Advertising And Promoting Your Website How To Get Your Website in the Public Eye

[Xarex 1]

I've learned quite a bit about advertising a website which is a loaded job with lots of work to do and lots of creative ways to do it. So the following is a complete guide on how to get your website into the public eye, get it known, get web browsers like Google to start seeing it, and especially, getting visitors to your site.

 

 

Ok, you've done so much work. You came up with a good idea for making a website and you've actually managed to go through with it. Congratulations. You've signed up for free web hosting, spent hours on end, running code, making sure it works, had a few friends and family members check it out and they were quite interested in what you were doing, and everything is fine. Your website looks awesome, functions well, and your friends and family love it. So what now?

 

Did you design it for yourself or for others to enjoy as well? It is about you? Or is it an interactive website? If it's for you, than you don't have to worry too much about advertising. If it's for other people to visit and hopefully keep coming back, then you should start wondering about how to advertise and get your site out there into the world eye.

 

If you build it, they will come. This is very true. But they won't come if they don't even know it exists. So now your next full time job is getting the word out and spreading it.

 

So what is the best way to advertise?

Site Submission & Directories

Word of Mouth

Web Rings

Link Referrals / Exchanges

Other Suggestions

These are the ones I'm most commonly familiar with. You could also put ads on Google using Adwords, ads on Facebook, ads on MySpace, ads on YouTube, and anywhere else you can think to put ads. An easy spot would definitely be on your car advertising your web site. But for now, we'll stick to the free and cheap methods of advertising because we want to make some money and spend as little of our own as we can.

 

Before we start to advertise, what is your domain like? Are you still using a free web host? If you are, consider buying and registering for a domain and paying for web hosting. It doesn't have to be expensive. You can find plenty that are cheap. But there is a difference between GOOD AND CHEAP. Before you give over any credit card information, make sure you GOOGLE the GOOD and the BAD. So for example, enter in some terms like: mywebhost.com reviews, mywebhost.com is amazing, mywebhost.com sucks, mywebhost.com is horrible, mywebhost.com negative reviews.

 

Spend about a week or so just reviewing different web hosts. If they offer unlimited space, they're probably lying. No one has unlimited space. Besides, you don't need unlimited space unless you're storing your mp3s or your movies. And there are storage places where you can do that for free -- YouTube, Photobucket, box.net, etc. There are dozens of free sites that will give you storage space. So you don't need "unlimited space" for your web host.

 

I've only got 1 GB on my web host and I'm currently using about 130 MB. That is already a lot. But most sites consist of only text and databases and you could probably get away with 50 MB of space on your site.

 

So there are a few things you want to look for in a web host:

 

Good reviews

Good uptime

Good storage space (1 GB is plenty)

Good bandwidth space (5-10 GB should be plenty, you can always buy more)

A domain name is probably the most important decision you're ever going to make. A domain name says something about what your website is about. If I typed in https://mustang.ford.eu/, I expect to login to a site that is probably Ford Car Manufacturer. If I type in https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us.html I am surely expecting to login to the McDonalds restaurant website. Your domain name should be closely related to whatever your site is about.

 

There is a lot of confidence and respect in buying and owning a domain name. When you begin sharing your link, and your friends see it's a domain name, they will probably be more interested in visiting your website. You also feel much more confident to give out that link when you have a domain name with a functioning website than if you are a subdomain on some free web host. With a good web host and owning your own domain name, you are also offered more protection than on a free web host service. And security is something you will need to think about while you've got your site up and running and the visitors are flowing. So the domain name is very important. And you could be stuck with it for a while. So choose wisely. When it comes to advertising a domain name, especially a website, you want a memorable name.

 

We are the information generation: There is so much information available to us. And with information comes a lot to remember and a lot to know. People don't have the patience to remember something unless it really means something to them. So make your domain name and your website something easy to remember. Lets test this out, what do you remember more?

 

Hey Angela, check my site out at music-4-u.info

Hey Bill, visit my web site at music4u.biz

Hey Joe, while you're on the computer, take a look at my web site at musicforyou.com.

Which would you remember more? Sure, they are all fairly easy to remember. And I don't want to knock the ending .biz and .info domain names. They can definitely pack a punch depending on the domain name and the advertising done! You should try and avoid hyphens but if your goal is to simply have a website, than go for it. If you have no choice, than you have no choice. But it's more likely that music4u.info is going to get more hits than music-4-u.info. It's just easier to type and easier to remember. And not only do you have to explain that it's music-4-u.info and not music4u.info, but it takes time and people forget by the time they get home or probably even open up a browser.

 

So I don't want to knock hyphenated domains and other domain names are very hard to come by and some are even cash crops. But .com is the most professional and .com is the one people will remember. Why is this? Because .com has been in existence and in our minds since the creation of the Internet. Do your best to get a .com. You might even have to change your website name and the original domain name you thought of, but seriously, take some time and play with your words to figure it out. If you can't seem to find something better, than go for the hyphen.

 

What you want is: something that slips off the tongue and sticks into people's minds. If possible, think of something that is not common. You will realize this later when sites begin to index your website. For example, my website is YouTrippy.com. Before it was even indexed, in just a few hours, it was picked up by Google. I typed it in the search engine and it was on the first page to be displayed. Why did this happen? Because no one ever types "YouTrippy". If I type in "You Trippy", my site is actually the second to come up. Before I began link exchanging and advertising my website, "You Trippy" yielded absolutely nothing about my website. It was not on the first, second, or even the third page. However, when I wrote my meta tags, I included the words "YouTrippy" and "You Trippy" in order for search engines to be able to recognize my website.

 

So when choosing a name, choose something that isn't so common and it's so much easier to get on the first page! Unfortunately, if your website is not on the first or second page, your likely not going to be seen as much. I read somewhere that being on the third page is the same as being on the 300th page. This is just something I read. Just think about your own habits and behaviors when you're searching: Are you likely to scroll to the third page? Only if you can't find what you're looking for on the first or second! And if there are a dozen other websites with your name on it, and they've done all the advertising and became popular, than you are going to have quite a bit of work to do before you can even get to the top, the first, the second, of anything.

 

YouTube

Facebook

Google

 

Do I have to explain these to you?

 

Twitter

 

Do I have to explain this one to you? Twitter came in a bit later. I remember when I was trying to figure out what this "tweeting" business was. I caught on soon as I signed up. But by now, even Twitter needs no explanation. If you don't know what Twitter is, you can Google it while you ask your friends on Facebook, and they'll probably get back to you as soon as they finish tweeting on Twitter about what they saw on YouTube earlier.

 

You need to come up with something easily memorable that people won't forget. A little over 10 years ago, Google wasn't even a word. Now Google is both a noun and a verb, and in every person's mind. In 10 years, it's hard not to find a person who has never heard of Google. Welcome to the #1 Search Engine on the planet. Welcome to the #1 Master of Advertising.

 

While we're on the topic of a good name, you should definitely think about coming up with some good graphic banner to advertise your site. It can be simple and easy or something complex, but to have words that say: "My Web Site" in plain text is really just bland and boring. Spice up your site with a banner and show your personality and the personality of the site you created! Put an image into people's minds. My banner is nothing special, but it's a blue background with floating trippy hippy like text ⦠YouTrippy. I used BannerSnack to make it.

 

 

Now that we've got your domain and website name figured out, lets move on to the work of advertising your website.

 

 

Site Submission & Directories

 

This is probably the easiest thing you are going to do. Submit your site to every search engine you can. DO NOT PAY FOR SEARCH ENGINE SUBMISSION! A search of Google "Submit my site" will show you endless links that will do it for free. Personally submit your search engine to the major players. Google. Yahoo. Bing.

 

But there are other programs that will submit your site to smaller search engines. Whatever you do, I repeat this: DO NOT PAY FOR ANY SUBMISSION. Even if you are offered your site to be submitted to 100 search engine sites. These sites are small and although people do use them, it only matters that you at least submit your link in some form, but without paying. But like I said: there are plenty of websites that will submit your link to them for free.

 

What you really want is your site to be picked up and indexed. This is not done through submission. A few years ago, search engines used to just go by submissions and meta tags. This isn't really done much anymore, other than search engines using the meta tag information to display something in the search engine results. Now your site is found from being linked by others. I will discuss this further in the Link Exchange section.

 

You want to definitely submit your site to directories. DMOZ is one of the most popular and the best to get entered into, though it sometimes takes a month to get in, as the site is just run by volunteers.

 

Here are some useful links for site submission & directories:

FREE

http://www.freewebsubmission.com/

http://www.dmoz.org/

https://www.somuch.com/

http://www.txtlinks.com/

http://www.theseoking.com/

http://www.jayde.com/main.html

 

PAID

https://botw.org/

http://www.goguides.org/

http://www.joeant.com/

http://www.gimpsy.com/

 

This is it for site submission.

 

 

 

 

Word of Mouth

 

Are you popular on MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter? Do you have family and friends?

 

 

First step: Friends and Family.

 

Tell your family to visit the website if they haven't already done so and ask them what they think. If the reviews are generally good, than they will likely support you. Tell them to tell their friends, and just spread the word and talk about it with others. It's not like they are selling something. Simply talking about their brother, son, husband, daughter's website or whatever. Most of their friends will likely be curious to see what it's about. Do the same exact thing with your friends and tell them to tell their friends!

 

Keep talking about it! No matter what! Keep talking about your website! Even if you think it's getting annoying. You don't have to bring it up in every conversation, but if it's got relevant content to what you are talking about, than you should mention it! And even mention it around strangers. Even mentioning you have a web site, which not everyone has, will spark some curiosity, especially if it's got something good on it!

 

Second step: Social Networks.

 

Facebook

 

My sister has 1200 friends on Facebook. My brother has 400. I have 450. I am not close with every single one of these people, but many know who I am and many I have had some decent conversations with. The people who I know would at least take a look at it are the people I went after first. This was about 10 people. These 10, we'll label A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J. These 10 do not include my brother, my sister, or myself.

 

A has 300 friends.

B has 1000 friends.

C has 600 friends.

D has 250 friends.

E has 800 friends.

F has 500 friends.

G has 100 friends.

H has 230 friends.

I has 1600 friends.

J has 2000 friends.

 

These people are potential visitors to your website. Lets first add these friends up including my brother, my sister, and myself.

 

450+1200+400+300+1000+600+250+250+800+500+100+230+1600+2000=9,680 people

 

That is 9,680 potential visitors. Not all these friends probably view their friends profiles, not all view my sister or my brothers or even mine. A lot of the time we remain hidden to our friends because Facebook only displays in the feed who you interact with most unless you change it.

 

So I'm going to give the example of 3,000 people who work in a building and enter and exit through the same door everyday. Across the street, clearly visible is a sign that shows a big (\/) (M) for McDonalds and McDonalds is right underneath it. 3,000 are not going to go to McDonalds everyday. 3,000 people are not going to go to McDonalds every week. Some will stay in and eat their lunch. Others will go elsewhere. But some will on some days! Of these 3,000 people, lets be hard on ourselves and say only 100 people go to McDonalds a day, but they go daily. They aren't the same people. But it's just 100 people at any given time of 3,000 that go to McDonalds for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Has McDonalds made money?

 

100 people are still people. 100 people bring money and make business. If you can get 100 visitors to your site a day, would you consider that some kind of success? I haven't given us the benefit of the doubt. The benefit of the doubt would be that at least 300-500 people go at least daily, either for breakfast, lunch, or dinner.

 

So these Facebook friends are visitors to your website. When it comes to Facebook and friends, however, I caution you: DO NOT SPAM YOUR FRIENDS! YOU WILL LOSE VISITORS THIS WAY! AND YOU COULD EVEN LOSE FRIENDS! If you post it once and the next day it's gone, post your link again. Tell your friend to just take a look. It's guaranteed that besides your friend, someone else is going to see that link. In another week and a half, ask your friend if he's checked out the link. Make it personal and direct.

 

A bad message is just posting the link without any comment.

A good message is like this: "Hey Gemma, check out my web site. I think you'd appreciate a lot of the music content on it. Let me know what you think "

 

I am not telling her: "when you get a chance, check it out." I'm actually asking her for her input. She is less likely to delete the comment/post because I'm asking her directly and it's not spam. She'll probably leave this up and her friends will see it as well.

 

Three more forms of advertising on Facebook:

 

1. There are several artists and people with thousands of friends on Facebook who will befriend you just for being there. Or you can befriend them personally by request and they are fine with it. Real live people/artists/musicians/etc. managing their Facebooks. Their pages are great for posting your link. Again: DO NOT SPAM YOUR LINK! Just mention their name personally and that you think they should check out your website. There are more eyes watching these pages!

 

2. Advertise your link on site's that are related to your link. Just search Facebook. My site is http://www.youtrippy.com/ - a site dedicated to music of many genres including psychedelic, classic rock, trance, acid, techno, experimental, alternative, rap, R&B, Hip Hop, etc. So what do I do about this? I search for this type of music. Classic Rock has a fan page. Psychedelic has a fan page. Psychedelia has a fan page. Trance has a fan page. With over 100,000 "Likes" on these pages, potential visitor to your site who can see these pages. And you are actually going after people who will favor your content and keep coming back. Trust me: People are using Facebook because they have nothing better to do. They are looking for stuff to do on the Internet. Your site could be the next place they are stopping at and returning for more.

 

3. Create a Fan Page on Facebook. I created one for my website: /areyoutrippy?_fb_noscript=1

You can create your own page here: /login.php?next=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fpages%2Fcreate.php&_fb_noscript=1

Under Brand or Product, choose website and fill out the information.

Like your page and get other people to like it as well.

This will also help you later if you decide to add a Facebook Like or Login button to your website.

 

 

Think about who your friends are. It's crazy, but in life, such as in Hollywood, it's not WHAT you know. It's WHO you know!

Use your friends to your advantage! If they have a lot of friends, get them to catch on to your website!

Get them to like the idea, get them to continuously visit your website!

And if they do like it, remind them to tell their friends to check it out as well! Their friends are more likely to listen to them than they are to you!

If you have a friend is in advertising, see what he can do for you.

If you have a friend who is good with video editing or photoshop, see what he can do for you.

If you have a friend who is good with public speaking, even he could be useful!

 

Of course, you are sure to return the favor in some way and help your friend out if he/she ever needs it!

But definitely utilize the skills your friends have! They are the portals to allow many visitors to enter into your domain!

 

So there you go. Facebook is a powerful advertising tool!

 

MySpace

 

 

A few years ago, I made a MySpace page. I wanted to be popular like everyone else. I had about 40 "friends", give or take. But I wanted more. I wanted people to know who I was! So I decided to make this page completely about something I was interested in. I made it about Vampires. I got just a few people who added me, and that was it.

 

I realized this wasn't me. I love Pink Floyd. I am obsessed with Pink Floyd. So what did I do? I turned my MySpace page into a fan page. I invited others to join and friend me. I invited bands to come on to my MySpace page and advertise their music. And that's what they did. And MySpace was slow, I could barely load my page for some reason. And I realized how much I hated MySpace after that and visited occasionally, like once or twice a week. Little did I know, I was becoming popular without even realizing it. More and more people kept adding me. And to this day, continue to add me. My site gets popularity depending on the months or seasons or whatever. I logged in once a few weeks ago. Nothing, not a single friend request. I then logged in about two more weeks after that to about 70 friend requests. I added them all. No one is ever denied.

 

They love my page. I haven't changed it since 2005 and the last time I posted that i was thinking about changing it, many people said I should keep it the same and not think about changing it. And so, I haven't changed it since. I have over 1500 friends now. Some actually read my few blog posts. So I advertised my website on there. I put my website in my About Me section. Anywhere I could see fit. I blogged that I wasn't very much active on MySpace and that people were welcomed to continue to read the page, but that I would be much more active on my website and to visit me there.

 

MySpace advertising explained!

 

 

Twitter

A while ago, I had an idea, and I realize this is the same with domain names: Come up with a good name and you can become popular: it's what people remember. Of course, this idea failed. And I've only got 14 followers and I'm following 28 people. I post my link occasionally. And I try to follow those with many followers, and get a post to my link in or whatever it may be. I'm not as familiar with Twitter and Twitter wasn't as successful for me, so I can't write a whole lot about it. But if you've got a lot of followers, they'll be reading what you post.

 

 

YouTube

Huge potential number of visitors here. A few years ago, I got into making accounts and just posting random videos about anything -- mostly comedy. Some Family Guy stuff. Some South Park. Etc. Almost all videos I post have to deal with comedy, and people love things that make them laugh. I've posted some music and concerts too, which also get a daily amount of viewers. I'll also upload scenes from movies which is also very popular.

 

These accounts I created became popular and I was getting thousands of views. On one of my accounts, I have 530,000 visitors in total to my videos and it seems it only increases each year. These videos don't get removed because the copyright owner doesn't mind having them there. It's definitely a nice advertising technique. These videos are not owned by me so I can't make any money off them despite YouTube advertising to me to become a YouTube Partner.

 

I have a link to my website in my profile. This doesn't do it any justice. I only have about 3,000 visits to my profile. That's it. 530,000 video views. So people are watching videos, but not looking at who I am. Who cares who I am? My videos are more important! So target where people are looking!

 

Guess where I put my link? Before I even write a description about the video, my link goes first.

 

Here are just some lines I've used:

 

Description: "For more videos and music like this, check out http://www.youtrippy.com/!

 

Dave Chapelle making fun of the word '*BLEEP*'"

 

Description: "If you liked this video, check out more on my site: http://www.youtrippy.com/

 

Spaceship I saw when I was in Jerusalem"

 

Description: "For psychedelic music and videos, check out: http://www.youtrippy.com/

 

Will Smith sneezes bulls.."

 

 

You get the point. YouTube displays only the first sentence that you write. After that, you have to click "More" and unfortunately, not everyone who sees the video is going to do that. So put your website link first and the description after.

 

 

MAKE YOUR LINK AVAILABLE IN EVERY WAY AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE! And there you have it. This takes care of advertising on Social Networks.

 

 

Web Rings

 

A web ring is a collection of websites linked together in a circular structure, and usually organized around a specific theme. You usually must keep a link or a banner on the main page of your site somewhere. This isn't so bad for a potential number of visitors that you could possibly receive.

 

My website is a part of http://dir.webring.org and you can join through the link. This seems to be the most dominant web ring and most popular on the Internet, at least from what I searched on Google.

 

The good thing about my website is that it's music-based around many genres so I can join just about any category, and there are a lot of different categories. The more categories your site can associate with, the better. I had wondered how I was going to be a part of many web rings and fit all the banners on my site. The good thing is they don't require that. They only require that you have one navigation code on there. And then you can apply to as many web rings as you want. It works on an approval-based system, so there is a moderator for every web ring who either accepts you or denies your submission.

 

Link Referrals / Exchanges

 

Referrals

 

I was quite skeptical when I first joined a referral service. It was free to join. But I did join quite a few of them, only to find that my inbox was spammed out. There are several that are good and do what they say. I did come across one known as LinkReferral.com in which you submit your site and you are usually placed right at the beginning. They claim that you will get at least 40-60 views per day. While this isn't far from the truth, it certainly does take time.

 

The catch: you have to view sites [30 per day], review sites [5 per day], post on their forum [1 per day], and favorite a site [1 per day].

 

If you don't, your rank starts to drop and your site goes below in pages. This is great for a few days as you don't mind checking out what other people are doing, talking on the forums, and favoring sites. But after a while, it just becomes annoying and tedious. Sometimes when viewing sites, the count won't register. I don't really know the logic behind what makes me #4 one day, #9 the next, and back to #5 on another day.

 

This is actually a great site to start out with .. get your site reviewed, just get some hard feedback about your site, as there are plenty who are willing to check out your site and review it. But after about a week, there are just better methods to promote your website. You can always buy a paid membership and they'll keep your listing in the #1 or #2 spot, but it's probably not even really worth it. But I do suggest signing up for at least a week to try it out.

 

Exchange

 

This is probably by far one of the best and most superior methods to get your website noticed. It is probably one of the most important things you need to do as well. When you use this method, you are creating backlinks. Sites that are linking into yours. Google favors this type of method and will rank your page based on the popularity it gets from other pages.

 

You will want to exchange links with sites that are getting noticed and have visitors as much as possible. You can check website ranks by visiting http://www.alexa.com/. The closer to 1 the better.

 

Before we continue, know that this is a method of: I'll watch your back if you get mine. So do yourself a favor and create a link exchange section page. You don't have to have the link exchange on your main page, but have a link to it on the first page that is clearly visible. Most of these websites will want to see a link on your page before they add you. Give them the benefit of the doubt. I often give 48 hours or so before checking back. I will send a second email usually giving another 24-48 hours.

 

Sometimes, depending on their rank and their popularity, I will actually ask them to add me first. This can depend on your descretion.

 

My emails are often very polite. In the subject, I put Link Exchange. In the body, I state my business:

 

I would like to link exchange with you.

 

My website is: http://www.youtrippy.com/.

 

Description:

A portal into the psychedelic world: music, videos, wallpapers, friends, and more.

 

You can link to me using this code:

 

You can find a link to your site on my reciprocal link is: http://www.youtrippy.com/

 

I look forward to exchanging links with you. I will leave your link on my site for 48 hours. If I do not hear back from you, I will assume you did not want to exchange links.

 

Let me know!

 

 

Sincerely,

...

 

 

You will want to exchange links with sites that are related to your website categories. Music. Art. Blog. News. YouTube. Videos. Movies. Etc. Look through the first 2 or 3 and maybe even 4 pages of Google, open up all the links, and see if there are link exchange sections. If they have a link for submission, than fill it out.

 

Many of the more dominant websites will try and charge you to post a link on their page. If this is the method you want to use, than go for it, but no results are guaranteed. If you're trying to save some money, than offer to exchange links. If you have to exchange links with a few lesser known but growing sites, go for it.

 

But do your best to just exchange links for free. It's easier, less expensive, and its supposed to be a partnership. Don't link exchange with every single website you come across. You can be picky and choosy. When I first started, I had many types emailing me and I was getting referred to places in Turkey and China, but the sites had nothing to do with what I'm promoting.

 

Link Exchanges are helpful to both parties because it allows for your members to see a link with your link exchange partners on it. They will get some traffic because people are curious and they will likely get more traffic if their site is more closely related to yours. You will also get more traffic if they do the same. And if they are up to date with their tools and all, they could easily tell where their visitors are coming from.

 

Utilize link exchanging as much as possible. It will help your rank greatly.

 

 

Other Suggestions

 

SIGNATURES

 

If you post regularly on any type of forums, make sure you put a link to your website in your signature!

 

If you are regularly sending out emails, have a signature with your website in it!

 

If you post a comment on a forum, a blog, a photo, a website, make sure that after your comment, you put a link to your website at the end!

 

If you make YouTube videos, music, or any kind of art, make sure you have a signature link to your website somewhere in there!

 

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If your website has anything on it -- whether it be music, wallpapers, videos, games, etc., make sure you mention the words: Free!

 

This word is very powerful to most human beings. The human ear hears it. And the human eye sees it. It does get attention! If you look at Google analytics, there are tons of keywords with the words "free" in it. So it's always good to put something like: "free music, free videos" in your keywords. If your site is not free, than offer something free!

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World Market: Europe. Africa. Asia. Russia. Australia. South America. Mexico. Internet is everywhere. We are in a global market and a global economy. Do not just aim for visitors from the United States. Do not just visit and exchange links with sites that only speak English. Find some sites in other languages that are common with your site. With Google Chrome and Firefox extensions, there are translators built right into the web browser and should translate the page automatically for you.

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I only went over 4 social networks. There are dozens more. Find these, learn them and make use of them, get your links on them in some way!

https://del.icio.us/ - to name one, which is a bookmarking site owned by Yahoo.

http://hubpages.com/ - another very popular social networking site.

http://blog.friendfeed.com/ - yet another social networking site.

Here is a list of Social Networking sites. Check some of them out.

http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

 

Social Networking is going to be your primary form of advertising, and keeping it fresh in people's minds. Social Networking is a huge market for potential visitors, clients, and friends.

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Sign up for Yahoo Answers! and reply to the Questions. In the source, add your link. Or just sign your link after your answer.

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Write on GoArticles.com, EZineArticles.com, and Helium.com. Write about something completely not related to your website, but include your link in some way. At the end, for example, "Check out more of my articles at
http://forums.xisto.com/
These sites are huge and Google will index them and you'll likely get a few people reading them and many more visiting your site if they are good articles.

 

More sites to write articles on: digg.com, Ideamarketers.com, Articledashboard.com, Articlealley.com

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Write interesting articles and blogs on your own website!

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Sign up for a free co.cc account and have it redirect to your website! I don't know why or who is using these, but apparently co.cc is Australia. And it might just be, that when Australians search Google, your search results are likely coming up with that specific domain name.

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Come up with a very juicy description of your website! Don't just post a link, post details about what you want people to click on! The more appealing details, the more likely it is that people are going to click on it!

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Use Adwords from Google and pay for advertising.

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Graffiti. Remember you used to get in trouble for this in school? Writing on desks, walls, the ground. Honestly, write some graffiti on walls with your domain on it. Of course, I'm not encouraging you to do it illegally, nor do you want to deal with the authorities, as they will eventually find out who you are through your domain. But take some chalk and walk into a city like Chicago and go to different areas, and just write your website down on the ground, on a tree, on a building. I used to live in Chicago, so a place I noticed where people are everyday is the Biker's Path. Constantly jogging. Many areas along there where chalk could easily be noticed!

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Link Bating: If your website is unique, than you can create a certain demanding idea around it. For example, why do people visit YouTube in the first place? Google? or Facebook? They visit these sites for the search engine, to keep in touch with friends, and to watch videos. Your site needs to hold something that people want, need, and will continue returning to everyday. This requires creativity, research, and a lot of thought - basically, the next "big thing" - but it can be done.

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Direct Emails to all your friends asking them to check out your site and review it.

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As I stated in the Link Exchange section, submit your link to sites that have ratings close to 1!

 

http://www.coolsiteoftheday.com/ has a rating of 37,117 in general, and 18,254 in the US. If your site is featured on here, it will surely drive in some major traffic. Find sites like these, check out their Alexa ranking and submit your site!

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Make your members feel as welcome as possible. Greet them. Make them a part of your life, make them a part of your website, and the daily things that you do and the daily things they do! Inform them of updates you are working on and things you plan to incorporate. Have a Chat Room if possible. Some kind of live communication where they can chat with you. A discussion forum is great and all, but live communication is even better. I recommend [url="http://www.shoutmix.com/v3/
http://forums.xisto.com/
which is a Shoutbox-like chatroom. Java-based and works well. The free version is about 60 posts an hour. And a certain limit bandwidth a month. Once your site gets more popular though, you should purchase the full version. It's only $20 for a year. Great deal.

 

Come up with creative ideas, contests, or other things for the people visiting your website!

 

Make your visitors want to come back! Not just because of the content of your website, but because of you and because of the community!

 

Update your site daily with new content!

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MAKE USE OF WHAT YOU ALREADY HAVE! When it came to figuring out how to get people to come to my site, I began with Facebook. Then I thought about MySpace. Twitter. YouTube. Delicious. Stumble-Upon. Blogger. BlogSpot. Google BlogSpot. Google Buzz. You want to be putting your website, especially if it's an easy catchphrase into people's minds!

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There is always work to be done on your site. If you are finished with your website, than you are finished with hosting it and you should just let it run out and disappear into the abyss like so many websites have done before it. YOU ARE NEVER DONE WORKING ON YOUR WEBSITE! ADD NEW FEATURES! ADD NEW CONTENT! KEEP IT INTERESTING! KEEP IT FUN! KEEP ADDING NEW THINGS SO THAT EVERY TIME YOUR VISITORS RETURN, THEY ARE SEEING SOMETHING NEW!

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My site is only in it's first few weeks and I'm already receiving about 160 visitors a day and the numbers are increasing. My website has become my full time job. I am always working on ensuring that there are no bugs, ensuring that new cool features are added, and making sure that content is constantly being added. My next step is actually getting more people to interact with each other on the site! As I said, always work to be done!

 

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This is quite long, my longest article/tutorial I've ever written. I hope this information was very informative and helpful for you. If you do everything properly, you will have a lot of visitors in no time. Good luck and may you have lots of success for your website traffic!

[mahesh2k 0]

Some of the suggestions from your post do work and they're even in use by many members on and off this forum. Problem with some strategies is that they're not working as of now. For example, directory listing hardly helps these days. Because google and other search engines don't like farmer links. I mean site with lots of paid links. In such case they don't like paid directories either. Google used to like DMOZ earlier but now they're also ignoring it and moving to commercial search results. So if you're going to pay someone few bucks to buy paid directory listing then my suggestion is to stop and think about that strategy. Another thing is that traffic doesn't mean earning. I mean CPC ad networks hardly pay for tons of traffic which doesn't click on ad. Also if you install bot to click on your adsense ad then that is also not worth it. So spam bot and other auto promotion strategies are again NO-NO. Twitter and facebook are good traffic and promotion tools but watch out for the spam and other time wasting things. You need to make sure that you're not wasting time with some social networks but are fetching enough good traffic. Again, point of my post is look for the strategies that are working and use them to promote your site or product. Otherwise you're likely to get less results for your hard work. Put your efforts into the social media or other methods which are working.

[Xarex 1]

I have to agree with you there. Search Engines have changed their strategy a lot. They no longer favor those link farms, and in fact, you get penalized, which is why it's very picky and choosy depending on which ones you join. And certainly not even worth it to pay for any of them.I think I came across 5 or so and signed up... all I do is either get spam email, some crappy newsletter acting as if it's delivering the most important information that no one knows about, or just requests that all these non-related sites want to put my link on their webpage -- actually clicked on one of those sites and it had no content on it. So certainly not worth it.The web rings yielded results but not very many. But having your link on that site definitely won't hinder you.I only know DMOZ from the hyped-up nonsense about t.. it actually seems very inactive.I've actually stopped advertising lately because I'm working on a new project right now for my website which is taking some time to learn and go through all my mistakes. But I think it's just relevant and new content that attracts users. You win some and you lose some. But you basically have to become your visitor. And that can be hard too. I've opened up a whole different browsers, visited my site as a guest, registered for a user name, just looked at different areas of the site, and tried to make it as appealing as possible. It's always best to just get constructive feedback. Though that's only good to an extent -- because I've had someone tell me my website was too dark -- and then another person tell me it was bland and boring and asked what happened to the black. So I've learned a website should be a reflection of your personality.. which hopefully is more interesting than just setting up a website with plain colors.But I would say my best advertising has definitely been the social media and the link exchanges. There's just a large database of so many people looking for connections, looking for something to do, looking for something to check out, and if you can get them away from Facebook long enough.. you might have put them on to something new ;)I've link exchanged with quite a few music sites and even drug-related sites as my music content can be appealing to that audience. It has definitely helped quite a bit. Can't say it's done me absolute wonders, but it has driven my rank down on Alexa.Thanks for your reply and assertion.

[William Tarleton 0]

other method for site promotion are:facebook advertisingyoutube promotionseoppcemail marketingbrandingjoint ventureforum marketing...