Skillful Website Promotion
Brings Quality Visitors

Website Promotion Objectives

Whether your website is brand new or has been around for awhile, the purpose of website promotion is essentially the same. The following objectives and approaches will help you meet the goal of more quality visitors to your site. A quality visitor is one who has an interest in what you are selling or offering, you might say he/she is a screened prospect.

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The aim of SEO is to enhance a website’s rank on the search engine results pages (SERPs). Familiar strategies include:

a. Page Optimization. You want your web pages to rank as high as possible on the search engines. This requires carefully selected keywords and phrases. Also, to make them most effective they need to be appropriately placed on each of your pages. While this may seem straight forward, there is more here then meets the eye, so you will need to study up on this subject if you are going to do it yourself.

b. Inbound LinksThese are links (also referred to as backlinks) that point from a website other than yours to a page on your website. The quality of the websites pointing to your site is very important to website promotion. They should be related to the theme of your site and the more popular, respected and impartial the site is, the better the search engines like it.

• Get Listed in Directories. Directories provide links to your site to help search engines decide how relevant your site is for your most important keywords. So pick links carefully. The more relevant the link to the theme of your website the better the search engines and the higher they rank it in searches. There is a plethora of really great online directories out there. Some are very large and generic, others are much smaller but highly focused on different industries. There are only a couple of major directories…

Yahoo directory (dir.yahoo.com). You must pay a fee to join this directory.

DMOZ – open directory project (dmoz.org). This is a free directory.

After the two major’s, there are literally hundreds of second tier directories with varying themes. The major’s carry the most weight in the world of SEO (search engine optimization). While this may be the case, the second tier directories can also be an important tool for obtaining inbound links.

• Build Links with Other Websites. In addition to Directory links pointing to your site, it is also very important to have other related, quality websites link to your site. A couple of ways to obtain these links is to post a link on your site (called a link exchange), pay for them or write articles for the other website. You need to be careful as to what sites link to yours since totally unrelated site links or less than credible link exchanges could actually harm your search engine optimization.

It is said that “if you want to truly own your online business, you must build your own free traffic”. With free traffic as the base of a successful website, you can then add to it by taking such steps as buying Pay-Per-Click advertising or other website promotion techniques.

2. Pay Per Click (PPC)

This is a process of placing ads in search engine result pages (SERPs) that link to your site. When a web surfer performs an online search that matches up with your sites theme (keywords etc.) your ad appears. If the individual clicks on your ad, you pay the agreed upon amount.

Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing are the two major PPC programs. When someone clicks on your ad, you can expect to pay from $0.05 to $12 plus. The amount will be based on the competition for your keyword(s). The PPC concept of website promotion is that you have a more targeted web surfer who is interested in what you are selling. This type of advertising is popular today and at this time there is probably not a better online advertising model.

3. Branding

Branding is the process of building and promoting “your brand” no matter what your company sells or represents. It can be a trademark, product or service, etc. The simple secret to branding is consistency. Anything that is used to promote and market your business should use the same elements, for example logo, color or any customized features. Consistency reinforces your brand with your customers and with anyone who sees your website and other marketing materials.

4. Other Website Promotion Tips and Techniques

• Include your website URL on all printed material, emails and promotional items

• Put your URL on uniforms and company vehicles• Include your URL on all press releases and classified advertising• Add quality content to your website on a regular basis

• Use your URL when signing posts to blogs and forums

• Send emails about your website, products and services you provide to customers and clients

• Start up a blog or create a forum on your website so customers can post and discuss subjects of interest

• Create an Affiliate Program to allow other companies or individuals to market your products or services for a fee per item sold.

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