Thursday, December 18, 2008

Online Web Site Marketing Strategies

By Stewart Woyo

It is finally finished. Your site is gorgeous, appealing and downright amazing. With your graphics and images painstakingly chosen, you just know you'll be rolling in the dough in no time flat. You submit your prize to the search engines and the directories and sit back to watch the money storm begin. You wait. And wait. And wait. Finally, a few weeks later, you know that a pretty site alone does not generate revenue by itself. The search engines aren't going to do the work for you, so you'll have to find a way to promote your site and get it in the public's eye. A solid strategy is the only way to get the traffic your website and business deserves.

While there are countless was to promote your website, I will outline 5 of them for you to implement.

1) "Move the free line," is a phrase for a popular website promotion tactic. Offering a sample or service for free is a proven method of generating increased traffic to your site. Be sure that your company's information is included on your sample. In this manner, visitors who love your sample will constantly be reminded of where they got it, and be able to come back to your website again. Give the visitor something of value for free, and include a call to action.

2) If your company has budgeted some money for you to spend on increasing traffic, the best way to get more visitors is to pay for them. Many search engines offer pay per click services that charge only when a user ends up at your site. This tactic is a very effective way to target a high quality audience.

3) Network, network, network! Networking is one of the oldest and most successful tools of business. Focus on building relationships with related businesses, but not direct competitors. The trick is to find businesses that offer similar products and services as your own and share the target audience. Exchanging links with your partners can lead to more conversions for everyone involved. Having unbroken links to quality sites will help improve your search engine rankings. You can also exchange your customer email lists to increase the effectiveness of your email newsletters and direct marketing. This may be the most valuable tip in this article.

4) Having a steady flow of content and articles is another good way to increase traffic. If you can write and syndicate a few hundred articles, readers will be accessing your site from all over the world in a matter of days. Eventually you will reach critical mass, which is essentially when you have so many unique visitors that you couldn't stall web traffic if you tried.

5) Studies have shown that video is one of the most effective ways to drive traffic to your website. Video has become a mainstay of the internet culture. The more video content you have, the better. Publish videos to your website, and then submit them to free web video sites like Youtube or Google Video. Every time one of your videos is viewed you'll improve your search engine rankings. Better search engine rankings mean more traffic. Without visitors your website is invisible to the world. - 16039

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