in this section...
in this series...
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So, your web site is up and you're ready for people to look at it. Now
what?
Below are some suggestions on how to market your web site. These may
not apply to every web site, so pick and choose what you think will work
best for you.
- Issue a press release and submit to relevant publications.
- Join a relevant newsgroup or forum and post an announcement.
Include a link to your web site with every post you put up as part of
your "signature."
- Email sites that are relevant to your site and offer to trade links
- if they post a link to your web site, you'll post theirs. The more relevant
the site, the more it'll help your search engine rankings.
- Email sites and offer to write free articles in return for
having a link to your site on the article.
- Run a print advertisement campaign. Get lots of postcards printed
with your web site address and mail to everyone who might be interested.
- Integrate your web site address into your existing print materials,
such as flyers, brochures, business cards, and letterhead.
- Purchase banner ads or other advertising space on relevant
web sites.
- List your site in search engines and directories. See below
for more information.
Search engine campaign
Search engine marketing is a whole other animal... and a while one at
that! There are two facets of search engine marketing that you should be
aware of: pay-per-click advertising and improving your search
engine results. Unfortunately there is NO "easy way" of getting your
site to be in the top results, so don't be fooled by the hundreds of emails
that you'll get from companies claiming to do this. We don't consider ourselves
experts in this area, but we have some advice that we can give:
- Define your keywords. The first thing you should do is to figure
out what keywords you should focus on. This will help you with determining
what kind of meta keyword tags to define and what pay-per-click keywords
you should buy.
- Consider pay-per-click advertising. This is the quickest way
to get results, but it may come at a price tag. Pay-per-click advertisements
are the small ads that you see under "sponsored matches" at the top of
Yahoo! searches or "sponsored links" in the right column of Google. The
current high-profile pay-per-click advertising is usually done through
Overture and
Google.
- Invest in a Yahoo! listing. If done correctly, a Yahoo! listing
is a great traffic builder and relevancy boost. The registration fee is
expensive (about $299 at last count) and it can be difficult to get your
site listed in the correct category. Another drawback is that the fee
doesn't even guarantee that your site will be listed. Find out more at
yahoo.com.
- Doing it yourself? Do yourself a favor! The
Planet Ocean Communications Search Engine Newsletter helps you to
stay on top of all the issues with search engine placement. It's less
than $100 for their book, 6 months of newsletters, the 6 next revisions
and updates for their book, and access to their archives.
There is also a helpful series of [free] articles at
www.pixelmill.com/support/a_se_1.asp.
If you don't have time to deal with search engine placement, you may
want to consider paying someone else to do it. You will want to BEWARE of
the many emails that you'll get advertising "Top search engine results for
$200!" Below are some possibilities - we haven't used any of them before,
so do your research!
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