How do you promote your website?

Hi,

I am wondering. How do you usually promote your website?

Is there any special way to start with?

It will be great if you can list your the steps you follow. I would like to hear from eveyone here.

 

1. try to achieve high rankings in the search engines - especially google, yahoo and msn
2. use a advertising program - e.g. adwords
3. join forums of related interest

 

Thanks for the reply. But what would you do if the keywords you are using are very competitive in adwords and you have to pay over $1 for a click?

 

Actually, it seems really difficult for a beginners to get targetted traffic. But some good intelligent effort makes u succeed. Try posting some messages in related yahoo groups and related forums... but be careful not to write "PLEASE VISIT MY SITE" directly on forums , they consider it as an advertising and will ban you. Add ur link in your signature and post normal quality messages very frequently. And also put in some efforts to get a link from a very high traffic website. If they charge some money, it is really worthwhile to spend it since traffic from those sites will be more targetted and are more likely to click your ads.

regards
Aditya

 

Thanks Aditya for the nice advices.

 

I let me sites promote themselves ;-)

 

They have to be very quality sites i suppose.

 

of course. why would you build anything else?

I've experimented with "shitty" sites, both with shitty content or with scraped content or datafeeds. the quality sites take more time initially, but once they're up, they continue to promote themselves, last longer, don't really risk getting banned, and are just a much better use of your time in the long term

 

I see. Thanks

 

I mostly add my links to my signatures at forums I post at. Also, I attempt to exchange links with decent traffic sites and use the AdWords Program

 

Will they accept to exchange with you if you don't have traffic?

 

Submit your sites to directories to add backlinks and increase your pagerank. As was mentioned above, put your site link in forums relating to your topic. A good place to find such boards is at http://www.big-boards.com.

 

Thanks for the link.

 

Oh yes, I have to say one of my hidden gems is placing a link in my sig on the forums...this one in particular. I continously receive traffic to my sites because of posting in this forum.

 

Thanks. But i think you will have to post a lot in order to get a lot of traffic.

 

Yes.
1. Kick off with an Adword campaign. Google Adwords will bring you well needed immediate traffic.
2. Write a Press Release - With few bucks you are going to get quiet decent number of traffic. Highly recommended.

Here are the usual steps I take:
1. Start with an Adword Campaign
2. Writing Press Releases
3. Improve Link Polpularity - This includes directory submissions, link exchanges, writing articles etc. Link popularity is still an impportant factor Google and other major search engines consider when giving high ranking. Remember Link building step has no end, it should be continued through out.
4. Join forums that are related to your site. If you have a travel related site you should join travel related forums. This will also bring you quiet decent number of traffic as well as the link in your signature will help you achieve backlinks.
5. Advertising - Advertising in Magazines is very very important if you are a serious marketer. Find journals,& magazines that are directly targeted to your target market and do some advertisements. With just few bucks you can target a wider audience.

MSN may give you a good ranking for a couple of months but, achieving good ranking in google and Yahoo is much more difficult.

As for Google you should wait atleast a year before you start getting referrals in most cases. Also in order to gain good ranking you should remember the following points.
1. Creat content and more content - Update your website as often as possible. Google and and other search engines value frequently update websites than the ones that are not.
2. Make your content unique and fresh - Try to achive unique and fresh content. Major search engines highly recommends to do so. Do not copy content from other websites.

 

You may also want to consider writing some articles (themed on-topic with your site) and submitting them to the free article directories. This is a good way to create backlinks, as well as to increase your SE rankings.

HTH,
Sam

 

Thanks a lot guys. Very interesting tips.

 

I will add a thing here : try to aim for active user driven site. if your user create content then you have free time for other things. So encourage your users to create.

 

I mostly use word-of-mouth, and asking webmasters of related sites to link up.