Content Management Systems (CMS)

Promoting your website

In this part we will overview various methods to generate traffic to your website. Basically there are 2 categories: free and paid.

Free traffic represents - SEO, link exchanges, banner trading, participation in forums, newsgroups, posting blog comments where appropriate, writing and submitting articles to directories .

Paid traffic represents – paid advertising methods as Pay Per Click (PPC), paid banner advertising, paid links, running ads in newspapers, radio or distributing flyers in your local community, etc.

Below you will read main methods you could use for promoting your website.

Search engine optimization

This is most popular method for creating traffic. Traffic from search engines is highly targeted and has great conversion rates.

There are many manuals and guides about search engine optimization. The key points to keep in mind are:

- There are 3 major search engines – Google, Yahoo and MSN

- There are several search engine channels that all can bring traffic

a. Standard web search

b. Blog search

c. Picture search

d. Video search

e. Mobile phone / WAP search

Most SEO concentrates on standard web search which means other channels still offer an easy way to get highly targeted free traffic. Read more in MoreNiche guides how to utilize most of these channels.

Recommended Search Engine Optimization Tool

SeoElite – is one of most popular SEO tools with multiple functions, from competition research down to automatic link exchange approaches and more. 

Blog Specialized Search engines (free)

This channel is totally different from the top 3 engines, and operates in its own world – which means, different competitors and different engines, for example, Technocrati or Syndic8;

Advantages of blogging are: it is easy to use; it is search engine friendly, usually seen as a trusted source of information by surfers, attracts an interactive community that has targeted readership audiences which can result in high conversion rates and sales.

Being featured on a top blog sites can result in thousands of targeted visitors in as little as an hour. If blogs are your way of promoting products, Use these engines to your advantage.

Blogs are also good for generating backlinks and sending traffic to your main website. 

Word of Mouth & Viral Marketing (free)

Word of mouth is an old school method and very effective for getting your message around. A simple way to achieve this is to have a “Tell-A-Friend” feature on your website. Visitors would probably use it to inform their friends they think would be interested in the topic. The new visitor will be highly targeted to your sites content.

Another part of viral marketing is distributing something valuable in the form of an ebook or report. These reports would have links back to your website. Distribution can be done through uploading them to forums, public file sharing networks, for example, Kazaa network or Emule and mentioning them on newsgroups, etc

Viral marketing and word of mouth can be mixed together. If you offer an ebook, the surfer has to give the email addresses of 3 friends who also may be interested in the subject in order to receive it. So this can potentially get you 3 extra visitors from every one who decides to get the ebook. Similar campaigns with unique approach has reached as much as millions of referrals this way

Another method would be to create a website and offering free greeting cards to your visitors’ friends. If this is a dieting site, it could be a perfect card for inviting somebody to dinner. At the end of message you can add your little own ad, saying something like: “Curious how to lose weight – find the answer at myweightlosstips.com”.

Press release distribution (free/paid)

Press releases are similar to articles but the idea is to present it in the light of something newsworthy. Once again it is a great way to get featured in offline and online publications, such as Google News or even the New York Times.

For example, say you did experiment on weight loss product X in your town and 10 people lost a total of 200 lbs in just 2 weeks! There’s a fantastic reason for press release! Use it to your advantage to feature your website where you have more details on experiment and product reviews … plus a sales pitch!

Bear in mind, that press releases can also attract journalists from magazines or even radio and TV stations!

A good place to start is prweb.com and similar services. Read their guidelines and tips; read previous press releases in your niche and see what you can adapt from them.