Put Your Business on the Web
the RIGHT Way!

Promoting Your Website

Promoting your website Building your website is just the first step in bringing your products, services or information to the online world.

The saying "build it and they will come" does not apply on the Internet. In fact, there are millions of sites out there which were built and no-one came!

Your visitors will not come UNLESS you optimise your site for good search engine rankings AND actively promote and drive traffic to your site.

I've already talked about targeting the right keywords and optimising your site for the best search engine results on those keywords. Keyword research is a vital step in building a successful website.

Pay-per-Click Search Engine Marketing

You might also want to consider starting a pay-per-click advertising campaign with search engines who participate in this type of marketing. With PPC advertising you "bid" for placement on your keywords. Generally, the higher you bid, the higher you rank in the search results, but there are other factors which can determine your rankings as well, such as your click-through ratio and the quality/relevance of your landing page.

There are a number of search engines offering PPC advertising, the best known of which are Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft.

If you'd like to give PPC advertising a try I'd recommend you start with Google AdWords.

You can see AdWords in action when you do a search at Google. They are the text ads under "Sponsored Links" at the top and down the right side of the page in search results. You can set up your AdWords campaign for US$5 and control how much you want to spend per day. It is very effective advertising although it can get quite expensive if you are targeting popular keywords. For this reason it is well worth your while to get some expert guidance.

That guidance comes from a guy by the name of Perry Marshall. Call him Mr AdWords if you will. Perry also happens to be, as we say down here, a top bloke! Perry's Definitive Guide to Google AdWords is just what the title says. Highly recommended.

PPC is all about ROI (Return on Investment). Although good natural search engine rankings are what you should always strive for (research shows that searcher's eyes gravitate toward the natural results), it makes sense that if your PPC spend is less than the income generated, then it's worthwhile doing. And unlike other types of advertising the results are easy to track.

Other Ways to Promote Your Site

How else can you promote your site? There is a multitude of ways. I'll give you a few basic tips here and then a top resource to really get your promotional efforts cranking:

Include your URL in all your stationary - business cards, letter heads, signage, etc.
Add a "signature" to all your outgoing email messages which includes your URL
Post to moderated discussion lists, forums, blogs etc. Many of these allow you to add a signature to your posts or comments which include your website address. This can also be a good way to acquire incoming links to your site, which helps search rankings, but be sure to not "spam" the list by only posting on-topic comments and advice. I suggest you start with LED Digest - a great resource for sharing ideas and advice with some of the big names in Internet Marketing
Start your own newsletter and build an email list. I'm not the greatest email marketer (never seem to have the time) but many will tell you that "the money is in the list". For newsletter distribution and list management I use and recommend AWeber
If you have a static website, start a blog (web log) and host it on your own site. Blogging has many advantages such as progressively building your content (search engines love this), engaging your visitors and creating links back to your site from social bookmarking sites such as del.icio.us
Use AWeber to automatically create newsletters from your blog posts and mail to your list
Advertise in e-zines and newsletters
Join an affiliate network such as ClixGalore and get an instant commissioned sales force
Download a free copy of the Authority Black Book and learn how Web 2.0 can drive massive amounts of traffic to your site

This is, of course, a very quick and basic intro. Web Marketing is far too big a subject for me to cover completely in this book. Far better to leave it to the experts - marketers who I respect and who's products I use and benefit from. Who do I admire the most? Glad you asked!

Ken Evoy

Ken is one of the good guys of the Internet Marketing world. You’ll find links to some of Ken’s “Masters” courses in the Resources section at the end of this book.

Next - Creating Additional Income Streams

Course Home - Create a Small Business Website : Contact : Privacy