Feature Article

A Guide To Website Promotion - Part Two

by: Scott Lindsay Make a Website Builder

Now that you are familiar with the most important search engines and linking strategies, you should not ignore other promotion tools that will enhance your website promotion efforts.

3. Traditional Media Strategies

Website promotion should be a mix of online and offline strategies. Traditional media tools apply successfully to increase traffic and get more visitors.

Promote your website URL on business cards, stationery and company documents.

Don’t ignore the importance of the traditional media. Include your URL in any display in newspapers, magazines and so on. Many people do use the yellow and white pages to search for services. Make sure your company is listed and provide the URL along your listing as well.

Send your clients business greeting cards on proper occasions. These will act as reminders and help maintain good communication channels between you and your customers.

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Use your local TV and Radio to promote your website. Advertisements on national TV are really expensive, but do use them if you have the money.

Print informational brochures and periodicals. For periodicals don’t just ramble about a topic: make them worth reading. Send them free to business partners, clients, journalists and research centers.

Develop a free service (related to your business field) to attract clients to your website: a free online insurance calculator, a free e-book, free software, etc.

4. Email Strategies

Emails are virtual corporate letters. Email can be used to send out answers to inquiries, news, offers, advice and much more. The first and most important rule when it comes to business email is: DON’T SPAM! The rest comes naturally.

No matter what business email you send out, always use a signature: your name, position, company address and phone numbers, website URL. Always include the http:// in front of your domain name, as many email software programs fail to convert simple www. into links.

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Publish an eNewsletter ("ezine"): this is a periodical electronic publication with useful information for your clients. You may include in the eNewsletter articles, press releases, news and special offers. But don’t forget to include a visible link to your website as well.

Send your clients special offers, discount coupons, product updates and so on. These should be personalized, clear and to the point. Once again: don’t spam.

There are email marketing companies that have developed lists of people who have agreed to receive commercial emails. You could use such a service, but if you do, make sure it’s not a type of "pay to read email" company. To pay for something like this will do you no good, as people who get paid to read emails don’t really care about your message, but just click on the links to get a commission per click.

Up to now you’ve learned the importance of search engine strategies, how to develop a solid linking strategy, how the traditional media tools boost site popularity and what email strategies work best to promote your website. In the third and last part of this short guide, we will show you how to use paid advertising effectively. We will also take a look at some miscellaneous website promotion tools.

Scott Lindsay is a web developer and entrepreneur. He is the founder of HighPowerSites and many other web projects. HighPowerSites is the easiest do-it-yourself website builder on the web. No programming or design skill required. Get your own website online in just 5 minutes with HighPowerSites.com

Second Article

It's All in the Title

by: Matt Foster ArteWorks

Many search engine optimization companies will sell you a search engine optimization package that addresses many of the major aspects of search engine optimization. These aspects include, but are not limited to, use of file names, alt tags, h1 tags, keyphrase density, meta tag optimization, link analysis and the like. These are all key aspects of a good search optimization.

However, one problem is that the major search engines (especially Google) not only rank pages upon relevant content (which is determined by the factors listed above, and more), but by fresh content as well. What this means to you is that, even after your site has been "optimized to the max", your rankings will increase to a certain level and then not go much higher. To get to the top and stay there, your site should deliver fresh, relevant content on a regular basis. Depending upon the nature of your business, your competition, and targeted keyphrases, the rate at which you should add content to your site can vary from monthly to daily.

The delivery of fresh content to your site, in a form that is readable by search engines (i.e. not through the use of javascript, iframes, or the like) requires a dynamic, database driven content management system.

The most cost effective way to achieve this is through the use of a weblog that sits on your server and resides under your domain name. Updating the weblog with rich articles or commentary, broadcasting this information to the internet, and allowing users to post comments, achieves the following:

1) Increases the number of inbound links to your website 2) Increases the frequency at which major search engines will spider or crawl your site 3) Increases interactivity for the web user 4) Improves your search engine ranking

Matt Foster is the President and CEO of ArteWorks Business Class. Mr. Foster is an expert on search engine optimization and search engine friendly website design. Mr. Foster has been working in this industry since 1995. His firm regularly obtains website placements on the top 15 listings on Google and Yahoo.