Promote Your Site Every Day - Promotion Course

This article contains at least 6 ways you can promote your site today. It is a summary of a 7-day email course called Promote Your Site Every Day (now called Promote Your Site Every Week!)

Day 1 - Submit Your Site To A Search Engine

Okay, okay there are no big surprises with this promotion method.

Search engines still represent the best way to get traffic to your site, day after day after day. But which search engines are the most important?

Answer: Google, MSN Search, Yahoo! Search.

The good news is that you don't have to submit your site to Google at all, if it knows about your site. The bad news is that it will only know about your site if another site listed on Google is linking to your site. (Learn how to build incoming links in Day 3.)

It is also important that your pages are optimised for the search engines. And you'll find an up-to-date list of the major search engines and directories here.

Day 2 - Post A Newsgroup Discussion

There are newsgroups, bulletin boards or forums on just about every subject imaginable. A good place to start is https://groups.google.com which allows you to search all of the Usenet newsgroups for a particular term or phrase.

Post a message online, via Google, or offline using Outlook Express (or similar). Follow the forum or newsgroup guidelines, when you start a discussion or answer someone's query. It *is* okay to mention your website in a 2-line signature, though.

Newsgroups and forums also prove a good place for you to get known and develop trust.

Good websites usually come with a good forum too; e.g. SitePoint forums. And some sites are simply forums; e.g. Clickbank forums or UK Affiliate forum

Day 3 - Build Incoming Links To Your Site

Links make the Net go around; they are what make the internet great! Links also make your website useful to your site visitor (a well-maintained, and useful, links page can in itself make a website worth re-visiting again and again).

One way of achieving lots of links to your site is to swap links with other sites. This is easier said than done, however. To improve your chances of success, do something like the following:

• Identify sites with similar content to yours
• Send a personal email to the webmaster suggesting that both your sites could benefit from a reciprocal link
• Once people begin to reply to your email, create a "Links" section

Personally speaking, I don't respond to reciprocal link requests when my link is simply going to join hundreds of others, often not related. I don't think Google thinks too highly of such links pages, either.

A much better strategy is to try and build incoming links to your site only.

Day 4 - Write A Press Release

What's better than advertising in a publication?

Answer: having your business feature in an article in that publication.

So here are the basic steps of writing a press release:

=> Press Release Checklist

o Step 1 - "What's Your Story?"
o Step 2 - Think Like A Journalist
o Step 3 - Mechanics Of Writing A Press Release
o Step 4 - Example Layout Of A Press Release
o Step 5 - Is Your Press Release Ready?

o The missing ingredient - K-I-S-S

Obviously there is a little more to it than that. Why not read my how to write a press release article, or...

Day 5 - Be An Expert, Have An Opinion

Believe it or not people are interested in what *you* have to say! Several websites are even willing to pay you for your opinion! (And we all have an opinion, don't we!) Remember, it's good to talk, especially if your listeners then visit your website!

If you *really know your stuff*, you can become an 'expert' at several sites. You may have to write articles on your subject of expertise, or just answer questions from site-visitors. Either way *you* gain more exposure, and your site gains more exposure too.

Opinion sites:
- https://www.epinions.com
- https://www.dooyoo.co.uk

Expert site:
- https://www.answers.com/experts

Day 6 - Start A Joint Venture

A joint venture can be as simple as joining an affiliate program. But basically you sponsor another's product and take a share in the profits. Joint ventures can also improve 'site-stickiness'.

You need to:

1. CONTACT webmasters who market similar products/services and ask them if they would be interested in offering yours. Share the profits, and it's a win-win situation.
2. PROMOTE another webmasters' product or service (something you believe in) to your subscribers or customers.

There is much more to joint venture marketing than this, obviously than just affiliate marketing. Simply think of ways you can partner with another company offering a complimentary so that both you and your site visitors benefit. Win-win! ;-)

(By the way, to be really good at the affiliate marketing game, you MUST learn how to PREsell. Thankfully, Dr Ken Evoy has written the definitive ebook on the subject. Learn more about Make Your Content PREsell, here!)

Day 7 - Follow Up!

No new websites to visit here; no new methods of promotion. Just an opportunity to measure the success (or otherwise) of the previous 6-days' efforts. This is a time to follow-up and perhaps plan for the next 6-days.

But if you're really keen, you *could* take a look at some other promotion methods:

• Encourage visitors to bookmark your site
  
• Write an article
• Run a competition;give promotional items away as prizes
• Create an online community
• Create great content, and allow others to use it
  

Good luck, and keep on promoting
Steve M Nash

PS Once you have learned about promoting websites, you can also know how to
earn money online!! One such way is through affiliate marketing - enjoy!

Reminder: This website promotion course shows you how to promote your website -- please share this page!