Beginners Guide To Website Promotion For Business Owners

Being in the web design industry myself, I come across a lot of website owners who pay for an all-singing all-dancing website, only to discover one year down the line that a website unfortunately won’t promote itself and are dissatisfied with the lack of visitors. As a business owner, you need to be aware of what strategies you (or your search engine optimisation (SEO) company) need to employ. Just as there are a huge variety of websites, there are also various promotion methods which suit certain website types more than others, and a combination of strategies should be used. Read on to find out what strategies will work for your website…

Short-Term vs. Long-Term Results

It can sometimes take a significant amount of time to achieve free traffic from the search engines, and whilst you develop the strategies listed below, you can gain a ‘quick fix’ of website visitors by creating a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaign. PPC is run by many search engines however the big two are Yahoo Search Marketing (Overture) and Google Adwords. With both of these, you choose a bid amount for certain keywords and according to your bid the search engines display an advert of your choice in the “sponsored search” section of their website. In Google this is the pale yellow area at the top and right of the search results. Then when someone searches for a keyword phrase you’re bidding on, if they subsequently click on your ad, then you have to pay Google. Obviously the amount you bid should depend on the value to you of a potential sale (or lead), and your expected conversion rate. When starting a PPC campaign you’re obviously not sure of what your conversion rate is going to be, and so you should calculate the bid amount based on a ‘worst case’ scenario – perhaps try a 1% conversion rate. Using PPC will help boost your traffic quickly and in the short-term, however for long-term and best of all FREE results, carry on reading for more tips that will help you boost your visitor numbers.

Links, Links and More Links

Yes as the title suggests, all of the search engines (with particular emphasis on Google) value inbound links to your website. It is believed that Google won’t even include your website in its search engine if you don’t have at least one inbound link. In reality if you are in a competitive industry then you will need many more than just one link. Inbound links serve two purposes, firstly they drive traffic directly to your website from visitors who click on the link, and secondly they help to boost your rankings in the search engines. Without giving away too many trade secrets, it is safe to say that for websites that don’t naturally attract inbound links (unlike blogs for example), an inbound link building campaign should be high on your agenda. This can be done yourself, if you know where to look, or you can employ a search engine optimisation company such as ourselves, to do the legwork for you.

You may have heard of reciprocal links, whereby you place a link from your site to another site in exchange for a link to yours from theirs. These were all the rage up until a few years ago, until they were devalued by Google. You should now focus on getting one-way inbound links to your website.

How can you get people to link to your website with nothing in return? Well, as I said the approach varies dependent on the type of website. The best bet is to create useful and relevant content or features on your website (perhaps install a blog) that people will naturally link to. I’m sorry to say it but unless you’re a multinational company (in which case you probably wouldn’t be reading this), your 5-page company introductory website is unlikely to gain many inbound links without you putting some effort into getting them.

There are literally thousands of free web directories out there that allow you to submit your website to – first of all you should try and get included in those directories relevant to your industry. If you are in the electronics industry for example, you should run a search for “electronics directories” and many of the websites at the top of the results will allow you to submit your website to. There may be a cost for submission, however, and this needs to be weighed up against the advantages that the link will gain in terms of visitors and also search engine benefit. To weigh up the latter, you need to know quite a bit of advanced SEO stuff so if you’re operating a link building campaign involving paid submissions then you are best to use an SEO company as they will be able to maximise the return on your money.

Will any old link do the trick?

In terms of search engine benefit, no, not all links are equal. Avoiding the majority of the technical jargon, the best thing you can do is to make sure that the anchor text (ie: the text of the link that is highlighted and usually underlined) contains the keyword phrases you are trying to rank highly for. Quality is just as important a consideration as quantity of links.

Content Is King

A popular phrase that is often mentioned in SEO circles is that ‘content is king’. Basically, this means that it is the content (the actual text) of your website that play a large role in determining the success of your website in attracting high rankings and visitors. The more keyword-rich pages you have on your website, the more website visitors you will attract, as you will rank for a much wider variety of phrases. Ideally you should try and add content to your site regularly, particularly content which is useful and relevant to your target market. A blog would be a great starting point, allowing you to post articles and company notices regularly. You can post anything you like, from informative articles to press releases for example. It will also help to establish a level of credibility in the eyes of your customers, particularly if you include descriptions of your recent business successes and positive customer testiomonials.

Ladies & Gentlemen, Welcome To Web 2.0

Web 2.0 is a term that has gained much popularity recently, and encompasses the ‘next generation’ of websites such as social bookmarking sites (eg: del.icio.us), blogs, podcasts, social networking sites etc.. These should all be investigated and considered to make the most of free promotion strategies, however I consider that Digg can offer the most possible reward for the least effort, and so this is explained in more detail below:

Using Digg.com To Promote Your Website’s Content

Once you have written your latest article and posted it on your website, rather than sitting back and waiting days, weeks or even months for the search engines to find it and include it in their index, you can get visitors from day 1 by submitting the story to Digg for example. Digg is probably the most well known website of its type whereby users submit ‘news stories’ and Digg visitors can rate it by either giving the story a “Dig”, or they can “Bury” it. If you’ve just written a catchy and informative article that you think other users would benefit from then by all means submit it to Digg. At worst case you’ll probably get half a dozen website visitors who have clicked on your story link – and at the best case, if you’re story has hit the spot, then many people will Digg it, and visitors will increase exponentially if you’re lucky enough to be one of the popular stories featured on their homepage. It takes less than five minutes to submit your story, and is one of those strategies whereby the disadvantages are minimal, but the possible advantages are huge. Some really popular stories receive thousands of Dig’s, which means that they have probably received even many more visitors than this, as not everyone will ‘Dig’ the story after reading it.

To conclude, website promotion should be a consideration for every new website owner, and there are a variety of approaches that should be looked into. They range from content and link building to making the most of next generation Web 2.0 websites such as Digg and YouTube. With a bit of dedication and hard work, your website can become a valuable tool (if not an essential resource) in gaining extra publicity and ultimately sales.

If you need help with search engine optimisation or boosting the visitors
to your website then feel free to contact us to find out how we can help.

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Tags: guide to website promotion, business owners, website promotion, increase visitors