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Web Promotion for Newly Start Up Low Budget Online Businesses
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By Gerrick W
[Hits: 12261]
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Ok, you have your website up and running 4 weeks ago. You havedone the following thus far to promote your site...
a. Submission to Search Engines b. Submission to directories c.FFA (Free For All) d. Free Banner Ads
For all that promotion, you are only getting 20 visitors a day.Now you ask the one million dollar question. How can I get morevisitors to my site? You have a low budget and you want to knowhow and where you can promote your website to get more visitors?
Welcome to the real world of Internet marketing. To have 20visitors per day is not bad for a few weeks old online business.Promoting your website is an ongoing process to improve searchengine visibility and increase web traffic.
Search Engines
For a start, it takes months to rank well at the major searchengines for competitive keywords. Google, Yahoo and MSN arecurrently the 'big three'. You may rank well for MSN in a matterof three months but it may take up to a year to rank well forGoogle and Yahoo. You may not receive traffic from the majorsearch engines for quite a while.
There was a time where you could rank well on the major in amatter of weeks. Webmasters employ html tricks, meta tagspamming, special doorway pages to rank high at the searchengines. The scenario has changed. The major search engines havetightened their algorithms to prevent exploitation and theirSearch Engine Result Page (SERP) from being spammed bywebmasters.
So, beware of any SEO company that promises high ranking in amatter of days or weeks. There is a difference between havingyour web pages indexed and ranking well. Your web pages may beindexed within 24 hours but it may months before they rank wellfor your keywords. Ranking well at the major search engines canturn out to a long, long process.
This does not mean that you give up SEO altogether. Learn aboutSEO and subscribe to excellent SEO newsletters to keep up withthe latest SEO news and developments. Make adjustments to yourweb pages but don't fall into the trap of SEO rat race that sapsup all your time and energy.
There are other aspects of web promotion that needs yourattention if you aspire to grow your business.
Directories, FFAs and Free Banner Ads
What about directories and FFAs? You are fortunate if you have afew click-through from free directory listings. The alternativeis to get your website listed in Yahoo! Business Directory. Thecost of listing is a tidy sum of USD299 a year.
FFAs are hopeless. Free banner ads are not effective.
Pay per Click (PPC)
Pay per click (PPC) or Cost per Click (CPC) are text ads placedon websites, advertising networks or search engines. GoogleAdwords and Overture are the two popular PPC advertising on theNet.
Every time someone clicks on an ad, the advertiser is charged aspecific amount. The amount does not exceed the highest bid theadvertiser is willing to pay for his or her ad keywords. Thiskind of advertising drives targeted traffic to your site. A wordof caution here though, unless you know the ins and outs, do'sand don'ts of PPC, steer clear or else you may blow your budget.
Content Distribution and Ezine Advertising
For a budget conscious online business the best ways of webpromotion are distributing content and ezine advertising.
Write articles that are specific to your business and distributethem through article directories. No sales pitch and affiliatelinks at this stage please. Just include what is called a'resource box' with your website address, email link and a shortdescription (3 to 5 lines) about yourself and your business.
Article directories readily make available your articles forothers to use in their ezines. This becomes free publicity foryour business. Better still if your articles address thesituations of your readers and provide solutions to theirproblems. This will established you as a credible source ofinformation. In turn, you will have people who are predisposedto do business with you coming to your website via yourarticles' resource box link.
Ezine advertising is another cost effective way of promoting anewly start up low budget online business. It puts your ads intocontact with targeted, potential customers for your product orservice. Conversion rates tend to be higher, because the peoplewho clicked on the ad link are interested in what you have tooffer.
Do the necessary, search engines and directories submission,gather inbound links, but spend the greater part of your time toresearching, writing quality content, and developing a qualityezine to promote your site. Without systematic planning andclear directions, you will go in circles and ultimately give upaltogether. Making gobs of money on the Internet may not be easynowadays, but not impossible.
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