There are a number of ways to promote your site once you have it up and running. Probably the most important way is through search engines or directories. Another way is by advertising. A third way is by publicity. Here are some great reports on setting up and promoting a web site.
Here's an important free report on The Top 10 Internet Marketing Blunders! Make sure you don't commit these common errors.
Advertising
You can advertise your web site several ways. There are "Banner Exchanges" where you place an ad for your site on someone else's site in exchange for placing an ad on your site for theirs. Banners have become less effective recently, so many webmasters prefer text links, which have a more personal look.
You can pay to have an advertisement placed on someone else's web site. Sometimes these ads are paid for on a per click basis. Other times you pay a commission on any sale that the ad generates. Sometimes this is called an Affiliation program.
Many search engines have Pay-per-click programs. Google's Adwords is a good example of one of the biggest of these programs. I feel this is still the best way to advertise my websites, but bids on PPC (pay per click) keywords are getting much more expensive, and click fraud (inadvertant or fraudulanet clicks that you still pay for but do not bring you a real customer) is becoming more of a problem.
Here are the search engine advertising PPC programs that I like the best:
You can also run ads in newsletters, newspapers or magazines.
Classified advertising is often a good way to get started in promoting your web site. There are both free and paid classified available on the Internet.
For more information see the Advertising section on this web site.
Link Exchanges
You can also exchange links with other web site owners offering products or information that are of interest to your prospective customers. Send each webmaster a personalized email explaining why you think a link to your site would benefit their visitors. If possible make a suggestion about where to place the link. Always offer a link back to their site.
Publicity
You can write up a press release and send it out to newsletters, newspapers or magazines. This is a good source of free advertising. Make sure you word your press release like a news story though, as opposed to an advertisement.
Search Engines
By some counts there are over 1500 search engines. Fortunately there are services available to submit your URL to most of these. Each of the major search engines, or more precisely services, handles submissions a bit differently though. You should probably take the time to submit your web site to the top twenty or so by hand because about 95% of the searches are handled by these engines.
I like selfpromotion.com because they have lots of good advice on getting listed with the search engines and tell you which ones are best done manually and then do the rest for you automatically.
Yahoo is a good example of a directory rather than a search engine. You must go to Yahoo's site and submit your URL for each category that you feel relates to your web site. The Yahoo's editors actually go to your site and then add you to their database.
Most search engines rely on a combination of people checking out submitted URLs and automatic "spiders" or "crawlers" that automatically search the web for new sites, updated sites, and sites or pages that no longer exist. These are all added to a large database or index. When you do a search, the "search engine" then sorts through all this information and presents you with a list of relevant links.
For more about search engines see:
- About Search Engines
- Search Engine Watch
Search Engine Optimization
Every webmaster should know something about search engine optimization. Basically this has to do with making your site rank higher on search engines. This is probably your most important task because search engines will always be the most important way to aquire visitors for most websites.
The first thing you must do is determine which keywords (ie, words that a potential visitor will type into a search engine) will bring the most qualified visitors to your website. To do this, find your competitors on the web and figure out what words they are targeting. You can do this by viewing the source of their web pages and looking at their titles and descriptions.
There is a delicate balance between choosing keywords that are too general and keyword phrases that are too specific. For instance, if you sell auto parts, then the keyword "auto" would be too general (because a search on "auto" would include auto makers, etc.) and the keywords "beautiful auto parts" would be too specific (because very few people would search for these keywords).
You should include specific brand names, and other common descriptions for your products in your keyword list. Sign up for a Google Adwords account and use their keyword suggestion tool to find out how many people search for various keyword combinations.
Include as many keywords as possible in:
- The Title of the page
- The Description of the page
- The first paragraph of the page
- The file name of the page (if possible)
- The alt tags of any graphics on the page
- The page headings of the page
There is quite a lot more information about this subject on the Internet and many people who make a living optimizing web pages for other website owners.