Website Promotion: Getting Started

Website Promotion: Getting Started
By: Joe Garite II

Okay, if you have read my last article Search Engine Optimization: Getting Started than you are ready for this article. If you haven’t, bookmark this article and jump on over to that article. When you’re done with that come back to this one. If you have already read it than you can continue to read on. In this article I am going to tell you the FREE ways of getting advertising and promotion. Ready? Lets go!

Search Engine Submission
You’ve optimized the site you want to make money on so lets start to submit it to search engines. Now you may have seen those ads that tell you they will give you 500 Search Engine Submissions for only $19.95, let me be one of the first to tell you that it’s a waste of money. All you need to do is go to Google.com. That’s right, one search engine will take care of all your needs. Google has become such a huge search engine, that the majority (not all mind you) will crawl through Google to get their index. So head over to http://www.Google.com/addurl.htm and submit your website. People ask “how often should I submit my website?”, I usually submit once every couple of months (2-3 should be good). However, there are others that will say you only need to submit it once. It’s a judgement call that you can make. But be warned, if you submit too often your website will be “sandboxed”. When submitting to Google, you must be patient, VERY VERY PATIENT. There have been websites that can take 6-12 months just to get indexed, but when it finally does, you will see the difference as long as you have fresh content (the key to any website).

Inbound Links
Inbound links hold a great deal of importance when Google decides where you are to be placed on their search engine. The more inbound links you have, the closer to the top of the search you will be. Remember that single keyword/key phrase I told you to use? Type it in Google and find your top three competitors. Write down their URL and do another search in Google for each URL. Than click “View links to this site”. This will give you an idea of how many links your competitors have going to them. You can also use this method to check how many websites are linking to you. While doing this, you can also look for a place to add your link to those websites. When requesting that a website add your link, make sure that the area you are going to be placed in has less than 40 links on it. Any more than that and the search engines may consider it to be a link farm (this will also result in sandboxing).

Article Submissions
Do you know a lot about what your doing? Sure you do, that’s why you do it. Take that knowledge and put it into an article. By writing articles (just like this one) you are creating fresh content for your website. Not only can these articles go into your website, but you can submit them to FREE Article Publishers such as ArticleBlast and EzineArticles. When writing your article you can include an “About the Author” section also known as a resource box. Inside the resource box you would put a link to your website. This counts as an inbound link to your website.

Google Adsense
Some people may choose to go the path of using Google Adsense. This is perfectly fine if you are in a rush to get targeted traffic to your website and if you have the money to spend on it. The average budget for Google Adsense is generally $300 a month and up. But it really depends on how much you want to spend and how desperate you are to get traffic flowing to your website. The higher your budget, the more traffic you are sure to get. Keep in mind, however, just like any of advertising method, Google Adsense does not guarantee paying customers. You must make sure that your advertisement shows exactly what your website is about to avoid wasted clicks. Do not make them general and do not lie to your customer. It’s a waste of your time and a waste of their’s.
For those who aren’t in a rush to get traffic into their website, but want to experiement with Google Adsense, I would suggest no more than $100 as a budget and using 2-3 target keywords. The Google Adsense path is a good way to get traffic, but can be a costly investment. And some months may not always be in the black because of it. Be wary when preparing your budget. And always make sure you have enough to pay your web hosting bills.

Conclusion
There are still many more ways to promote your website, online and offline. I will go into some detail about offline promotion and how you can go about doing so for some reasonable prices.

Joe Garite II of WebReality.net has seven years of experience in the Web Design field. He focuses mainly on the UI of a website, but is now in the Search Engine Optimization field.