Free or Low Cost Ways to Market Your Website
Regardless if you have a product, a service, a hobby website or
just want to share pictures of your wedding, you have to
advertise somehow to get the traffic to your site or blog.
Take for example all of the many different 'surf for traffic' or
'pay per click' programs that are out there. If you have a
website that is about your hobby, say model airplanes, then what
good is this traffic really going to do you? Who's using these
services? You could be using Google Adwords or even 12 Daily
Pro.
Webmasters and marketers that want traffic on their own site. So
they most likely won't spend any more time on your page than is
required by the little timer these services use and then they
are gone again. Even if your site is about these traffic
services (this is about the only time you will see very much
benefit from using such a tool) you will still have to spend a
ton of time just surfing and clicking around to get a real
benefit from these programs. Once marketers realized this they
switched gears. They started promoting all the different
programs to a lot of other marketers to get them in their
downlines, so they could get some traffic as a bonus. This
became their new focus. The problem is that everyone else did
exactly the same thing, so not a lot of people were surfing the
internet anymore.
Bottom-line is this. You need targeted traffic. So here are some
tips on how you can generate exactly the traffic you need and
bring the visitors you want to your website without having to
chase after them.
1. Your Copy
What is your website about? Do you just have a page with a lot
of links and not much else?
Effective copy is the key to getting sales from your website.
You really need to have others proof your website for clarity
and copy. If you can not take the constructive criticism, then
get thinker skin.
If this is the case, think about adding some copy to your
website that will be of value to any potential visitors. You
could write articles or find articles at one of the many
directories that you can reprint on your site.
2. Have references in your subject matter.
You don't have to put up some all kinds of pictures (although
that can work too), but rather try getting referral about what
you are doing and what you are like to work with, as it relates
to your topic of choice.
3. Forums and bulletin boards.
You could add a forum or bulletin board to your website where
your visitors can interact with each other. There are a lot of
free services available out there that you can use to either
remotely host a forum for you, or even software you can install
on your website's server. To find some of these, just head over
to your favorite search engine and you will definitely find
plenty to choose from.
And while you are visiting the search engine, why not run a
search for any bulletin boards and forums that are already out
there for your chosen topic? You could visit those and interact
with the visitors there and since many allow you to post a
signature or a profile, you could add a little line about your
own site with a link (just check the rules of the forum first so
you don't violate any of them).
4. Start a blog.
Blogs are very popular and search engines love them because they
provide constantly new and fresh content. Your blog would be a
great place to talk about what you are up to that day. So if you
spent some time today buying new parts for your plane you could
write about where you found them, how much they cost you, why
you chose those parts, anything really goes.
The really great part about this is that you can point links
from your blog back to your website, so when the search engine
stops by to grab and index your latest content, it will also
stop by your website and you will start seeing very targeted
traffic heading your way.
5. Write articles.
Writing articles isn't hard and can be a great source of fresh,
new traffic to your website. There are a lot of ezines on any
topic out there and there are also a lot of directories where
you can share your article.
Basically, what you do is write an article and then add a small
resource box that links back to your website (just like a
signature) and then let other ezine publishers know that you are
allowing them to print your article in their ezine. And many
publishers go to the article directories to find new content for
their newsletter and even their websites. And since there are
websites and ezine newsletters on any imaginable topic out
there, you can't lose. Write an article every couple of days and
post it in the directories (even one a week or every two weeks
will start getting you traffic). Very soon you will find new
traffic coming from search engines, newsletters and websites.
Best of all, these 5 simple tips will bring targeted traffic,
meaning the visitors are coming to you because they are
interested in what you wrote.
So there you have it, 5 easy and simple ways to advertise and
drive traffic to your website at absolutely no cost.