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Promoting Your Free Website
Promoting Your Free Website
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Just because you put up a website does not mean that anybody will ever see it. There are millions of websites out there and they are all competing for visitors. To draw people to your website you must remember three things: One: PROMOTE! Two: PROMOTE! and Three: PROMOTE! When you are done, then you can go ahead and promote some more! Yes, it takes time and energy - but with the right promotion you can have a successful website! If you don't promote, you could try to sell hundred dollar bills for fifty cents on your website and you still won't get any visitors.
There are many ways to promote your site and many more ways being invented every day. You have to stay on top of things. Changes on the internet happen very quickly and if you don't keep current you will find yourself left in the virtual dust, so to speak. Here are some resources for promoting your website:
Search Engines
The best way to start promoting your website is to submit it to search engines. Start with the major search engines and work your way down. For a list of hundreds more, see our Ultimate Link List.
Yahoo
Altavista
Lycos
Excite
Infoseek
Webcrawler
Hot Bot
Free Search Engine Submission Services
Addme You fill out one form, then submit your site to 34 different search engines. You submit the information to each place individually, so you can decide where you want to send your site. You simply hit the submit button next to the search engine you want to submit to. Unfortunatly, they only put three search engines on a page so you have to go to more than 10 pages to submit to all the engines.
AddURL Easy to use, you can get an ID and come back using it and a password, you submit your site to umpteen billion sites (I'm not sure just many.) It doesn't just submit to search engines, it also submits to other sites as well.
Broadcaster You fill out 8 pages, only a few things to fill out per a page, then it submits your page to 200 different search engines. You don't have to hit an individual submit button for each one, very convenient. Doesn't take that long to fill out the pages, it is a bit confusing when your done though. It doesn't announce that your site has been submitted or anything like that.
Submit-It Registers your site with all the major search engines for free. You fill out a form, and go to a submitting area where you just hit submit (and occasionally pick something, like a catagory) a bunch of times.Its pretty useful. It submits it to 20 different places for free, if you want to pay, 400.
Free Banner Exchanges
Link Exchange This is the one that started it all! The Internet Link Exchange is a free service. You put a banner on top of any number of your pages, you submit a banner to them, and for every two times the banner on top of your page is displayed, your banner is displayed somewhere else once.
Smart Clicks Just like Link Exchange in the sense that for every two banners you display, yours will be shown once. The nice thing about Smart Clicks is that it has taken on a very commercial feel - most of the members are selling a product or service and if that is what you want to do (exspecially if you are selling information) you will probably get more hits by using this service as there is a better chance the viewers may be interested in what you have to offer. If you are involved in MLM or selling credit services, this is definitely the way to go!
Duthead's Banner ExchangeThis is a rather new banner exchange, however shows incredible promise. It's just like Link Exchange in that when you show 2 banners, your banner is shown once, however there are two major things they have extra. 1) You can have as many banners as you want (If you have multiple banners they will be run randomly to fulfill your credits) 2) Your banner has no data size limit (they must be 400 x 40 pixels, but as big as you want in bytes) For motivation to keep people from having gigantic banners you have to realize people will balance load time with quality. If your banner is too large it'll take too long to load and people will already have scrolled it off the screen, if it's small it'll show up immediately but probably be poor quality.
Internet Traffic Exchange Kinda like LE, however it's based on click throughs, not impressions. If you feel your banner is being hidden down in a corner or off the frame on peoples pages so you don't get your fair share of hits from banner exchanges, try this one.
Trade Banners Like LE, however you get 2 impressions for every three banners you display.
123 Banners Kinda like LE, same deal. You display 2 banners, your banner is displayed. Slower server and less people involved. I'd go with LE over this.
Comic Banner Exchange This site doesn't contain much information at all. You only know that 40% of the banners are advertisers, for them. Their site is a lil' cute tho..
Banner Cast Basically like LE. I still would favor the big name however, unless the deal was better. Same deal, ratio of 2 banners displayed to display 1 banner of yours (2:1)
BannerSwap Almost the same thing as LE. You get the ratio of 2:1 like LE, however clickthroughs are worth more than that. It's actually better than LE in my opinion.
Banner Ad Basic same thing as LE. Ratio of 2:1. It's better however, because you can decide what type of pages your banner is displayed on.
Geocities They have a "link exchange" of their own for member pages. You can also get free web space here
Web Rings
The HomePage Club This is exactly what it sounds like. Among the club they trade links, hints, etc. They have a couple webrings. More or less, it's just a club to help each other out.
Webring You join a webring, and put a ring graphic which allows people to navigate the ring on your page. There are tons and tons of webrings (including 13 (I think, is it more?) on Sailor Moon.)
The Rail The Rail is basically a webring. It shuffles the order its in every day however, which is kind of neat. And they also have different catagories.
Web Promotion News, Tips and Information
VirtualPROMOTE This site is the absolute best for learning how to promote your page. It doesn't have step by step directions, but more or less explains the idea, myths, do-not's, and other stuff. It's a lot to read, but it's well worth it. Before you join any banner swaps or buy any advertising, check this site out!
Marketing Tips This site gives lots of useful information on promoting your website. They have a section on guerrila marketing tactics that you should not miss!
E-MAIL Utilities
Url-Minder This basically allows your browsers to be E-Mailed everytime you update your page. They just put in their E-Mail address and hit submit.
While were at it, you might want to consider starting your own mailing list. You can ask your visitors to "sign-up" to receive news and information about your website. One word of advice though, don't SPAM anyone! SPAM means that you just collect email addresses off the internet and then send unsolicited e-mail to promote your website (or whatever else). The problem is that this is generally frowned upon and (especially with free websites) is a good way to get your website kicked off their servers.
Summary
As you can see, there are lots of free ways to promote your website. There are many more that you can pay for, if you so desire. All of the sites listed above will have plently of links to other promotional sites where you can look around and get a feel for the direction you want to go in. Keep in mind the following:
- Never rely only any one way of promoting your site. Also, never rely on any one company exclusively. Always have a backup plan. Businesses on the internet can be here today and gone tomorrow!
- Always try to have some fresh content on your site. This will give people a reson to come back, and may also get you a better placement with the search engines.
- Include some free information or useful tips on your website that would be beneficial to the average person. You have a much better chance of selling them something if they like the free information they see on your site.
- Never start promoting your site until it is actually up and running! Everyone is sick to death of landing on a site just to find construction signs or slightly tantalizing information of what is "coming soon". It has been proven again and again that grandiose claims of things yet to come almost never materialize, so anyone visiting your site in such a state will not be returning anytime soon.
- Always leave an email address on your site and respond promptly to any inquiries you receive. Would you send money to someone who did not answer your questions about their product or service in a timely manner? I thought not.
What? You still here???? GO PROMOTE! What are you WAITING FOR???
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