Web Promotion Tips

Submit to Top Search Engines

Submit your website to the top search engines. Approximately 80% of all traffic to the average website comes from the major search engines. Promotion is important. In order to be listed you need to submit the website to them. There are a number of automatic search engine submittal services, but our recommendation on all new sites is to submit by hand first, and then once a month using the automatic submission services. Some search engines even have an automated way of checking for good web design so this counts in the rankings as well. There is no substitute for good design. There is also no substitute for promotion.

Link Trading

Of the many promotion techniques, this ranks at or near the top. Trading links between other similar sites is valuable in two ways. First, most major search engines look at link popularity when ranking sites. The more relevant incoming links you have to the website, the higher the website will be in the rankings. Second, you'll gain targeted traffic to the site as visitors follow links from similar sites to your website. Of course, visitors will also leave the site and go to the outgoing links, but fair is fair and you'll gain more than you'll lose by exchanging links between similar sites. The easiest way to find similar sites is to do a search in a search engine using the keyword phrase that your site is targeting. Ask the webmasters from the top 10 sites in the search for a link exchange. Some will, some won't but if you have a site that has great web design people will want to link to you. Don't underestimate the power of web design. Remember, as a promotion tool there is no substitute for link trading.

Press Releases

Promotion also means press releases. Get the word out there! There are a number of places on the web to send out free or paid press releases. A good way to announce a website that has good web design to the world is by a well-written press release. The advantage of a press release is not only the traffic from the release itself, but the possibility that some editor or writer may check out the excellent design and content and do a feature story on it. Free advertising is a beautiful thing! So is free promotion.

Ezine Ads

Good promotion also means ezines. Ezines from similar sites to yours are a wonderful way to get targeted traffic to the website. Most of the times you'll need to pay a few bucks for an advertisement in an ezine, but sometimes you can barter and do an exchange of products or services in exchange for advertising. Ezines are great because many of them (like joke ezines) increase in circulation as friends forward them to other friends. Excellent web design adds to the experience and has the potential to get the word out faster than a company with poor web design. Promotion within the ezines is a must.

Join an Affiliate Program

Promotion means sharing the wealth. If you have a product or service that you sell on the website and you can afford to pay a percentage of the sales to someone else as a referral fee, then affiliate advertising is the way to go. People will place your graphic banners on their sites and link to you using an affiliate code so sales can be tracked. The great part of the affiliate program is that targeted leads are sent to you and you'll increase the inbound links and people will want to link to you in exchange for a percentage of the referred sales. Web pages that have good design automatically gain more affiliate links than those showing poor design. Affiliate links equal good promotion.

Message Boards

Promotion means talking it up on the message boards. Message boards are a great way to advertise a site that has good web design if you do it right. If you're not careful however, you may get kicked off the message board for spamming. A message board is a place where people gather to leave messages about whatever the topic of the board is. If you simply jump on the board and say, "Go to this site!" and leave a URL, then most likely you'll be banned as a spammer. If however, you have something of value to say to someone else, then there is more tolerance for including a URL below the signature. Be careful and be respectful. The good part about getting the site's URL on a message board is that the search engines count these as inbound links to the site, even if it is you who placed the link there! Don't overlook message boards as a great promotion tool.