Website Promotion

July 10th, 2008
Website Promotion/Marketing is a very complicated thing, and basically works as for any business, you must have more than one method of marketing your website. To help explain this, imagine a bicycle wheel, they have a lot of spokes, and the more spokes you have, the straighter and truer that wheel will turn. So should your Website Promotion/Marketing Campaign, just like the bike wheel, if you have loose, broken or missing spokes your wheel will be wobbly, at best! After all, how well would a bike wheel roll with only one or two spokes?
So, what is the solution? Depending on your site or product, and if you also have a “brick and mortar” location, that you are using the website as a “spoke” to market that, you have to adjust your plan accordingly. For example, lets say you have a widget store, a physical location, not just a virtual one, and you regularly advertise in your local paper, simply add your web Address or URL to that ad, just as your website should have the physical address listed on it. See how it works? Your business cards, magnets, or whatever you do to advertise, should include both addresses. Ok, so all you have is a website? Guess what, those same things can help your web business!
Now that you have the basics, move on to more advanced things, like Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Internet Advertising. It is these that I will discuss here.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is one of those things that you will undoubtedly get plenty of SPAM about! This topic is where many of the “Internet Guru’s” come up with their plans that they want to sell you, be careful. The Internet is about sharing information, and you can find it FREE, you just have to look for it! What I recommend, is to stick to the basics of SEO, with time you will learn what works best for you.
Get a Google account, and use the Webmaster Tools that are available, the analytics, and so on, tools are always good, and it is FREE!
Let’s go back to the Widget Store. If you sell widgets, talk about widgets! I don’t mean you have to repeat the word widget a hundred times per page, the search engines will see that as spam, so don’t do it! Just write your copy as if you were talking to someone, but do keep in mind those keywords. If you sell blue widgets, red widgets, big widgets, and little widgets, dedicate a page to each, and you don’t have to write a book either.
Make sure that your images have alternate text and titles, as well as your links, and use those keywords in the page title, like, blue widgets at your town, your state’s biggest widget store, I hope you get the idea, it is hard to explain.
You will also need to get “Inbound” links to your website, but stay away from link-farms, they can get you in trouble, but most link directories should be ok, and there are websites designed for exchanging links, but, be picky, you would want to get links from other widget related sites, but in the beginning, it will be hard to get reciprocal links from the higher ranked sites, until you get a PR 2, then other PR2 and PR3 sites will link to you, but probably not the 4’s and 5’s.
Internet Advertising
What are the best methods? What are the most effective methods? What are the most affordable methods? These are examples of the things that you need to think about and simply determine your budget and go from there. You can sign up with a Pay Per Click advertiser (PPC), like Google Adwords, Yahoo and MSN as well as others have some sort of advertising you can pay for. Yes, I do use PPC, remember the bike wheel? But, watch out, that can get expensive quick! Many websites will also sell you adspace, but be careful and study it a bit.

So, your site is done, the SEO taken care of, you have some newspaper ads, google adsense, and you are ready to go, right? Wrong! What is missing? Well, for one thing, time! Let’s just say you are fast, got everything done in a week, how long until you start showing up in the search engines? If you are using a site with an RSS feed, not that long, maybe a week or two, depending on how much you write. To actually get ranked by Google, that is about 3 months or so from my experience, but that is if you get busy and work hard!

What else is missing? Traffic! Yes, the other ads are going to get you some traffic, but not that much, those people are looking for you already, but what about the rest of the world? Well, depending on what you are selling, that may or may not be important, but the more traffic the better! More traffic means your site is more important. So, how do you get traffic? I mean a lot of traffic! From a Traffic Exchange!
REMEMBER THIS! If you want to use Google Adsense on your site to get paid a buck or two, DO NOT USE A TRAFFIC EXCHANGE! If you do, they will drop you like a bad habit! I know, it happened to me! Yes, it was years ago now, but a lot has changed since then, I don’t want those annoying ads on my site! I can get more out of the increased traffic than the couple of bucks that those ads paid! That is a decision you have to make, but let me tell you how it works. Unless you are selling a product that is more of an emotional thing that will inspire “spontaneous purchases”, very few people trading traffic with you will even look at your site, much less join or buy something! That’s right, so why do it? As I said earlier, more traffic means more important! The more important the site, the higher the rank! Just remember, using a traffic exchange is just one more spoke, and not a cure all!
Most traffic exchanges are FREE to join and you get bonus credits for signing up, and the more traffic exchanges you surf on, the more unique visitors and page-views you will have, look at each one as another spoke in your wheel, but do not think that is the final solution! Traffic exchanges help, but don’t bet the farm on it!
I happen to have a trffic exchange site, TrafficComplex.com, go check it out, register and surf, see what you think. If after trying it that way, you say to heck with that, you can just purchase credits, either here or there, but if you are a member at my site, you probably won’t need to buy any for a while, I’ll give you 3,000 credits, just for signing up and surfing 100 pages!
Should you just want to get some credits, and not go through signing up and all that, I will add your site, and 10,000 credits for 10 bucks! Just click the Buy Now button below, but make sure you email me or use the contact us form, and give me the URL for your site, up to 5 pages, and I will take care of it for you.
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I do want to warn you, traffic exchanges are often used by people trying to spread viruses, adware, spyware and such, so make sure you have a good antivirus program etc. I am the one that approves the sites on my traffic exchange, but, someone could always add some bad code to a site that has been approved! I surf my site a lot, and I watch the pages come and go, if I get a warning of some sort, I will remove that site from the rotation! Why am I telling you this? Just in case you sign up at another exchange, and there are hundreds, I have gotten many, many warnings while surfing! I surf on over 200 sites, so, just make sure you have a good antivirus! I use F-Secure, it costs a little more, but well worth it! I got three viruses and too many spyware, adware, problems to count while using Norton, so, just check them out when it is time to renew. I hope to see your site there soon, if you sign up, you will see mine!

Get F-Secure Antivirus here

Do you have anything to add to what I have written here? If so, simply register and post a comment, and share your experiences with others.

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