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Now
what do I do with it?
Now that your web
site is ready to promote there are several basic things that you
need to do to help people find you.
1. Get listings on search
engines and in Web directories. For most Web sites, search
engines and directories are the most important sources of qualified
visitors. They account for 70 percent or more of the visitors to
many sites. You should continue to submit your site to the major
search engines each month and place your site in popular directories
like YaHoo. It can take several months to build up a noticible presence
in the search engine databases. The main key to success with search
engines is to provide quality rich information on your web pages
vs. the key words you are trying to focus on. Click here to learn
more about how
search engines work. Click here for more information on Search
Engine Submission Service.
2. Collect "opt-in" e-mail addresses and e-mail
invitations to your prospects. "Opt-in" or "Maillists"
consist of people who visit your site and have asked to receive
e-mail about a specific subject. The invitation can be in the form
of a newsletter, coupon or special announcement broadcast. This
ability is built into our basic hosting
service and can be utilized in a manual or subscribable mode
for hands free list generation.
3. Beg, swap, or buy links to your site from other sites
your prospects visit. Associations, educational sites,
and other companies are likely candidates for links. What other
Web sites do your prospects visit? See if you can get a text link
from those sites to yours. Over time, they could send you a steady
stream of highly qualified visitors. Sometimes you can get a link
from another site just by asking. Try that approach first. Most
of the time, however, you'll scratch their backs and they'll scratch
yours as each of you adds links to the other. If the other site's
visitors are valuable enough to you, you might even offer to pay
for a link. Getting links off of other site also will
also build up what is called your "link popularity". Search
engines place pages higher on search results based on this factor!
4. Promote your site URL offline everywhere you can - especially
in your local market! You've seen other people s URLs (Web
site addresses) on buses, billboards, t-shirts, and TV commercials
on the radio and in their newsprint and yellow page advertising.
You can do the same with yours. Put it on your letterhead, business
cards, and checks--anyplace you would normally print a phone
number. Make sure all your employees include your Web address
in their e-mail signature files.
5. Send e-mail and "snail mail" press releases
to announce your site. When you launch your site, add something,
or hold a special activity on your site, you can generate traffic
through press coverage. Press releases are cheap, and they can produce
stories in both electronic and traditional media. Those stories
send a temporary burst of visitors to you, and the leads are qualified
because the respondents are interested in the topic of your release.
6. Swap or buy banner advertisements on other sites.
As opposed to text links (#3, above), banner ads deliver short-term
bursts of visitors to your site. That can be expensive, but there
are services that swap banner space on your site in exchange for
displaying your banners on other sites. Swapped banners usually
generate less-qualified traffic than targeted banner ads, but they
cost much less.
7. Pay commissions to affiliates who send customers to you.
You may have noticed that some Web sites have recommended reading
lists, and when you click on the title, you are sent to a page selling
that book on Amazon.com. This is no accident. If you buy the book
from that page, Amazon pays a commission to the site that referred
you. Those commissions have resulted in more than 50,000 sites selling
millions of books for Amazon. Obviously, that method of driving
traffic is suitable only if you, like Amazon, sell your products
on the Web. An affiliate program of that sort is more complicated
to set up than other traffic-driving methods, but it delivers the
most rewarding visitors of all: paying customers. You don't pay
for "clickthrough lookie-loos"; you pay only when somebody
buys your product.
8. Carefully promote your site on newsgroups, chat lines,
and e-mail discussion lists. The key word here is carefully.
Discussion groups can be worthwhile, but only if you move slowly
and keep your eyes open. If you don't watch your step, this method
can be the quickest way of alienating your prospects instead of
attracting them. The reason is that online discussions tend to attract
the people who are passionately interested in a topic. If you become
a valued contributor to a discussion, not selling your products
overtly but just answering questions, other participants may spread
good electronic word-of-mouth about your company. This technique
often translates into increased traffic on your Web site--and sales.
Conversely, if you pepper online discussions with sales announcements,
participants will get angry and drive traffic away from you.
9. Buy sponsorships of sites or pages that your prospects
visit. Whereas banners are short-term traffic-drivers,
sponsorships are long-term, suitable for driving ongoing traffic.
You sponsor a page, an article, or a section of a site for a specified
time period, say a month or a year, perhaps longer. You usually
pay per time period, regardless of how many visitors see the content
that you sponsor. If you have chosen to sponsor content that's related
to your prospects' needs, the response should be strong, and your
site will be swamped with qualified visitors. Another benefit of
sponsorship: It blocks competitors from running banners in your
sponsored area.
Tip: Don't spam your prospects! All those e-mail
messages you receive promising, "One million e-mail addresses
for $20!!!" and similar stuff fall into the spam category.
If you buy or rent a list like this, beware. The people have not
asked to receive e-mail, so many will be irritated by your message,
and some may retaliate. If you want to grow your business by building
relationships with repeat buyers, spam is not for you. If you are
one of our hosting customers spamming or un-soliciated email marketing
is a violation of our service
policies and any such activity can result in a termination of
service.
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