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by Jeff Lee
So you've built a web site. Now you just have to sit back and wait for web surfers to come rolling in, right? Wrong! Web promotion might possibly be the single most important factor in regards to the success of a web site. You may have spent a great deal of hours building an attractive, professional and easy to use web site, but without effective promotion, these efforts will go to waste. Even the most attractive and well designed site in the world will fail if no one knows about it. That�s why you MUST promote. Don't despair though, there are a large number of promotion strategies available to any webmaster, with little or no cost.
*** Banner Advertising ***
Everyone has seen banner advertising, in fact it's everywhere you go on the net. Placing a banner ad can cost anywhere from $5 to $100 depending on the web site and the level of audience targeting. For a new business or webmaster, buying banner ads can be costly relative to the benefits, as banner ads are faced with low click-through ratios, sometimes as low as a half percent. For those that want to banner advertise for free, there are banner exchanges which will display your banner on a pool of web sites in return for you displaying banners of other members. While these banner exchanges are free to join, be careful how many you participate in. Each extra banner added to your web site will slow down loading times, lessen the attractiveness of the site and steal the attention of your customers. In my personal experience, banner exchanges have been disappointing, causing me to drop them from my pages. I received very low click through ratios, about 0.3% which was discouraging enough, but the added load time and the unprofessional look of a banner exchange also played heavily into my decision.
If you do decide to banner advertise, there are some simple things you can do to increase your click through ratio. Use bright colors, such as neons or use a catchy background that will be noticed. Web surfers won't click on your banner if they don't even realize it's there. So make it stand out from the rest of the web page. Use power words and phrases in the banner copy such as: free, click here, money, get and receive. Make sure that your banner copy relates some sort of benefit to your user. If the web surfer has nothing to gain from your site, they won't go there. Another factor that influences the click through of a banner is the placement, banners at the top of a screen will enjoy higher ratios.
***Search engines***
For the past several years, search engines have been the holy grail for attracting web site. They're important, but they should just be one part of a promotional strategy. Getting a high ranking on major search engines such as Yahoo, Excite, Infoseek, Altavista and Hotbot can provide a wealth of hits to your web site, but remember, there's only so many top slots and everyone is competing against you to get them. By optimizing your web site for the search engines, you can increase your chances of getting one of these top slots. Search engines aren't everything though, even without high placement on one of the major sites you can attract significant web traffic.
***Pay for rank search engines***
Pay for rank search engines are fundamentally different from normal search engines in that web sites bid on search terms, with the order that sites are listed based on the bids. By bidding on search terms related to your web site, you can receive cheap, targeted traffic. For example, if you run an online game store you would bid on words and phrases such as: "game," "board game," "Monopoly," and "video game." Your bids are the amount that you pay for an actual click through, meaning that you are guaranteed significant traffic for your money. Goto.com is the major pay for rank search engine, but there are several others. Several months ago I opened an account with Goto.com, and I'm happy to report that it has been a tremendous success. The key is to bid on as many related search terms as possible, because it costs nothing to have search terms as you only pay for actual click throughs. If you had 1000 different search terms, and only 5% of those received a click a day that's still 50 new visitors per day. So far I have bid on 350 search terms related to my web site, http://go.to/earn-freemoney, and I'm always brainstorming for more. A useful tool for brainstorming new search terms is provided by Goto.com at http://inventory.go2.com/inventory/Search_Suggestion.jhtml. You type in a search term, and Goto will provide a list of related searches. Another piece of advice at Goto.com is to always start bidding at $.01, because many of your bids will be somewhat obscure phrases that have not been bid on yet, meaning that your $.01 bid will take the top ranking! As an added bonus to getting a high ranking on Goto.com, I've received some hits from metacrawler type search engines such as Dogpile and Go2net which incorporate the Goto.com index into their own. A word of caution, after my success with Goto.com I went out and bid on search terms at Simplesearch.com, but so far I have little to show for it. I bid on the same 350 search terms, but have only received several hits so far. The problem is that besides Goto.com, the other pay for rank search engines don't receive enough traffic to make them viable.
***Signature files***
A very easy and free promotion tool is adding a signature file to all of your outgoing email messages. A signature file is a short 2-3 line advertisement promoting your web site. For example, my signature file is:
***Earn FREE Money! Get paid to surf the web. Over 25 FREE money making programs. Click NOW!
http://go.to/earn-freemoney
With signature files you want to use power words and phrases to draw the reader in. Also, you want to make sure that you provide some sort of benefit to lure the reader to your website. Most common email programs such as Outlook Express and even web based email such as Yahoo and Hotmail will allow you to attach signature files to the end of your email messages. Additionally, signature files can also be used in message boards. Make sure though, that you have something important and of substance to add to the conversation, otherwise this could be considered spamming.
***Reciprocal links***
Trading reciprocal links with web sites complimentary to your own are a great way to increase web traffic. Look for sites that target your desired demographic group. For example, you run a online games store, then it would be wise to target sites catering to reviews of games. When you find a web site that you would like to trade links with, write a polite email to the webmaster offering to trade links. Usually, the trade will be on the same level, if you post their text link, they'll post yours, or if you post their button, they�ll post yours. In certain cases though, an uneven trade is fair, for example if one site garners more traffic than the other it would be fair for the low traffic site to post a button or banner and the high traffic site to post a text link.
***E-zine or newsletter advertising***
E-zines provide a good opportunity to advertise on the internet. They are newsletters delivered by email that subscribers opt to receive. There are e-zines devoted to every topic imaginable, with subscriber bases varying from just a few, to hundreds of thousands. This provides an internet marketer with a great opportunity to target a specific demographic group of a certain size. Ad rates can range from just $1 to $75 per thousand, with many opportunities in the $5-$10 range.
***Write articles***
A great way to promote your own web site is through writing informative articles. Take advantage of your expertise and write an article with it. It doesn't matter what area your expertise is in, whether it's collecting antiques, fixing cars or cooking, there's an e-zine in that area and an opportunity for you to be published. Once you have written an article, check out the list of e-zine directories below to find appropriate e-zines for your article. Once you come up with a list of e-zines and web sites, politely email the publisher explaining why your article would be a good fit for their publication. Because your article will be informative and contain useful information, publishers will be happy to print your article for their readers. Include your name, a very brief bio, and a link to your web at the end of the article.
***Offer a newsletter on your site
The most cost-effective way to increase web traffic to your site is to increase the number of repeat visitors you get. One effective way to increase repeat traffic is through offering a periodic newsletter to your visitors, containing web page updates, news or other offers. A newsletter is good way to reach out and touch your customers, reminding them that your web site still exists and providing them with some new reason to visit. A site such as www.listbot.com can provide you with an easy and free opportunity to start a newsletter. When you establish a free account, their servers will automatically handle subscribing, unsubscribing, and sending out your newsletter for you, leaving only content to you. If you decide to offer a newsletter though, don�t overdo it by sending it out too often. Once every other week is probably adequate to keep you site in memory, without annoying your subscribers by bombarding their email account.
***Increase word of mouth advertising
What's the most convincing advertisement for something? It's when an advertisement isn't really an advertisement, but instead a piece of advice from a friend to use a certain product or look at a certain site. Hearing something from someone we trust can be 10 times more convincing than simply reading a sales pitch from a self-interested marketer. Word of mouth advertising also doesn't cost anything and has the property that it exponentially spreads. If one satisfied customer told two more, and those two told two more, this would quickly add up to a huge number. Word of mouth advertising is very convincing, doesn't cost anything, and exponentially spreads, thus is very effective. One easy way to encourage word of mouth advertising on your own site is to add a box to your web page in which a visitor can type in a friend's email address in order to send them an instant referral.
***Free links for all pages
Free links for all pages (FFA) are sites where anyone can submit their link and it gets added to a long list. These sites usually have several hundred links on them, meaning that it's difficult for any links to stand out from the crowd, and often there are so many links submitted to these sites that the old ones quickly get cycled off the page. Also, it's very questionable whether many of these sites get much traffic, other than people who have submitted their own link and are looking at it. But, not all FFA sites are of low quality. Some FFA sites on large respected sites do get hits and are worthwhile. There are also sites on the net that will submit your link to 100s of FFA sites for free. Usually the FFA sites your link gets submitted to are of the lower quality though. While these auto submitters are free, they will usually ask for your email address and allow each FFA page your link is submitted to, to send you an advertisement. This can amount to 100s of email advertisements. If you do use an FFA autosubmitter, it's wise to get a quick, free email account at Yahoo or Hotmail for all these advertisements.
***Give away a freebie
There's only one thing that people love more than a bargain, and that's something that�s free! Give away some sort of small freebie to get people your site. Get your offer listed on the numerous freebie sites around the net.
***Track your visitors
This isn't necessarily a method of promotion, but it is absolutely vital to any successful promotional campaign. You have to know where your visitors are coming from, whether it's from an e-zine ad, a reciprocal link from a partner site, a banner ad, or a search engine. Otherwise, you won't know where your visitors are coming from and you won�t know which methods are working and aren't working. Look at the methods that aren't working and try to figure out why. On the flip side, look at the methods that are working well and see if you can use this to improve to the rest of your promotional campaign. Pay attention to things like, which ad copy is selling, or which graphics are attracting clicks. You can get a free tracker at http://www.extreme-dm.com/
Using all or some combination of these methods can provide significant amounts of traffic, but you have to work at it! You can�t just slap up a banner exchange or post a few free links here and there and expect the hits to start rolling in. Promotion is a job which requires constant work and effort, but it's absolutely vital to the success of any web site.
*Jeff Lee runs the Free Money Resource, ( http://go.to/earn-freemoney ), devoted to listing and reviewing FREE money opportunities on the web. He also runs the Web Promotion Resource, ( http://go.to/promotion-resource ), bringing you tips, tricks and online resources for web promotion. This article is free to be republished as long as this bio is reprinted.
Banner exchanges:
http://www.linkexchange.com
http://www.hyperbanner.com
http://www.plemx.com
http://www.free-banners.com
Tools for building banners:
http://www.quickbanner.com
http://www.animation.com
Get your own mailing list:
http://www.listbot.com
http://www.onelist.com
E-zine Directories:
http://www.e-zinez.com/cgi-bin/hyperseek/directory.cgi
http://www.ideamarketers.com
http://ezinesearch.com
Pay for rank search engines:
http://www.goto.com
http://www.simplesearch.com
http://www.findwhat.com
http://www.searchound.com
FFA Autosubmitters:
http://www.linkscout.com/ffa/
http://ns.netfirms.com/multi.html
Get your own FFA Page
http://hubeicorp.com/LinksScript.html
Free Tracker:
http://www.extreme-dm.com/
Reccomend Site Forms:
http://www.emason.com/tools/
