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The Basics of Web Site PromotionThe Basics of Web Site Promotionby Pinyo BhulipongsanonNow that you have a web site and make it available to millions of users worldwide, you may be wondering how come your web site traffic is so miserably low? (hopefully, you are the curious type that put in counters to see who visited your site, if not, I highly recommend AXS Site Tracking System). The truth is that you have to do a lot work to increase web site traffic. Unpromoted, a web site will see very few visitors (if any). If you are like most webmasters, you want to have a web site that actually does something. If you have a message board, you want people to write. If you sell something, you want people to buy. And so on... The key here is to get people to come to your site. Here are several web site promotion techniques: Build a Good Foundation Before you start promoting your web site, it is worthwhile to get your own domain name Make sure your site is complete (no missing graphics or underconstruction sign, etc.) A complete web site can be as small as one page. You can always grow it later. Make sure your site has something useful to say or sell. People will not bookmark a site that is useless. Make sure each of your web pages is optimized for high search engine ranking. Build your Internet Presence Submit your site to major search engines, especially Google Submit your site to major web site directories, especially DMOZ Exchange links with other webmasters, but only with sites that are related to yours (reciprocal linking) Consider publishing monthly e-newsletter to keep your current user base to come back to your site Consider hosting discussion forums Other Promotional Techniques Add your site as part of your email signature. You can also add it as part of your signature when you write on message boards and newsgroups. For instance, this is my email signature: Pinyo Bhulipongsanon http://www.greatnexus.com Strategically mention your web site in other message boards and newsgroups with a similar topic. You have to be careful here and only use this technique sparingly, or else people will just ignore you. I only do this when my site would be a useful source of information. If you sell products, you can put up some auctions on eBay and mention your sites on the eBay About Me Page. Check out these web sites and newsgroups for more promotion techniques. Some good ones I found are: Search Engine Forums SelfPromotion.com SiteOwners.com WebMonkey: Drumming Up Web Traffic on the Cheap Promotional Techniques to Avoid Avoid auto-submission to search engines and directories. In truth there are only a handful of good search engines and directories. Auto-submission usually will just get you a lot of spam emails Avoid participation in Free For All (FFA) listing. There is no quality monitor on FFA and you site can be listed amongs shady entries. Moreover, some search engines such as Google will actually penalize you for having any association with FFA Avoid participation in Link Farms. Read major engines policy and guideline and avoid techniques that they discourage. For instance, cloaking, hidden text, keywords stuffing, etc. See Googles Webmaster Dos and Donts Explained for a more thorough discussion on this topic. About the Author: Pinyo Bhulipongsanon is the owner of GreatNexus.com Webmaster Resources offering visitors with features such as webmaster forums, webmaster directory, webmaster dictionary, programming scripts, and webmaster articles. Visit his web site for more webmaster and SEO articles, or to submit your article. |