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 Market my website? Why should I have
to spend time and money marketing my website? It's
supposed to be marketing my business!!!
That's how so many business owners feel, they spend a bit
of money on their website design and then sit, doing
nothing, waiting in vain for it to start paying dividends
and bringing in the customers.
It's very simple really, nobody is going to come to your
new site if they don't know about it - if they don't see
mention of it, a link to it or aren't recommended it.
So how can you get your website noticed? Here's a list of
the common methods you can use:
- Traditional Ads & Marketing
- Search Engines
- Online Directories
- Links Development Campaign
- Participation in Online
Discussion Forums
- Article Submission
- Pay Per Click
- Banner Ads
Traditional Marketing
Magazine & newspaper ads, Yellow Pages, PR articles,
leaflets & door drops, business cards, email
signatures, company stationary, company vehicles, the
front of your store. These and many more are places you
can and should advertise your website's URL.
Search Engines
Getting to the top of a keyword search on the major search
engines - Google, Yahoo etc. - is high on the wish list of
most website owners. Unfortunately it's not something that
will happen straightaway. It can take many months of
adding content, getting links from other sites and
optimizing your content for keywords to get a high
listing.
Online Directories
Directories are collections of website addresses that are
collated by human beings. Most will charge a fee for
inclusion, DMOZ/ODP is the one everyone wants to get
listed in - it's free and will have a great effect on your
search engine ranking, but expect to wait months if not
years for a listing.
Links Development
This is one of the most powerful ways of promoting your
site. It means getting other (hopefully related) sites to
include links to yours. To get a link simply email the
site owners and ask for one. Often you'll have to
reciprocate the kindness i.e. link to their site as well
but some will be happy to list your URL for nothing.
If you're a member of local business groups then don't
forget to include your web address on their sites. What
about all your suppliers, can you get a listing on theirs?
Not only will you get people visiting your site via all
these links, you'll also improve your position on search
engine listings (search engines algorithms take the number
of links to your site to be an indication of its
importance).
Discussion Forums
Another way you can attract attention is by participating
in online discussion forums (to do with your area of
expertise of course!). Most will allow you to include a
website link in your signature, i.e. a link to your
site in every post you make.
Article Submission
This is a brilliant way of getting noticed. If you don't
have any problems writing essays then get your pen out!
There are many sites that allow you to submit your
articles for free and they should all allow you to
include a resource section on yourself or company with a
link back to your site.
Pay Per Click
Pay Per Click (PPC) is a very good way of driving traffic
to a site in the short term. Google's Adwords is one of
the best known PPC systems around, Overture provide
another.
When somebody searches for keywords in Google you get a
list of 'sponsored links' on the right hand column (go to
Google and search for 'catering work' and see the
sponsored links on the right). The owners of the sites
don't pay anything unless the person browsing clicks
through to their site.
Banner Ads
It might be worth putting up a Banner Ads on sites you
know your prospective clients are likely to visit. The
ads, which will be made to click through to your website,
come in GIF format or, increasingly, are created in Flash
for a more striking and memorable ad.
Pricing is often Cost Per Click (CPC) but most common is
Cost Per Thousand Impressions (CPM). CPM is related to how
many people see your ad.
As you can see, there are many ways
of building up traffic to your site. If you've got
products, services or content that people want and you're
willing to put some effort into some of these methods then
you will soon start to see a rise in visitors.
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