How do you promote a website?

alnokta

Hello Any ideas on how to promote a newly started website that provide certain service? Ideas other than Adwords, spam, etc. It is a legitimate services... I would appreciate any input...

Waterskiaddict

Submit it to a search engine, or find a website that allows you to submit your site to multiple search engines at the same time.

strawberries

make sure you have your metawords, descriptions right. submit to the 5 or 6 main engines.....google, yahoo, etc.......don't worry about the hundreds of other engines, which are a waste of time. The main few engines will give you 99.99 percent of your traffic. take a bit of time and submit your site to various key listings pages for your specific type of area/subject matter. in your emails, usenet posts, discussion board posts, put your url/website in your signature file.

Crazyotaku

heh that's pretty cool, I just did a search on google for my site and it came up first on the list under "Otaku gamers anonmyous" too bad it's not ready for advertising yet... I don't want a lot of poeple visiting it if it's not close to being done yet.. lol.

alnokta

Thanks Already done all of that, guess it is a matter of time until people come in...

Waterskiaddict

make sure people have a reason to click and a reason to come back(fresh content)

strawberries

alnokta, it takes time. I personally still haven't managed to crack it. I did get one site up to an average of 300 visitors per day, but it took 2 or 3 years. The area that I need to focus a lot more on is getting links......I think those specialised directories/links pages for your area are a good way. But that takes a lot of time.

giginger

Create a sitemap. That'll help Google, MSN and Yahoo index your site better. It will also be quicker. They've agreed a sitemap standard too so it's well worth doing it.

crash_D.

this is probably the most common question webmasters ask when they launch a site.. ok,,,,

there are several major steps:

1. good, interesting, and relevant content. the more, the better. content is everthing

2. basic optimization. you should think about what terms your target users would query google, yahoo, and live. if every page has its own keywords, optimize each page (tons of work, i know, but it pays). use your keyword once in title of the page, in h1/2/3, in i,b,strong and em, in a. Once in each of these tags. And mention it in the text (p, pre, whatever). but don't get carried away and overoptimize or Se's would remove you (happenned to me once, don't play with this).. use a keyword density tool to keep your keyword density decent. Also, change your keyword logically (e.g. for a keyphrase fast driving be sure to mention fast drivers, driving fast and hurtling drivers etc.). optimization i the most boring work, but it does pay in the long term.

3. have other similar sites place links to your site. SE's use the quantity and quality of external links to your site. Link exchange is the second boring thing. You will have to exchange reciprocal (or ring) links with sites that have the same (or very close) target audience. exchanging links with a microbiology research institute (if you have that fast driving site) is pointless (and stupid). but if you have fast driving site, then google (a verb: to google) your keyphrase (or keyword) and offer them link exchange.. pay attention to their page rank (which can be viewed by google toolbar) . The higher the rank of pages that link to you, the better for you!!! this is the most important rule.. but i asume you have no GPR now, so 1 or even 0 GPR pages would do. Links to your site not only drive traffic (which they actually don't), but they also pass pagerank and thus increase your positioning in query results. Create a template that says about your desire to exchange links, and imply mail to prospective link partners. you will have to create a links page and place links to their sites in return.. only make sure these are good sites (not link databases, porn sites, hate, etc).

believe me, when you do that (which takes several months), your site will be popular.. and be sure to read the famous 26 steps guide... and be sure to use google webmaster central

Good luck and tons of patience

alnokta

Thanks fellows, I will try that ...

cycas

Apart from the advice above, if it is a community site (I'm assuming it is if you are asking here), make sure that every post gets at least one answer, and encourage your users to talk about your site elsewhere and promote it by linking from their blogs or other forums that they use. The type and market of the site will, of course, affect how you do this. Communities don't build themselves and people are reluctant to post if a forum seems dead. If necessary, make yourself several users and spend a bit of time chatting to yourself! Participate in discussion on other relevant forums (no, not spam, real participation) and link to your site through your signature, where that is allowed, or in response to genuine questions on the topic. Consider creating a mailing list to encourage people back. It's tricky to get right, but in some markets (my experience is primarily with travel and gifts) it's terrifyingly effective. Check out the competition and try to work out what they are doing not-so-well, or spot ideas that they are too large and slow to take fast advantage of. Implement those ideas on your own site. It's really hard giving advice of this kind without any idea of the market, because that does make a Huuuuuuge difference. Gift-buying mums tend to behave quite differently to serious men who want to buy 12,000 custom made platinum-coated widgets! Hope this helps though.

leason

Flash games. No, serously. Flash games with high scores and you'll have instant return traffic. Unless your target audience dispises that sort of thing, it is a good way to start out. Check out http://www.pnflashgames.com for some examples.

deel

it is all of the above and whatever it takes. i feel that the most successful marketing plans begin with a service or product that because of it's genuine quality, like Vanilla :) - require very little salesmanship. instead all you need to do is point the way to it. in the case of agressively using meta tags and keywords to achieve top rankings - it can be a full time job to stay on top. i have a friend with who has a very cool shoe store - he made a myspace page for the store. not sure how much extra interest it generates - but having the myspace connection to the search engines i'm sure helps in the keyword searching department.