to relevant pages in my web sites.

3) I submit my articles to directories online.

4) I continue this process repeatedly, some days writing as many as 20 articles per day. Yes, article marketing and web site marketing promotion are extremely effective, but they also require patience and dedication.

What Is Web Promotion & Web Design?

Web promotion is a catch-all phrase for marketing a website through the internet, there are three basic types of web promotion :

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) : The process of preparing web pages to be submitted to and ranked high in Search Engines (such as Yahoo!, Google, MSN, AOL, etc.) If your pages are already ranked, then SEO gets your pages ranked HIGHER.

2. Associate/Affiliate Programs : Link referral and link exchanges - the joining of geographic or occupation-specific websites that are complimentary in services or product.

3. Paid Advertising : Google ad words or overture are examples of paid advertising, where you "pay-per-click" - if someone clicks on the ads from a search engine and go to your site, you get billed for that click.

What is the difference between web promotion & web design?

Web Design...

encompasses the visual aspect of the site; all you see here, the graphics and style of this web page, is web design.

Web Promotion...

The promotion of a website that is already built. Web promotion includes search engine optimization, viral marketing, creative writing, and Ad campaign management. However, web promotion and web design work very closely together to make a website that is successful and encourages someone to buy a product or service. Therefore, it is difficult to separate the two in terms of where one task ends and the other begins.To complicate things further, creative writing is a collaborative effort between the owners of the site, the web designer, and the web promoter.To operate a successful site you need great web design and superior web promotion.