Profiting 103 - The First Steps of Web Promotion
This is perhaps the most important topic
when it comes to your new online business. After all, you
have come up with a great domain name. You have a clear
business model, and you have a pretty good idea of how you
will make an income for the time being. But at this point
absolutely nothing is going to happen unless you take the
next big step, promoting your site!
In Profiting 102 we talked about using your site as an
informational resource. The example we used was “Widgets.”
We decided that for now, your site is going to be largely
“blog” oriented, meaning you would share your knowledge and
expertise with your audience through regular updates. Since
you are a “widget” expert it will be easy for you to supply
a lot of content that will keep your audience coming back
for more. However, first you need an audience.
Advertising comes in many forms and you can generate a lot
of traffic simply through free advertising. For the purpose
of this article we will limit it to free advertising since
it is assumed that we are working on a limited budget. One
of the best ways to do this is through article writing. You
see, people come to the internet for one purpose usually.
That is, to get information. And the best informational
resources out there are article sites. Google even
recognizes this, and many article sites appear in the top
results of google searches. This can be a valuable tool for
you, the rookie online entrepreneur.
Two of the top article sites right now are EzineArticles
and GoArticles. Both of these sites have a lot of traffic
and can generate a lot of exposure for your website. The
key here is however that you have to be as informative as
possible. Article sites are not looking for promotional
type articles and they will usually reject you quickly if
your articles have too much hype. Try to write in a natural
conversational tone. Rely on your own expertise to convey
what you are trying to say to the audience. The standard
rule of thumb for article sites is to only include your
"self-serving" urls in the author resource box. Most sites
limit your promotional urls to two.
Besides the two previously mentioned sites there are
literally thousands more like them on the web. To deal with
this many sites now offer article submission services where
they take your article, and once approved submit it to a
thousand or more article sites. Many of these of course are
not free but some such as Isnare provide the service for as
little as $2 dollars per article.
Another type of free promotion, which is probably the
hottest trend right now, is video advertising. Not
necessarily commercials but home made video footage of you
discussing a particular topic that relates to your
business. Sites such as YouTube have made the movement
quite popular, and for good reason. You see, search engine
“spiders” have the ability to actually crawl the content of
video. They will pick up on keywords used and then direct
you to these videos when you search for information! Yet
another powerful tool to promote your business. Also Google
loves video content. Your website will see a definitive
increase in traffic if you can create useful videos.
A new wave of promotion that is increasing in popularity is
Web 2.0. This terms refers to the way that the world wide
web is shifting to a popularity in social networking sites,
blogs, and “folksonomies” (a play on the words “folk” and
“taxonomy”). Not only are these sites used for pure
socialization, but now they are an integral part of a
businesse’s web promotion campaign. Sites such as Squidoo
actually allow the user to develop their own web
communities.
The final piece to the free site promotion puzzle is
directory submission. Your search engine ranking is largely
based on how many other sites on the web link back to you.
This gives your site more credibility. I would suggest
avoiding services that promote link exchange and link
"blasting." Google may penalize your page rank by having a
large number of low quality links back to your site. In
general, it is almost always better to submit your site to
directories by hand the slow and meticulous way, instead of
utilizing any kind of submission software. One of the best
listings of free web directories is AddUrl.nu. They have a
huge database which is constantly updated and maintained so
that you know all of the directories are of high quality.
To sum up, page rank on the search engines takes time and
trying to speed things up may ultimately slow you down.
By utilizing several different methods of website
promotion, you will be surprised at the results you can get
through simple free advertising. It may take a little work
but the results are a well worth it, and it is a imperative
first step in your business building process.
David Webb is an EzineArticles Expert Author.