Marketing Your Website

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 optimising 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.

Trevor Lewis has over 10 years in the Software Industry. He is currently a Senior Consultant at EMNM. EMNM offer a range of new media design services including multimedia presentations and website design.

ButterflyBucks, GhostCash Hire New Affiliate Manager AVN News (press release) They also provide hosted galleries and other free content for site promotion with payouts via CCBill. Robert has been in the adult industry for 12 years and has many years of experience running cash programs as well as internet marketing, ...

50 Incredibly Useful Resources for Freelancers The Dough Roller Network Solutions offers just about everything under the sun including, Web hosting, Web design, ecommerce, Web site promotion to name a few. This site has been around for a while and helps users get started by providing them an array of tools.

Hindu Business Line

Malls cash in on social sites Hindu Business Line Moreover, relying just on on-site promotion, too, won't generate the expected interest levels (read footfalls). “Ideally, there should be a mix of online and offline promotional activity. You cannot rely on one and ignore the other,” Mr Saxena adds. and more »

Lettings portal launches new TV advertising campaign Rentman Software Ashdown said: “We are an independent, regional portal covering Scotland and parts of Northern Ireland. “We believe our through the line expenditure on site promotion is on a par proportionally with any of the big four UK sites.”

Senior Planner PlanningResource (subscription) You will be dealing with large and often complex schemes, handling the applications, site promotion through the LDF process and strategic advice. You will ideally be MRTPI qualified, have a consultancy experience and preferably have some experience of ...

Promotion 6 du Théâtre National de Bretagne Web Rank Info Votre avis doit porter sur les produits ou services proposés sur le site Promotion 6 du Théâtre National de Bretagne (ou à défaut, sur ses contenus), à condition bien entendu de les avoir déjà testés. Il est impératif de donner les détails qui prouvent ...