Webupon

Start from the basics, think of it this way, if you were to build a building can you put up the 10th floor without building the other 9 first? No, this is exactly how you have to look at it when it comes to promoting your website or a blog.

There are millions of ways to promote your website and blogs, and surly you may have already come across them. But you are here obviously for a reason, and my guess is you either found them too hard to implement or too expensive. I have listed some of the things you should do before getting into all the other technical and costly ways of advertising. Before you start to promote your site, make sure you offer free, original, and quality content on your site. This is the most effective means for increasing traffic to a website. It doesn’t matter if you sell a product or a service, giving away free stuff will always attract users. Also make sure your site is complete and ready to be promoted. Incomplete sites or blogs will turn away potential users from returning. Just remember this; it takes a lot to get one user, but a second to lose a million.

1. Tell all your friends and family members about your site and ask them to visit your site and pass the word around.

Ask them for feedback, everyone wants to feel important, so when you ask them to give you tips and ideas and what they think you should have on your site or how it can be improved, it will make them feel important. This will make them come back to visit your site to see if you have made changes or how it has been improved. Don’t just ignore their tips and ideas; they could be very useful, as these people could have been your potential users.

With all sites, at the beginning it is a bit difficult to get loyal and returning customers. So say please and thanks to your friends and family. If it feels like your begging, then be it, just remember who will be the winner at the end? You.

Just remember this little tree example – You tell 10 people (friends and family), these 10 people, each tell 10 others meaning 100, and those 100 tell another 10 each… I will let you carry on with the calculation as we all need a bit of mathematics practice every now and then. Jokes aside, but can you see how it will have people coming to visit a friend of a friend of a friends site. Someone you never met or know about will visit your site, not because they wanted to, but were asked to.

Some search engines rank your sites according to the number of visitors, which following the above will give you a good start, and others use Meta tags and descriptions. To be at the top, you need both.

2.Make sure your Meta tags and descriptions are relevant and describe what you actually do or sell on your site. Be creative, sometimes competing with the popular words or phrases can mean you get nowhere, so why not try words that are not too popular and work your way up. Take over the smaller market first and then aim for the bigger one. Niche markets isn’t always bad, in fact sometimes can be very beneficial.

3.Email all your contacts from your mailing account. We all have real friends that we meet up with and go for a drink or a coffee, but we also have unknown people in our contacts on Hotmail, Yahoo or Googlemail or whatever it is that you use. You don’t believe me? Have a look, I bet you will find at least one that you don’t recognise. Make sure the email is eye catching and interesting. It doesn’t just have to be a link to your blog or site; just make sure it will lead them to it somehow.

4. If you are still working, then tell all your work colleagues, don’t be shy about it. Remember, you will be the one who will benefit at the end.

5.Have some simple games and puzzles page to get people to engage with your site. You don’t have to have millions of flash games, it could be simple games such as sudoku, word games and so on. Just in case you have a user who accidentally comes to your site, but isn’t interested in what you have to offer, they may stay on to try and find the answer to a silly question you may have put on your home page, which may even have them come back. All the top and popular sites do, to name a few, Facebook, Yahoo, Google, MSN etc, so why not you.

6. Submit your sites to search engines and directories for free. Make sure they are the markets leading sites and the most popular ones. Don’t waste your time, money and effort in submitting to sites which only end up using a major search engine. These sites act as the middlemen, who use the popular sites to get their results. I have come across a site which lists the most popular and major search engines and has direct links search engines submit URL page. Avoid submitting your sites too often, as this may have your site rejected.
http://4jokerz.com/submittingwebsites.aspx

7. Try and link to other sites, but make sure it is relevant to what you have to offer. It is no use you linking to a health related site when you could be selling smoking related products, such as pipes, cigarettes etc. It will have a negative impact.

8.Use your social networking sites to advertise what you have on your site. With sites like Facebook, Myspace and Twitter, you can have your site on your profile. People who look into your profile may sometimes be interested in having a look at what you do or have on your site.

9. Become a member of Twitter. If you are popular amongst your friends, and they like to know what you get up to, then have them follow you on Twitter. Always remember to update by saying what the latest is on your site as well as yourself.

Some may laugh and make jokes, but at the same time go in there to see what it is that you’re talking about. Imagine this, a friend of yours goes into you Twitter account to see what you are up to, while they are out with people you don’t know. They think your silly to be doing what you’re doing, so laugh, to which his/her friends will ask why? You friend will then probably show them your site, which may interest at least one person. If not, you have nothing to lose, but if yes, then you just got 1 more user.

10.Finally, if you are advertising on your pages, make sure the adverts displayed are relevant to your contents. If you use googleAdsense, Bidvertiser or alike, then you don’t have to worry about doing it yourself, as they have systems in place to advertise links relevant to your contents. It is only when you join affiliate programmes yourself and you get to choose what you advertise and where.

Having the right adverts on your pages will mean visitors have a better experience, and are likely to come back to your site to re-visit a site they may have used linking from yours. You will be surprised how many people out there sometimes actually think that, a site that links from a site is part of that site or company. Which also gives you the advantage of them not bookmarking it, and may force them to come back to your site as they may have forgotten the name of the site and web address they visited.

Regardless of the above, links from your site will leave an impression of you or your company with the user. If you link them to useful sites, they will remember you as they would have enjoyed their experience on your site and sites visited through yours. But if they have a bad experience, they will never forget that, and in the future may not click on any links from your site. This is bad news for you if your earning will be depending on your adverts. So don’t just go for the advertisers that pay the highest commission, but for the ones that can benefit you in the long run by giving your users a better experience and quality products and services.

Lastly don’t advertise your direct competitors on your site, as this can drive away users from your site.

The above simple tips will give you a great start, and may even make you succeed. You may eventually need to spend a bit of money, but what I have listed is what money can’t buy. Take your time but be accurate, as there are no room for errors. Your failure will mean someone else’s success.