Promoting your website

Marketing guru Charlie Cook has a sound approach to helping you grow your business. Sign up for his free newsletter and check out his eBooks.

Our service includes registration with the major search engines and directories that accept free listings, including Google, of course, Yahoo, MSN and Open Directory.

There are many other ways to work with and promote your web site, depending on what kind of business you're in. The Web Site Marketing Primer is an excellent introduction to get you thinking.

Also, read the articles on web site promotion on our Learn More page.

It may be important to work with businesses and organizations in your field who are already on the net. For example, my client Fairhill Farm registered her site with key dog-breeding associations, and actually sold puppies over the Internet before the site was "crawled" by the search engines! Every business is different. Get to know what kind of Internet presence your suppliers, organizations, and competition have, and work with it.

Starting a web site is a bit like opening a store (even if you're not actually selling on-line). You need to:

get people to visit your website
communicate with the customers your web site attracts
keep your site up to date and in working order

To maximize what your web site can do for your business, plan to put some time - and money - into site promotion and maintenance.

Nov. 2006 update: Advice from top experts

Search engine algorithms are constantly changing. Here's some advice from a panel of experts from Google, Yahoo and others at the 2007 PubCon in Las Vegas (as reported by WebProNews):

Each page of your site is a potential entry point for search engines and users, and should be optimized for what it is about.
Inbound links: Aim for quality rather than quantity. Don't even bother with those large-scale, automated link exchanges that you get requests for. In fact, getting links from a "bad neighbourhood" can hurt rather than help.
If you are targetting a local geographic area, get links from your Chamber of Commerce, local directories and other entities.
Use Google Local. If you can get into the top three there, it'll put you on the front page of Google's standard search for geographically-based inquiries. Google Local Business Center
Having unique content is very important.
If you're selling manufactured products, write your own descriptions rather than using the manufacturer's copy.
Blogging about your subject or product provides the kind of original, unique content that search engines are looking for.
A big buzzword right now is "link bait" - text that makes other people want to link to you.

Getting people to visit your website

Getting your web address known is the first important task.

Include your web address in your e-mail signature, and on business cards, envelopes, invoices, letterhead, voicemail, and all other advertising.
Get any industry associations to link to your site from theirs. It may be worth joining one! Check them out carefully.
Exchange links with relevant businesses with which you are not in direct competition.

Search engines.

It's hardly necessary anymore to "register" with search engines such as Google. They will find you. The more links pointing to your site from other sites, the better.
While building the site, I incorporate keywords that people would use if they wanted to find a site such as yours. You should pay attention to how the site is performing in search engines for various keywords, and make changes to improve it.
Web sites that are updated frequently are visited more often by search engines and rank higher in the results.
The Internet is so new and growing so fast that it's always changing. There are often new things in what search engines will accept, and new ways to make your site rank higher on them. Be prepared to deal with these changes from time to time.

Other promotional activities to consider

Blogging has become a common and effective way to promote websites.
Issue a press release about your new site.
Participate in forums and newsgroups related to your business - with your web site included in your signature.
Writing articles for others to publish in E-newsletters. You establish yourself as an expert in your field, and have a link to your site in the signature.
A pay-per-click ad campaign such as Google AdWords may work for you.
There are many "Web 2.0" websites (websites with user-generated content) where you can create articles or pages about your niche and link to your site.

Some of these promotional activities can be done by your web site designer or another agent. Other activities, those that require your knowledge and industry contacts, are best done by you. It's a good idea to plan and budget (time and money!) accordingly.

Communicate with the customers you attract

Put a system in place for responding to e-mail.

Encourage customers to come back by changing your site often.

One way to demonstrate your expertise and attract customers is to provide interesting information on related themes. For example, if you sell light bulbs, you can have some articles about home decorating or different kinds of light fixtures. Even though you don't sell fixtures, it gives light bulb customers a reason to visit and revisit your site. And they'll remember you.

Another way to establish yourself as an knowledgeable person is to write a regular e-mail newsletter. On your website, a simple form can give users the opportunity to sign up for it. If they want it, it's not spam.

A guestbook or other mechanism by which customers can give their feedback will add interactivity to your site.

Keep your site up to date

Besides adding to or refreshing your web site, there are basic ongoing maintenance activities which include:

checking and fixing broken links to other sites
keeping your information up to date
re-registering with search engines regularly

For more information, see the articles on web site promotion that I've indexed on my "Learn More" page.