10 Ways to Promote Your Website

You need to promote your site in front of more and more people if it is to be successful, by which I mean profitable. This requires both on-page and off-page optimization, commonly called SEO (search engine optimization), and careful monetization.

Promoting a site in this manner has to be done in two ways:

1. Each webpage should be useful, interesting and appealing to human readers, and
2. Each page of the site has to comply with the criteria used by the search engine robots to measure its comparative value against those on competing sites.

Here, then, are 10 ways to promote your website so that it will attract more traffic and backlinks – the basic requirements for increasing page rank and sales.

Spend some time doing keyword research. You need to find one keyword (the term should be keyword phrase but we always shorten it for convenience) per webpage, with perhaps 4 or 5 supporting keywords that you will include in the page content to make it more readable.

Your chosen keyword needs to be as much as possible a buying keyword: ‘buy diy doghouse plans ’ rather than ‘ways to build a doghouse ’, for instance.

Each webpage should have:

• A title , which includes the main keyword.

• A META tag , basically a succinct summary for the search engines. Make it between 60 and 160 characters including spaces.

• H1 (usually the title), H2 and H3 headings , with the main keywords included as much as possible. Try to give the gist of the article in these headings, for readers and robots that might be only scanning the page.

• A first paragraph that has the main keyword included . Since some robots do not go beyond the first paragraph, it should summarize the contents of the whole article.

• Alternate text with each image or video. This is still read by the search engine robots so should include your main keyword. I usually use just that keyword.

• Anchor text that should either be the main keyword or placed close to the main keyword.

This is the pursuit of traffic and use of backlinks for internet website promotion. You need traffic in order to get sales. You need backlinks to convince the search engines that your site is popular with humans, so that they send it more traffic.

Off-page optimization will include some or all of the following:

• Writing articles for syndication in the better article directories

• Writing blogs or guest blogs in suitable niche sites

• Writing comments in niche forums

• Writing Hubs in Hubpages

• Posting in social networking sites such as Faceboook and Twitter

This can be either:

• Paid advertising, such as Pay-Per-Click (PPC) or paid space on virtually any online marketing site.

• Free advertising, the main method being the resource box you get with each syndicated article, or the signature block you get with forum and blog posts. Social networking sites are also good.

Careful positioning of your sales links on each webpage can make a huge difference to how your site is perceived. Too much marketing fluff or advertising will make readers hit the Exit button pronto. Sales or affiliate links in the wrong place will get no or very few conversions.

I like to have several complementary products to promote rather than having only one – the ‘don’t have all your eggs in one basket’ syndrome!

Everybody likes a freebie. Make an interesting ebook or useful video to give away, in exchange for the reader’s email address.

Develop an email list of interested readers and send them an interesting, useful newsletter regularly to promote your site. Don’t overdo it and stuff each email with promotional material. Only put this in every fifth or sixth newsletter.

The purpose of these mailings is to build trust and loyalty with the people on your list who, after all, have already expressed an interest in your website by adding their names to it. Do this properly and they will want to buy more things from you.

And never, never spam anyone.

Your website needs to have a good internet presence. This means writing at least 20 unique pages, and 30 pages are even better.

Smaller websites might work but, to be taken seriously by the search engines, size is definitely important!

Search engine robots need to find a site’s contents clearly and easily. Include a sitemap to achieve this. For WordPress users the Google XML Sitemaps plug-in is all you need.

Also use a ping-back plug-in so that every change or addition you make is automatically signaled to the search engines, to encourage their robots to make return visits. I use the cbnet ping optimizer plug-in.

Write good, useful content for each webpage, at least 400 words but 500 is better. You need to build trust and loyalty with your visiting readers, and this is the best way to do it. Write copy that sells but, at the same time, write copy that is compelling.This is a skill that can be learned very easily.

Good copy is the key to promoting a site successfully.

These, briefly, are some good ways if you want to know how to promote your site properly. For more detail on some of these topics you might like to check out ‘My Proven SEO Techniques for Making Money Online’.

You will notice that much of this work involves writing, and writing well. Some people can do this effortlessly, others struggle to get it right. Good content creation is a copywriting skill – not to be confused with ‘copyrighting ’! Another part of this skill is being able to write compelling copy; words which sell a product or service.

This copywriting skill can be learned and, for basic internet marketing, it is not difficult. I cannot emphasize this too much: writing good copy is vital for successful marketing .