How to Promote Your Site, Website Promotion, Promote My Web Site

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How to Promote Your Website

This lens is aimed at all those site owners who want MORE!

They want more visitors to their websites, and they want more visitors to convert into subcribers (or leads) or into customers (sales). It's a short-ish lens because the way to get "more" is essentially a short-ish message, but there are links to many, many resources that will help you promote your business online. So let's go...

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

(NOTE: Don't forget to bookmark and rate my lens, add it to your favorites and lensrolls!)

Your #1 Marketing Concern

From what site owners tell me their biggest marketing concern can be paraphrased as this: "Show me how to get more visitors to my websites and get them coming back afterwards".

And this is what I then tell them to do.

"How Do I Promote My Website?"

Most people want to learn how to successfully promote their websites and how to make more sales, leads or affiliate commissions. They usually have a website in mind, but if they don't I always tell them to check out a product/service called Site Build It! as it's a great way to build a successful website (it's also a great way to drive traffic to an existing website...)

== Aside ==
Site Build It! (SBI!) is designed to let anyone with passion and determination create a website that gets targeted visitors (and those visitors often return for more). I created a free guide to SBI! to try and help people understand how good it is. In the end though, the real video testimonials you'll find at the free guide say so much more than I ever could - http://www.site-buildit.com
== Aside ==

So, for people that just want to get more traffic to their existing site then my #1 tip is...

1. Content 

Create Great Content - Tip #1 (how to promote your website)

Create well-written, unique, content for your site and keep on creating it, week in and week out. Remember, that content helps presell you and your business as it demonstrates your expertise, and it confirms that visitors are in the right place to do what they always want to do online: find out stuff.

Content can also help educate the potential customer as to just why they may need your product or service, too. And that's where sites that just try to sell without content will always struggle. (Even the mighty Amazon relies on content on its sites (it gets its customers to write handy product reviews.)

So content helps pre-sell. Obviously content helps your site do better in the search engines (see modules below for details), and good content often encourages other site owners to create links to your site, too.

== Aside ==
To learn *much more* about the importance of writing good content (and learn how to write it), I *highly* recommend Dr Ken Evoy's free ebook called Make Your Content PRE-sell (MYCPS). It shows you, step-by-step, how to please both the search engines *and* your site visitors.

You can download MYCPS! here, for free

== Aside ==

So create high-quality content and keep on creating it.

A by-product of creating content all the time is that you can sometimes reuse this content in the form of a Squidoo lens (ahem!) or even an article that you can use to promote your site on article directories like Ezinearticles.

And what kind of a teacher would I be if I did not give you examples:

Steve M Nash on Squidoo
Steve M Nash on Ezine Articles

Now learn more about building links in my #2 tip...

2. Links (part 1) 

Get People To Link To Your Site One-Way - Tip #2 (How to promote your website)

Getting other sites to link to your site is one of the most important website promotion activities that there is today.

One-way inbound links are best, but you can also swap links (called reciprocal linking) with quality, targeted sites too.

== Aside ==
NOTE: avoid link exchanges and reciprocal link software unless you are going to use them intelligently. The best way to build reciprocal links is by hand, one at a time.

One link exchange that is worth a try, though is SiteSell's Value Exchange. I recommend you download the Make Your Links Work ebook that you'll also find there - it too is an invaluable read.

== Aside ==

In fact, I suggest that one of the biggest differences between sites that rank on the first page and the fifth page of Google, especially for competitive keywords, is the number of quality inbound links that those respective sites have pointing to them.

So how do you build incoming links, then?

Begin with the following activities


1. Write articles

2. Build a Squidoo lens

3. Get your site added to social networks like del.icio.us

4. Simply ask people to link to your site

5. Make your site a WOW!

2. Links (part 2) 

Get People To Link To Your Site One-Way - Tip #2 (How to promote your website)

Okay, let's briefly cover each of these actions or activities.

1. Write articles

Jim Daniels wrote a great article on article writing called "Traffic Magnet"... The Genuine Article! and I put it onto my HowIPromoteMyWebsite.com website (which automatically placed a one-way link back to Jim's site - see how it works!) You can read it here

2. Build a Squidoo lens

What is Squidoo? Well you're looking at a Squidoo lens right now. Squidoo is a popular web 2.0 site (popular with Google, that is) that aims to provide useful information, lenses as they call them, on pretty much any subject you can imagine (like "how to promote your website" :-) )

Building lenses is easy. Very easy. Just click on this Make Your Own Page link and create lenses that both inform, and link to your sites! :-)

3. Get your site added to social networking sites

Social networking or bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, Stumble Upon and Squidoo are sites that let users create their own content or share their favourite websites. They're a great source of inbound links to your site and Google et al take notice.

Get your quality site noticed on social networking sites! Just do it. How? Use the AddThis.com Boomark tool that I use on this lens below.
(Find the AddThis.com tool here.)

4. Ask people to link to your site

Perhaps the easiest way to get people to link to your site is simply to ask them. You can ask them on any page of your website, including a links page, or in your email, or even on your Squidoo lens (ahem!). In all cases do make sure that you provide linking instructions, though.

Again, just so you can see that I follow my advice...

For this lens, simply follow the advice below, or check out my HTML Link request for TextMeFree

AddThis Social Bookmark Button


(NOTE: Don't forget to bookmark and rate my lens, add it to your favorites and lensrolls!)


5. Make your site a WOW!

When I say WOW, I'm thinking of sites like Facebook.com, Myspace.com, digg.com, YouTube.com and even Google. Do you think these sites ask for links? Nope. And how about AddThis.com? Do you think they asked me to link to their site from this Squidoo lens? Nope. I linked to their site because their site is really useful to YOU.

So think of ways of making your site REALLY useful, and I mean really useful, and you'll find your site receiving more and more inbound links, without you even needing to ask

3. Don't Quit 

Whatever You Do, Don't Quit! - Tip #3 (How to promote your website)

And if creating content or building links isn't your thing then you might like this last tip. It's quite a simple tip and it's more or less guaranteed to work: whatever you do, keep on doing it until you become a master, until you make it work for you.

That doesn't mean trying one thing after another forever more, because that never works.

It means checking out the lenses below and finding a website promotion activity that works for you - Ebay marketing, video marketing, viral marketing etc. - and sticking with it until you get results.

See I told you it was simple! :-)

Happy website promoting. Do me a favour now, eh! Please check out the website promotion lenses below, but also leave some guest feedback. I've done my bit now it's time for you to do yours! ;-)

Adios, and as Inspector Clouseau was wont to say, "until the case is sol-ved".

More Website Promotion DO's 

What else you should be doing to promote your web site

DO Optimise Your Website
Make sure that each page has a distinct title tag above all else!
DO Keyword Research
Make sure you're creating content based on keywords that people are interested in!
DO survey your site visitors
Who else can tell you what content (or service) needs to be on your website better than people that actually visit your site? Ask 'em questions! You might be surprised what you find out!

Some Website Promotion DON'T's 

What you should NOT be doing to promote your website

DON'T use free web hosting
Your site www.geocities.com/YourSite is a) never going to rank on the search engines and b) never convince customers that it's a real business.

Businesses don't use free hosting. It doesn't matter if you don't know why this is the case, or even if you don't agree, it's just a fact.

DON'T use free hosting!
DON'T use link farms
You put your link to your site on a so-called "link farm" and then you put the page containing that link on your site and, soon enough... yep, your site drops out of Google. DON'T do it!
DON'T purchase traffic
Don't buy traffic from guaranteed traffic websites. I did it once, and I don't care how valid the traffic source was, it resulted in zero sales. Guaranteed traffic is a scam, in my opinion, and you should avoid it at all costs.

Please add your comments below 

(Allowing feedback is a great way for you to promote your websites too, don't you know!)

Hey, if you've found this lens interesting, helpful, enjoyable, informative please lensroll us, leave a comment, vote for us or - even better - add us to your favorites! (Hey, if you don't ask... !)

Lensmaster

wowhehe wrote

cool!
sounds great!
helpful!

Reply Posted June 11, 2009

teteimathews wrote...

Wow, I love your lens. Great help for me. Thanks!!!!

ReplyPosted May 08, 2009

SteveMNash wrote...

in reply to Roy You should definitely keep your website up to date, for sure. I put evergreen info on this lens - which is not my website - so that I wouldn't have to keep on updating it. But if I wanted to promote this lens much more then you're right Roy, I should update it more often...

ReplyPosted April 27, 2009

Lensmaster

Roy wrote

You say to keep the info up to date - When did you last update this?

Reply Posted April 27, 2009

GeorgeCombes wrote...

Some great information on your lens. The do's and don't section particularly useful.

ReplyPosted September 05, 2008

Lensmaster

Sergiu wrote

You were wrong when you said free websites don't rank in Google.
I have a freely hosted website that ranks first with one keyword and 4th and 5th for others.
So now I'm considering in upgrading it so I get more sales.

Reply Posted August 29, 2008

Lensmaster

Dr. Anuj Gupta wrote

Really Very informative and helpful knowledge in your lens, I am great happy to find it. It is great job keep it ahead...my websites here.I am back soon. Seo Services Call Center Services Free Link Building Web Promotion

Reply Posted August 20, 2008

The_Davinator wrote...

Hmm, very great and informative lens Steve. I'm certainly finding some gems today. Thanx and 5 stars.

Cheers
Davin
Viral Marketing Maniac
http://www.luvcomputers.com/blog/

ReplyPosted July 29, 2008

Maa wrote...

Love your lens really appreciated the part where you tell peopel what not to do. 5 stars!

ReplyPosted May 28, 2008

Maa wrote...

Love your lens really appreciated the part that tells you what not to do! 5 stars!

ReplyPosted May 28, 2008

Lensmaster

Imran wrote

After reading your lens, I feel it is very good for newbie. You have summarized all internet promotion in little but relevant content that reflects your professionalism & right approach. Furthermore, one thing I want to add is that internet world is changing frequently. One promotional method which is famous now may be obscure tomorrow. I can give example of email promotion because of big smack down between spam laws and email marketing. So, your lens should be updated regularly so that we can get updates repeatedly.

Reply Posted May 20, 2008

Lensmaster

Kaly wrote

I found lot of tips here. Thanks. All are very useful valid tips.
I am going to use these tips to promote my websites http://www.elitespider.com http://www.waddies.com

Reply Posted April 27, 2008

funwithtrains wrote...

Nice Lens! 5 stars and a favorite from me! Please visit my Marklin Trains lens.

ReplyPosted April 23, 2008

 
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Website promotion - how do you do it?

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YouTube Videos - How To Promote Your Website 

YouTubers discuss website promotion, incuding video marketing :-)

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