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Get linked from 5,100 + sites FREE with one click.
1.E-mail
6%* of net users find websites via e-mail and 53%* through friends and relatives. So a quick and easy way of promoting your website is to send all your friends and relatives an e-mail announcing your site. Secondly add a signature promoting your web site to all your outgoing e-mail. Finally you can use targetted e-mail.
Cost: |
Difficulty: |
Effectiveness: * |
Free |
Very Easy |
6% |
Promote your web site via your outgoing e- mail by adding a signature. Dont make the message too long, include your URL and try to make the message eyecatching.
2. Search Engines
78% * of net users find websites through search engines.
Cost |
Difficulty |
Effectiveness |
Free |
Easy to fairly difficult |
The most effective |
There are hundreds of search engines many with their own idiosynchrasies. You will probably get the same result by submitting your site to the best 20 search engines but it makes sense to submit your site to as many of the thousands that are available as possible. Deep search engines such as Alta vista, Lycos or Excite use robots to catalogue a site. Basically you submit your URL and the robots will automatically catalogue your web site. Meta tags (see below) are very important to this type of search engine as this is the only way of influencing your ranking.
Standard search engines such as Yahoo rely on individual submissions and are reviewed by the search engines. You therefore have to make your web site of interest to users of the search engine to get a high ranking or even to get listed at all.
Cost |
Difficulty |
Effectiveness* |
Free |
Fairly easy |
Very |
These are essential for getting a good ranking with many of the best search engines. All they really are is a piece of HTML code used by search engines to describe your site more thoroughly. The code is not displayed on the web page itself.
Meta tags normally consist of a Title, content and keywords. Take care how you word your meta tags as they are sometimes displayed exactly as you write them. Promote the benefits of your site in a clear and concise manner.
When inserting a keyword meta tag you can use up to 200 words but don't use the same keyword more than three times as some search engines penalise excessive use. Use plurals. A search for dog for example would then also return pages containing dogs.
Although meta tags are surprisingly easy to do save yourself the trouble by getting your free meta tags here:
NetMechanic:
Power Tools for Your Web Site
When you have inserted your meta tags and got listed with the search engines do a search on your keywords to see where you rank. Then have a look at the tags used by sites above you to see what they are doing better than you.
Cost |
Difficulty |
Effectiveness |
Free |
Easy to fairly easy |
Very |
There are many submission services available. Some you have to pay for, others are free. Certainly make use of all the free services you can. They are very easy, submit your details once and your site will be submitted to multiple search engines. Make sure you have prepared your web site first (see meta tags).
The disadvantage of these services is that because your site is not individually submitted it will not have been tailored to the specific search engines requirements for maximum effectiveness. Use the service to initially list your site but go back to some of the sites when time allows and submit your site individually. Particularly with the directory sites like yahoo.
To submit your web site through these services click on the following sites:
3.Usenet (Newsgroups)
6%* of net users find websites through newsgroups.
Cost |
Difficulty |
Effectiveness |
Free |
Fairly easy |
Can be very effective |
You can reach a potential audience of millions with one single message. Very quick as the message is posted immediately but can take time for people to actually visit your site.
However follow the rules very carefully. Never spam by sending your message to multiple groups, make sure your message is relevant to the newsgroup. Ensure you look at the postings to see that your message is relevant. Ensure your message is brief, memorable and relevant (amend your message for individual newsgroups).
Check out search engine watch and deja news to see which groups are available and further help.
4. Reciprocal Links
62%* of net users find websites through links on other web pages.
| Cost | Difficulty | Effectiveness* |
| Free | Easy but can take time | If a good relevant link excellent |
This method consists of getting a link to your site from other websites. Many websites will give you a free link in exchange for a reciprocal link from your website. Although from a promotional point of view it doesn't matter from which websites you are linked , you will obviously get far better results if the content of both websites is compatible. You may also decide you do not want to be linked with certain sites such as porn.
This method is very easy and results and traffic will build over time. If your site hasn't got a links section add one now and make contact with other compatible sites.
Links can also improve your ranking with certain search engines. The more links you have- the higher the ranking.
MegaBanners FreeLinks page. It multiplies your hits like crazy, and it's totally free!
5. Advertising
44%* of net users find websites through printed media ie newspapers and 2%* through TV.
| Cost | Difficulty | Effectiveness* |
| Expensive | Difficult to get right | Can be effective at huge cost- other methods better |
Clearly TV advertising is only appropriate for large corporations. Some advertising may be useful such as cheap classified advertising probably in specialist magazines. The other methods described are however cheaper, easier and more cost effective.
However, you should definetly take advantage of the free classified ad and link pages available on the web.
Click here to be seen by
thousands!
There are hundreds of free classified ad sites on the net. Make the most of them by advertising on as many of them as possible and make sure your ad is short and snappy to help it stand out from the hundreds of other ads. You also need to ensure that it is listed in the right category. You can spend several hours submitting your site to them so work out your ad in advance and then submit it to one site after another. The following sites allow you to submit a free ad:
6. Other
8% of net users find websites through other methods.
Banner Ads
-create a banner for your site and visit the Internet link exchange
Web rings
Very similar to a reciprocal link. Your web site or page is linked to other web sites that cover the same subject area as your site. For instance a celebrity fan site could join a ring in which many web sites devoted to the celebrity are linked. Again, they can be effective. If somebody is interested in a particular web site they will probably be interested in visiting other web sites devoted to the same subject.
It is very easy to join a web ring (thousands exist on numerous subjects) but if a suitable one does not exist it is also very simple to start your own.
To check out web rings or start your own visit www.webring.com
PR
- is your site of interest to your local community, or special interest group. Then send a press release to your local paper or specialist magazine.
Click for Click Schemes
Their is one way of guaranteeing visitors to your site and that is to be a member of a click for click scheme. With these schemes you register as a member and give details of your website. They allow you to surf for credits. For every site that you visit within the scheme thay will ensure that another member of the scheme will visit your site. As these are guaranteed visitors make sure you use the targeting profiles which you enter when you join correctly. For instance if your website is likely to be of interest primarily to uk residents of ages 30 to 40 ensure that these parameters are entered. It's no use getting a visit from an 80 year old hungarian who only speaks Russian.
Click thru - Why join?
It's Free!
Earn one guaranteed visitor to your site each time you visit another member's site.
Earn one credit per referral 5 levels deep
Fee-based Double ClickThrus give 2-for-1 ClickThru ratio!
Visitors will also rate your site which gives you useful free feedback
Webmasters get targetted visitors and surfers find web sites they like
ClickThru is a great way to jumpstart your traffic. You can visit one site every 30 seconds for a couple of hours and get a few hundred guaranteed visitors to your website. Rating 9/10
Affiliate Schemes
Their are many types of affiliate scheme, the more familiar being the type operated by companies such as Amazon who pay you a commission for selling their books. However the scheme that is more likely to be of use and cost effective in promoting your website is the pay per click schemes. If you arrange one of these schemes you normally pay a few pence for every visitor sent to your site from another website. For instance if you offer to pay other websites 5p per click and you get 200 visitors this will have cost you £10. Contrast this with advertising where you pay £10 and you will not know how many visitors this will generate but unless you are particularly skilful you will not get 200 visitors. If your are interested in this type of promotion, and I would only recommend this method when your site is quite established- check out the section on affiliate schemes and particularly the service offered by commission junction.
*according to a survey by eMarketeer.com
Last updated 24/07/2000