Tips and ideas on how to promote your website for free

As you already know, a website or blog is great tool or a must have tool for anybody, company or organisation in any business or trying to promote anything. “It’s a window display for your Company or Business” and if used properly, it can generate lots of benefits to your business or organisation.

Owning or running a website and not promoting it is like opening a shop in the middle of the desert and expect shoppers to find your shop; because there are millions and millions of websites on the internet with millions more being added everyday.

Below are a few ideas or tips that will help you start promoting your website/blog and the good news is that most of the Website promotion tips below are FREE to implement and if implemented properly can give your website/blog an edge over big Companies with big advertising budgets.

 1. E-mails and E-mail signatures: If you own or run a website, you will in most cases have an email address with an extension matching your website domain name; for example [email protected]

The biggest mistake most people do is to have their own business’ email address and continue to use their hotmail, gmail or yahoo email accounts. Yahoo or Google allow you to use their email accounts for free because the more you use their email addresses the more you promote their companies.

The sooner you start using your Business or Company email address, the sooner you will start to promote your own Business or Company.

Whenever I receive an email, I look at the email extension to see where it is coming from, if the email message is good and the sender forgot to include their website address, I normally copy the email-extension into the web browser and visit the website.

E-mail signature: This is a small message normally found at the end of the email content. It normally reads as follows:

James Buregs
Marketing Director
Papa Internet Services
[email protected]
www.papainternet.comYour email can easily be configured to show this message on every email you send out.
The small message above is very important for two reasons:

• It tells you the person’s name and position in the company who has sent the email in case you wish to contact them.
• It also tells you where the email is coming from. This is very important because at every given opportunity you want people to know or hear about your company or business.

Adding an email signature to your email is quite very easy, just open your email’s dashboard and go to settings, scroll down to the end of the page and add your information in the space for the signature.

2. Word of mouth: This sounds very basic and may be somehow old style marketing but it is very effective. Just tell your family, friends, co-workers and anybody who cares or doesn't care to listen about your new website or blog and then sit back and let them do the job for you. Be sure to remind them or talk about your website or blog at any given moment, some will get bored but will not forget what your website or blog is about.

If you have friends’ contact emails in your address book, just send them general email introducing your new website and ask them to check it out and give you feedback.

3. Business Cards: Some people may say that business cards are old fashioned and outdated but they still work very well. Your business card must have your name, email address, phone number if you want and most importantly your website address, people will want to know in detail what you do and the kind of services you offer before they call or send you an email.

I have often gone through my pile of business cards to see whether I can find one for the plumber or electrician. For sure when they need your service they will go through the pile. Just hand your business cards out at any function you attend or whenever you meet someone who doesn't know you or your line of business. Remember to introduce yourself and business whenever handing out that business card.

4. Office Stationary: This especially refers to any kind of paper you use in your home or office to run your business. If you send out letters, invoices, receipts or quotations, just make sure they all bear your business name, any relevant contacts and your website address.

You could also send out or drop off flyers or business cards at a local shop or community centre advertising your services to the local community. People will normally follow on to your website to check out the services you offer.

5. Search Engine submission: When most people are looking for a service or just anything on the internet, the first place they go to is google or yahoo. These are search engine websites with lots of information and will display all the information they hold on their computers that is relevant to your query. Therefore, it’s important that you make these search engines know that your website exists.

Although it may be difficult to have Google or Yahoo listing of your website on their first or second pages for popular or common keywords (phrase) e.g “web hosting” or “law firm in London” but they will surely recognise your website if you use targeted keywords related to your business. For example; “Papa Internet - debsite design agency in East London”.

Submitting your website information to search engines is FREE but if you can afford, there is paid way of doing it.

If you visit www.google.com or www.yahoo.com and search for “Free search engine submission” you will find instructions on how to do it.

Alternatively, you can submit your website information to over 40 search engines for free through free search engine submission websites such as; www.submitexpress.com.

6. Business Directories: Submitting your website information to business directories is another effective way of informing search engines that your website or blog exists.

Search Engines love directories because they are updated almost daily with new information and often Search Engines visit them to capture those updates.

Submitting your website information to Business Directories is a good way of getting back-links for your website. The more your website is listed on other websites (back-links) the more the Search Engines will begin to respect it, and the more they respect it – the more they will want to be associated with it. Also, people use Business Directories to look for services or products. Google search for relevant Business Directories relevant to your business/trade and submit your website information to them - most are free.

7. Blogs and News letters: If you are lucky to get people visiting your website, how do you engage them and make them come back again?

Have a BLOG on your website. A blog is a dynamic page on your website that is updated regularly with new information. This new information could be in form of regular articles or just announcements.

Having blog is a good way of adding fresh content to your website and not only do search engines love it but also visitors will keep coming back to check on what is new on the website.

You can add pictures or videos on your blog or ask friends and visitors to add their pictures, videos or comments.

You could also encourage visitors to post any questions they may have that are related to the field your business is in. If for example your business is in the field of medicine, legal or accountancy, most of your visitors may have simple questions for you which you could answer promptly.

Some of the visitors may turn into customers if they are happy with the way you interact with them.

If you decide to post regular articles to your blog, you can submit your articles to blogs/article Directories for free as well to increase exposure. This will not only pay you back with back-links but also will bring traffic to your website from visitors following up links in the articles to your website.

Below are a few blog/article directories you can submit your articles to, but you can also do a Google search to find out more.

http://www.goarticles.com
http://www.ezinearticles.com
http://www.articlecity.com
http://www.certificate.net
http://www.amazines.com
http://www.articledashboard.com
http://www.article-directory.net.

Newsletters:  These are in a form of regular emails to your customers with updates or announcements from your company. This is basically to remind them that your business still exists. If there is any recent development within your company or if you offer discounts, this is a good a way of announcing them.

8. Social Networking: There are many websites that provide social networking platforms but the most common ones are;
YouTube
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn.

Most of the websites mentioned above have millions of users. Opening a Facebook, Twitter or YouTube account may be a Free and efficient way of reaching a big number of people with your message at no cost.

Some platforms such as Facebook or YouTube will allow you to start a profile dedicated to your business, which can easily be linked to your website.

YouTube has millions of videos and more are added every day, a small video about your business or charity activities may not only attract visitors to your website but customers too by following links in the video.

9. Classifieds: Classified listings present an easy and free method of reaching lots of people with information about your website and business. They tend to work very well with businesses or service-based websites but you can still drive lots of traffic to any other website.

Below are a few websites you can submit your information to but do a Google search as well to find a more suitable one:
www.craigslist.org
www.classifieds.myspace.com
www.classifieds.yahoo.com
www.kijiji.com

10. Forums: Forums are another good way of promoting your website by especially harvesting bank-links and traffic. All you need is to become an active member of the forum related to your business and start contributing with comments or articles. Just ensure that you include your website link in the forum signature.

By making meaningful and intelligent contributions, people will be inclined to check out the link in your forum signature to find out more about the business you are in.

Manually search for forums related to your website or business and then sign up to start contributing.

Lastly: I hope the above tips and ideas will help you start promoting your Website or Blog for free but if you have any questions related to the above article or any other articles on our website, feel free to leave a comment or send me an email.