Dear Soz,
How to promote your website? This is not an easy task and really
successful sites are based on very hard work, 24/7, and luck. I
already saw great sites that went unnoticed, and sites that are pretty
lame, but had good marketing.
Marketing a web site is not unlke marketing any other product. The
ways to advertise range between word-of-mouth marketing for free, paid
for marketing in advertisement, sweepstakes, or PR work; and media
exposure.
Word of Mouse/Mouth
===================
Let everyone know that you have a website: put it as a signature in
your emails, and ask your good friends and family to do the same;
print a business card with its name and give it to everyone your know
personally; ask people you know to sperad the word. If you participate
in online forums that are related to the site's topic, let everyone
there know about the site - they would surely be interested. If you
don't visit these forums, maybe it's high time to start. (Newsgroups
about any subject could be found at http://groups.google.com).
Paid Advertisment
=================
- Buy a banner in a site, where many potential visitors come.
- Participate in Google's Adwords scheme. For a moderate sum, you
could have everyone who searches for certain keywords see your ad:
<https://adwords.google.com/select/>
- Create a site-related sweepstake, and let contests-related sites
know about it. An ideal sweepstake would be one, where people would
refer more friends to visit the site.
- Participate in banner exchange, web-ring, etc. This is the cheapest
way, but usually also the least effective.
- PR Agency: pay a professional to promote your site. The most
expensive way, of course.
Media Exposure
==============
Related media (online and offline newspapers, radio stations etc.)
should receive a press release, announcing the launch of the website,
its topic, and anything else they might find interesting enough to
report.
Your site should be added to each large search-engine, as the
commentator suggested. However, it is important that you'll learn how
each search engine works. For example, Google rates sites by the
quality and quantity of the links they have, among other factors. That
means that you should be linked to as many quality sites as possible.
Keywords are important in all search engine, and you should maximise
the keywords to fit what people might be looking for in order to find
your site.
Most Importantly
================
Have a good site: well designed, with a lot of interesting and
accurate material - that people would love to read, to tell their
friends about, to put as link in their own site, etc. Free advertising
of this sort is the best one.
Moreover, if one of the journalist I mentioned in the press release,
or even a person who came in because of rumours or sweepstakes, sees a
badly designed site with boring material, they just won't pass it on,
or worth - mock you in public.
I hope this answered your question. Please contact me for a
clarification on this answer before you rate it. |
