Professional Web Site Marketing Strategies
By Stephen Renfrow
©2000 All rights reserved
Do you have a great online business, but few customers and a very limited budget to work with?
Just uploading your site onto the internet is not enough; even submitting to the main
search engines and directories takes time. Often it may take months for a web site to get listed.
You don't have to spend a fortune on marketing your site; the best methods are often very inexpensive or free.
1. Pay-per-click search engines
Pay-per-click search engines work by bidding for keywords. This is an immediate way to get your site listed. They work by
bidding for specific targeted keywords related to your site.
You pay only for hits to your site and bidding can start as low as $0.1 depending on the popularity of the keyword.
For example if you sell blue widgets then "widgets" is too
vague. "blue widgets" will get visitors who specifically want to
buy blue widgets! "Widgets" would probably be more expensive as
it has a more general audience, but "Blue widgets" is more
targeted to a particular audience and would most probably be
cheaper. Here are a couple of well-known ones:
overture.com and
go-click.com.
2. Submit e-zine articles
Submitting e-zine articles is free and often one of the best
ways of getting visitors to your site. Write an article about a
subject that relates to your site giving useful information, but
don't use it as an advert for your site or it probably won't be
accepted. You can, however, advertise your web site in a resource
box at the end of your article.
Submit your articles with online article directories at
e-zine-writer.com/article-lists.html,
e-zinewriter.com/top10.html,
ideamarketers.com
and articlecity.com.
If your articles are of value with good content they will soon be circulated amongst many other web sites providing you
with links back to your site. Search engines love sites with lots of links so it will increase your web site's popularity.
In time, you will find that traffic to your site has dramatically increased. This will be targeted traffic from visitors
having read your articles.
Success doesn't happen overnight and takes hard work and perseverance, but if you write a couple of articles a week you
will soon find an increase in visitors to your site.
3. Write your own e-zine
Start your own e-zine and publish it regularly. This is a good
way of informing your visitors of any news and updates on your
web site. Have an opt-in form in a prominent place on your
site so that people can subscribe to it. The e-zine should also
have an unsubscribe option as well. Any visitors who do
unsubscribe should be deleted from your database immediately.
You can install some free CGI scripting that enables visitors to subscribe and unsubscribe to your newsletter or e-zine. Go
to siteinteractive.com/subscribe/index2.html.
There are tutorials as well to help you install the script.
A good idea is to have a pop-under box for visitors to
subscribe. This will appear after they have closed your site. I
personally find pop-up boxes annoying, but with a pop-under box,
the visitor has already left your site anyway. You can get the
CGI script for a pop-under box at clickforcontent.com.
If you need articles to put in your e-zine, there are many sites that have databases of free articles you can use. Try
free-zineweb.com and
e-zinearticles.com.
These are just some of the methods that you can use to get traffic to your site. There are also
many offline ways as well including just talking to people you meet!
You could design and print out some flyers to advertise your
business and place them in cafes, libraries, supermarket
customer advertising boards, and even place some on car
windscreens in car parks that you are passing through. I have
often gone back to my car after a shopping trip and found a
flyer on my car advertising a business or local event!
Design and print out business cards. You can get some nice quality paper for printing these out on to make them look
professional. Hand these to everyone you meet and leave one with a bill whenever you eat in a restaurant.
How about designing a car sticker and place it on the rear windscreen of your car?
Placing an ad in your local paper is a good idea and reasonably inexpensive.
Always make sure that you carry some cards and flyers whenever you leave the house; you never know when an opportunity will
occur!
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