Promoting your site is much more than submitting to search engines. As the internet grows so grows the opportunities to advertise your business.
The strategies explored below will help you start a solid promo campaign for your blog.
Make sure your site is optimized before you begin promoting.
Directories
Directories are search engines that are compiled and powered by human beings.
Getting listed in directories is very important because many people will see these listings plus, crawler-based search engines are more likely to find your site and add it to their listings for free.
Prepare your submission information in advance in a word processor like notepad. Write different versions of your site’s title at 50, 75, and 100 characters. Range your description from 100 – 250 characters and set up your keyword list with and without commas.
Now you can quickly copy/paste as needed.
List your site with the top 5 to 10 directories. Some are free… some are paid.
DMOZ (the Open Directory Project) is a volunteer-built guide to the web and provided as an option at many major search engines, including Google. Being listed with the Open Directory is a must for any website promotion campaign.
If you plan to manually DIY check out BestWeb Directories and VileSilencer. They both have extensive lists of free SEO friendly directories.
Search Engines
Submitting your site to the search engines is a waste of time (and money) nowadays. Your blog content, automatic pinging capabilities, directory listings, and backlinks, is what will get you noticed.
Sitemaps are another useful tool to let the search engines know you exist. They are basically a layout of your site, telling the SE’s where to go, and what’s new.
Fortunately, there are plugins for your blog that will automate this process and notify the SE’s whenever new content is added.
Google XML Sitemaps Plugin
The following links are for manually submitting Site-Maps. If you don’t have one, or don’t know what I am talking about, go to “Using Sitemaps” at Google where you can learn what and why, then create one. It’s free.
NOTE: You should first upload your .xml (sitemap) file to your website server’s root directory .
Google Sign in to your google webmaster tools account. If you don’t have an account (shame on you) you can sign up there.
Click the sitemaps link shown on the left side, check the sitemap.xml option, then submit. You’re done.
Yahoo Here is how you submit your sitemap to Yahoo. Go to https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit and log in with your Yahoo name and password (same as your Yahoo email if you have one). Once you log in you will want to choose Submit a Site Feed. Follow the instructions and you are done.
MSN Live Search (Bing): Login to your Live Search Webmaster Center account. If you need to register for a Live Search Webmaster Center account you can sign up here. Make sure to follow their instructions on how to add your website and verify it. Click on the website URL in the list that you wish to supply a XML sitemap for / Click on the “Sitemap” tab located near the top right / Enter your full web address to your XML sitemap / Click “Submit” and you are done.
ASK.com: Ask.com supports the open-format Sitemaps protocol. Once you have prepared the sitemap, add the sitemap auto-discovery directive to robots.txt as follows:
SITEMAP: http://www.the URL of your sitemap here.xml (The sitemap location should be the full sitemap URL.)
Alternatively, you can also submit your sitemap through the ping URL:
http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=http%3A//www.the URL of your sitemap here.xml
Social networking
Social networking (SN) sites are basically online meeting places. Most SN’s are niche focused and encourage you to share your interest by discussing relevant issues, asking questions, offering advice, and socializing in general. SN’s are quite diverse and cover every subject from A to Z. which makes finding a target audience fairly easy.
As a SN site member it is important to follow the rules. SN sites may have restrictions regarding the posting of links and not adhering these restrictions could result in you being banned. Read the user agreement and play by the rules.
Do Not spam the boards with links. Creating a professional signature with your link included is the best way to promote your business. Obviously if you are involved in a discussion, and the subject is relevant to your service or product, a properly placed link would be fine.
Avoid arguments and topics which could spawn them, remember, you are representing your business and you want everybody to like you. Taking sides on any issue will alienate a certain percentage of potential customers. If you feel the need to debate and participate in heated arguments, create a new identity that has no connection to your business.
Mashable.com lists over 300 SN sites with a brief synopsis of each. This is a great place to start.
Article Writing
Articles are a great way to generate links, boost your search engine rankings, find new prospects, and target traffic to your web site. Search engines love content articles and many people will read and link to those that are interesting and informative.
Most article syndication sites allow you to post your content for free. Once published, your content is available for everyone to read, and possibly reuse. Some sites allow you to include HTML links in your articles and some don’t… read the T.O.S.
Almost every site allows links in your “Resource Box” which is your signature, profile, bio, or whatever. You can tell a little about yourself and, more importantly, include a backlink to your website.
Publish well written, informative articles, that attract many viewers and you have a good chance that someone will re-post it (requiring the inclusion of your resource box) on their site, thus creating a backlink.
A great way to find “writing ideas” is to sign up with Google Alerts and receive e-mail once a day, week, or month announcing news articles that relate to any topic you choose. Read through these articles and you may find new inspiration.
Article Writing Resources:
Effective article writing…
A nice step-by-step to article writing.
Writing Tips for Non-Writers Who Don’t Want to Work at Writing…
Interesting things to think about when writing articles.
Forums
Forums and Discussion Groups are a terrific way to promote your online business. They are almost always free to join, and offer more than just social interaction.
Active participation will enable you to discover new business strategies by sharing your ideas with other members.
Look for forums that are related to your business niche. Board Reader, Big Boards, and Board Tracker are great directories to search through.
Be somewhat selective in choosing the forums to join. Aside from being relative to your business you will want forums that are active.
See how many members there are (1000 or more is good) then check out the postings for the past week or two and make sure that there have been multiple contributions on a daily basis.
Read the user agreement and posting guidelines for every forum you join, they are not all the same. Make sure that you are allowed to place links in your signature and promote your business.
Remember, simply joining a Forum or Discussion Group does you no good unless you take part in the discussions. Build a good reputation and you will build your business.
Viral promotion through social bookmarks, Twitter, Facebook, etc. are extremely effective and will be discussed in a future post.
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Aw, this was a really great post. In theory I’d like to write like this too – taking time and real effort to make a good article… but what can I say… I procrastinate alot and never seem to get anything done.
Aw, this was a really great post. In theory I’d like to write like this too – taking time and real effort to make a good article… but what can I say… I procrastinate alot and never seem to get anything done.
Good afternoon, This is an outstanding write-up, and I can agree with what was written here. I will be back to check out the comments soon. Thanks
Good afternoon, This is an outstanding write-up, and I can agree with what was written here. I will be back to check out the comments soon. Thanks
Hi, I found this blog once, then lost it. Took me forever to come back and find it. I wanted to see what comments you got. Nice blog by the way.
Hi, I found this blog once, then lost it. Took me forever to come back and find it. I wanted to see what comments you got. Nice blog by the way.
Hello I was just wondering do you do all the writing yourself or do you have guest writers. I’m enjoying your blog. Thanks.
All the content on this site is original and written by me. I will be posting guest articles in the future which will display the author and source.
Thank you for your interest.
Hello I was just wondering do you do all the writing yourself or do you have guest writers. I’m enjoying your blog. Thanks.
All the content on this site is original and written by me. I will be posting guest articles in the future which will display the author and source.
Thank you for your interest.
Thank you so much, there aren’t enough posts on this… keep up the good work
Thank you so much, there aren’t enough posts on this… keep up the good work
It’s awesome to see this website is finally getting the attention it deserves! Keep up the fantastic work.
It’s awesome to see this website is finally getting the attention it deserves! Keep up the fantastic work.
This is standard in terms of google. Nada appears to rag upon it than that!This is exactly was forewarned about several years prior at the blackhat about SEO some number of years ago in ’94!
This is standard in terms of google. Nada appears to rag upon it than that!This is exactly was forewarned about several years prior at the blackhat about SEO some number of years ago in ’94!
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