|
|
|
Search engines are the best way to drive targeted traffic to your website. Search engines get an astounding number of visitors everyday. Each visitor types in a search term that they're interested in - which means that they look for you, rather than the other way around. Done properly, search engines can yield a huge amount of traffic for your website. Don't worry about submitting to the hundreds of search engines; it's the major search engines that will provide you the vast majority of your traffic. Thus it's best to concentrate on scoring well with each of the major engines. Each search engine uses a different algorithm to determine how well you rank. Learning how to score well on each engine can be a challenge. It's an ongoing task to stay at the top of the search engines; some people spend as many as 30 hours a week on their search engine positioning! If you are willing to make the effort and you have the time, a great manual for teaching how to do this, step-by-step, is Make Your Site Sell!. If you would prefer to spend your time promoting your website in other ways, think about trying WebPosition Gold, a multi-award winning search engine positioning software.
Directories, or indexes, are often mistaken as search engines. They differ in that they are simply a list of links, divided into categories. Search engines require you to type in a search term, which they'll use to pull up appropriate listings. With directories, you can click on the category of your choice to see the resulting list of links.
Directories are a great way of promoting your website. They're generally easy-to-use, and many are well known.
Ezine (newsletter) advertising is one of the least known but most effective ways of advertising your website, newsletter, or product. Each ezine has a targeted group of subscribers who have voluntarily subscribed to that newsletter. That means your ad will be seen by people interested in your website or product ... which means more responses - which means more sales! For more information on ezine advertising, click here.
Email is an excellent way of promoting your website and your products. But keep in mind that you should only send responsible email - no spamming! (see below) Email is personal and gives the person the opportunity to read through your offer at his or her leisure. They're not so prone to give in to that itchy-clicking-finger as when they're browsing the Internet, and the next website is only a click away. Responsible email means that you only send your offer to those people who request it. Please do not spam; you'll only make people angry and get yourself in trouble. One excellent way to promote your website is through a newsletter, or ezine. Offer subscribers high-quality information of interest to them, and include a small plug for your website or product. If you don't have your own newsletter, see our article on How To Start Your Own Newsletter.
Remember the offline world? It's so easy to get caught up on the Internet that you forget that there's that whole segment of the population that still exists in the "real" world. Offline promotion methods can be a very effective method of promoting your website. Methods include putting classified ads in newspapers, tacking up posters, distributing flyers, and so on. Someone browsing through their morning paper could see your ad in the newspaper and tear it out. Then when he or she wants to visit your site, all they have to do is look at the ad to get your website address.
Banner advertising is extremely popular. And it can be effective - if the banner works extremely well with the content of your web page and your target audience. But I'm sure you've all seen those websites where there are (what seems like) hundreds of banners of every shape and size, cluttering up the page and frustrating you with long loading times. What do you do then? You click to another site. People often ignore banners. They're everywhere, and so we've been conditioned to ignore them. If you want to consider banner advertising, find a reputable service and dig up your own testimonials. Find out what kind of results their customers are getting before you join.
Classified ads are often touted as an excellent way to get traffic and/or sales. There are several software programs being sold -- and very successfully, too -- just to automate the submission process to classified ad sites. In other words, you type in your ad, and the software automatically submits your ad to a large number of free classified ad sites. However, I've only personally had any success with ONE classified ad site. What more information? Click here.
Link exchanges can arguably be in either category (effective or not-so-effective website promotion methods). Most link exchanges will require you to put a reciprocal link on your site to theirs. This can result in YOUR visitors, browsing YOUR site, to see the reciprocal banner or link and click away from your site, never to return. However, in all fairness, some people have had great results with link exchanges. If it's something you want to consider, talk to others who have used the service and ask them what kind of results they've received.
FFA sites allow you to place a link to your website. Usually any link (other than to adult sites) are accepted. People love to post their links; however, when was the last time you actually READ any of them? Spammers (see below) often use FFA sites to harvest email addresses, so be careful.
How often does your mailbox get flooded with junk emails? If you're one of the lucky ones that don't have this problem (yet!), enjoy it while you can. Unscrupulous people harvest your email address from newsgroups, classified ads, or anywhere else they can find it. Then they mail you offers that usually don't remotely interest you in the slightest (often times, they're get-rich-quick schemes). Most people do not appreciate this garbage, aka SPAM. You're probably one of them. If you don't like it, then don't do it to others! All it does is make people angry. While you can try to cloak your email address, there is always one line in there that will allow the savvy Internet user to track you down. Your email account can be closed down, and in extreme cases, your ISP will shut you down! You might get a responses on your offer, but it's just not worth the hassle and headache it will cause you. DON'T SPAM! To help stamp out spam, visit the Internet Scambusters Stop Spam page. This is a strictly NO SPAM site! View Our Privacy Policy
|
