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Web Site Promotion Tutorial

Web site promotion tutorial includes search engine optimization, pay per click advertising, how to write a press release and more ways to promote your website

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7 Simple Ways To Promote Your Website

Back to basics.

Web site promotion does not have to be difficult:

• Learn the basics like search engine optimization;
• Test what works and what doesn't;
• Do more of what works (repeatedly).

This web site promotion tutorial covers the basics, and makes an ideal introduction to promoting your website.

1. Search Engine Optimization - Optimise Your Pages

What is the point of a website if no-one can find it! The very first thing you should do, as you build your website, is make sure it is optimized for the search engines (a process known as search engine optimisation).

This requires that you:

1. Decide on suitable keywords ( three sets of keywords, say), and then 
   
2. Put these keywords in your page tittle, page content, metatags, and alt tags (more or less in that order of importance).

Yes, it is a bit more complicated than that and yes the SEO rules keep changing, but it's important to get started with search engine optimization and that you keep on learning from your successes and failures.

Learn more about choosing suitable keywords here:

Using Wordtracker to find 'Most Searched Keywords'
(Read my review of Wordtracker and discussion on 'most searched keywords')

2. Add Your Site To Search Engines & Directories

Once your site is optimised then it's very important that the search engines (and directories)know about your site. The major search engines and directories include Yahoo!, Google, and Bing for search engines, and Yahoo! and the Open Directory Project (DMOZ) for directories. There are a few other important directories, too. (Botw.org is a great directory to submit to, also.)

There are two steps to follow, in order of importance:

1. Let the search engines 'discover' your site; i.e. do not submit it the major search engines. Instead, get a link to your new site from a web site already listed on the search engines .
2. You can add your site to the directories using their 'submit your site' link

Here are a few directories you can submit your site to:
- Strongestlinks Directories (includes free and not free directories)
- Botw.org (oldest web directory, not free)

3. Build Incoming Links

Get people to link to your site. Not only do links bring new visitors, but they can also help your ranking on search engines.

The best kinds of links are one-way links; i.e. the site links to your site only. Reciprocal links can also work, for non-competing sites. (And the only 'automated' way I recommend to reciprocal link is SiteSell's Value Exchange - sign up for free, here!).

There are many, many link-building strategies but a basic one is to simply create a fabulous website (how many links do you think Google, Facebook, Twitter and the BBC websites have to their respective websites!) You should also link out one-way, too, when appropriate. Ideally, you don't want to swap links with sites (and definitely do not do 3-way swaps) butlink-swapping is okay IF you include the link in real pages rather than a dead-end links page.)

Learn more here:

• Make Your Website a "Wow!"
  An incredible website, or resource WILL get inbound links - it's how the web (and human nature) works 
  
• Link Building
  Read my basic guide to link-building

4. Write Articles

A great way of building links is writing articles, actually. Write articles relevant to your website and let others reuse them on their website or in their newsletter or ezine on condition that they use the author resource box at the bottom of the article, which contains links to your site!

This is such a popular website promotion strategy that there are thousands of article directories (some much better than others) that will accept your articles. Learn how to write good articles (and how to promote them successfully) and you will succeed in promoting your website.

Learn more here
- Write Articles

5. Use Social Media

Everyone has heard of Facebook, Twitter (and even less likely social media candidate YouTube). These sites provide you and your business an opportunity to interract, and build relationships with your customers and potential customers.

You simply cannot afford to get your business involved with either Facebook marketing or Twitter marketing (or both - depending on the type of business, and the type of customer you're targeting). And if you can use YouTube to engage and educate you really should be doing tihs also.

Two words: do it!

Learn more here
- Link coming soon

6. Write A Press Release

Press releases (news releases) can be one of the most effective ways to generate traffic to your web site. If written well, they can produce startling results. But only if you have a genuine story to tell.

There are sites that give advice on how to write a press release, and sites that will compose and distribute your press release for you too.

Learn more here
- How To Write A Press Release

7. Post To A Newsgroup (Or Forum) Discussion

Somewhere, there's a newsgroup or forum involved in discussions relevant to your site. You can find a great variety of newsgroups at Google Groups, which allows you to search all of the Usenet newsgroups for a particular term or phrase.

Post a message to a suitable newsgroup using Outlook Express (or other newsreader software), or via Google's newsgroup site, or via the forum itself. Do follow the newsgroup guidelines - but it is usually okay to use a signature file with each of your posts.

Learn more here
- Forum Marketing Supertips
Created by online friend Harvey Segal, this is an excellent, free guide to using forums

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So there you are: 7 simple ways that you can promote your website. All that's left to do now is to get out there and do some promotin'. (So, what are you waiting for!?)

Website promotion.

Get the basics right.