10 BEST PLACES TO PROMOTE YOUR SITE

Website promotion is an art. As a webmaster, I spend most of
my time promoting my sites. Without a big budget you cannot
promote a site overnight. Most webmasters don't have a big
budget. So, they have to do it the hard way.

* Keep promoting it day in and day out.
* Try different options.
* Use trial and error to determine what works.
* Spend countless hours to arrive at good places to promote the site.

Over the years I have promoted my sites at hundreds, if not
thousands, of different places online, some good, some not
so good. I want to share with you the 10 best places to
promote your site so that you won't spend as many hours as I
have in finding them.Before You Start Promoting Your Site
Be sure to create and include Meta tags on every page. Also,
don't use all of the free submit utilities on the same day
since many of them submit to the same search engines. Wait
at least one week before you use the next utility. You may
want to open an email account on hotmail or another of the
free email services and use that email address if you plan
to submit to free for all links since many send a
confirmation email, or add you to a mailing list.

The Big Ten

1. Self-Promotion: This is the best place to start promoting
your site. And best of all it is free to use. However, for
only $10, you can have your data stored for one year so that
you can promote your site over and over without retyping the
information. Self-promotion allows you to promote your site
to over 400 different search engines, indexes, business
directories, international indexes, directories and awards.
http://www.selfpromotion.com

2. Jim Tools: This is another free utility that promotes
your site to 400 search engines and indexes and over 200
Free-For-All (FFA) links pages. Do not use Self-Promotion
and Jim Tools in the same week since many of the search
engines and indices are same. Compared to Self-Promotion,
Jim Tools takes a lot less time to submit to 400 search engines and
indexes. http://www.jimtools.com

The two free utilities above let you submit one URL to 400
different search engines and indices at a time. However, in
some cases submitting your home page URL alone isn't enough.
You have to "deep submit" your site. Deep submit is nothing
more than submitting each and every page of your site. If
you have 100 pages in your site, then you must use the above
free, utilities 100 times to submit all of them. (Deep
submission is possible with Self-Promotion's paid service.)
But don't worry. You can use the following deep submit
utilities to submit multiple URLs at the same time.

3. Associate-it Free Submit: This free utility lets you
submit all the pages in your site at one time to 24 major
search engines. All the submissions are done in real time,
you can watch the submission results as they happen.
Depending on the speed of your Internet connection and the
number of different pages you are submitting, this may take
any where between three minutes to a few hours. The good
thing is that you can start the submission and then surf the
Net as usual in a different browser window.
http://www.associate-it.com/html/main/300free/

4. The Promoter: This is similar to Associate-it Free
Submit, but it will submit multiple URLs to 800 search
engines, indices, FFA pages, classifieds, etc. at one time.
This works much like Associate-it Free Submit. You can start
the submission and then browse the Net in a different
window. The Promoter also notifies you when it's time to resubmit your
site. http://www.thepromoter.com/

5. Announce It America!: One more free utility that submits
multiple URLs to 300 search engines, indices, FFA links,
classifieds, etc. at one time. This works like Associate-it
Free Submit and The Promoter. You can start the submission
and then surf the Net in a different browser window.
http://www.announceitamerica.com/The_Announce-O-Matic

By using the five utilities above, you have submitted your
site to most of the search engines and indices. It may take
anywhere between three weeks to six months for your site to be
indexed.

6. Open Directory: Recently, when Netscape purchased NewHoo,
the Open Directory, I was quick to submit my site to be
included. The only complaint I have with the Open Directory
Project is that the editor in the category you are trying to
submit your site to may be your competitor and may try to
list your site lower in the list. But you can submit your
site to three or four different categories if it belongs.
Recently, Lycos and HotBot adopted the Open Directory, and
Altavista is adopting it soon, so getting listed with the Open
Directory may bring you a lot of traffic.
http://www.dmoz.org/add.html

7. Direct Hit: A lot of search engines like HotBot, MSN and
others have recently adopted the Direct Hit search
technology. Getting listed with Direct Hit may also bring in
considerable amount of traffic, but your site has to be somewhat
popular. http://www.directhit.com

8. GoTo.com: Even though it is not free, GoTo.com can bring
targeted traffic to your site at a low cost. To get listed
with GoTo.com you have to open an account with a minimum of
$25, then bid on keywords that you would like to target. The
minimum bid for each keyword is $0.01. I would recommend
bidding $0.01 on 500-1000 keywords related to your site. You
can bid high on 5-10 keywords that are really important to
your site and bid $0.01 on others.

To generate 500-1000 keywords related to your site, use Jim
Tools keyword generator at http://www.jimtools.com. If you
type in two or three keywords related to your site, the
keyword generator searches the web for similar sites and
compiles list of keywords by reading their Meta tags.
Usually, if you bid on 1000 keywords, you will get between 75-100 hits
a day. http://www.goto.com

9. Yahoo!: Even though getting listed on Yahoo is a
pain and it may take up to six months, most sites get the majority of
their traffic from Yahoo!. Also try submitting to Yahoo!
Local or International if your site fits. If you submitted
your site to Yahoo! and nothing happened for four or five
weeks, try submitting again in the same category, or maybe
in a different category. You can get good tips on how to get
listed on Yahoo! at search engine forums at
http://www.searchengineforums.com. Do what ever you have to
do, but get listed on Yahoo!. http://www.yahoo.com

10. PRweb: Press releases are one of the most effective ways
to generate traffic to your site. If written well, they can
be very effective. Over 90 percent of press releases are
sent out by the companies or sites trying to generate
traffic or publicity. Write a press release and distribute
it free of cost using Prweb. http://www.prweb.com/submit.htm

About the Author

Riyaj Shaik, President & CEO, Associate-it.com: The ultimate
directory of affiliate programs. Associate-it.com's
(http://associate-it.com) fully searchable and categorized
database includes reviews, ratings and descriptions of over
1,400 affiliate programs. You can find tons of free
information relating to affiliate programs and website
promotion at Associate-it.com. (http://associate-it.com)