The thing to remember about free website promotion is that nothing is ever truly free. If you don’t spend money promoting your website, you’re going to have to spend time. So why waste time trying to market your website using methods that will only bring you minuscule returns, if any? If you're prepared to work on them, these five free website promotion techniques will deliver, rewarding you with increased site traffic.
1. Work on website SEO.
Through working on website SEO, you can improve the page rankings of your web pages and drive more traffic to your site. And isn't that the ultimate goal? Get started with my 7 Basic Rules of Search Engine Optimization.
Tip: If you are using non-text content on your web page(s), such as photos, image maps or JavaScript, include text in the ALT tag so the search engines have something they can read.
2. Reciprocal linking.
Having other people put a link to your site on their site is a great way to get free website promotion.
Be aware though that getting inbound links to your website is not a numbers game; it's the quality of the links that really matters. So you want to focus your linking efforts on relevant quality sites.
3. Write articles.
The basic theory of article marketing is that you write an article and then offer it for free to various websites, blogs, magazines etc. Your article, of course, ends with a resource box or 'blurb' that promotes you and your website.
The beauty of this website promotion strategy is that if you get your articles published on popular, long-lived websites or in well-known magazines, they can be sitting there promoting your website for a long, long time with no further effort on your part.
However, there are catches. First, you have to be able to write well on a topic or topics that other people will want to read and/or publish. Second, you have to find the quality places for your articles to be published and persuade the people making the decisions to publish them.
Tip: Find the websites or magazines you want to be published on first, and then spend some time reading the content to see what type of material they might want and if there are any obvious holes in their content that you could cover. Then tailor your material to that particular site or magazine's needs.
Social media isn't just a great place to connect with friends and family; it's also a great place to promote your website and/or business as so many people are using it. For instance, a Nielsen study found that Internet users spend 21.3% of their time on social networking sites while PQ Media found the average U.S. Internet user spends around 33 hours per month on the Internet and about 8 of those hours on social media (5 Social Media Tips for Finding and Engaging Your Target Audience: New Research, Social Media Examiner).
Participating in social media can be a great way to get free website promotion as it can give you high visibility at low cost. To successfully market your website using social media, though, you’ll need a plan. Learn How to Create a Social Media Plan for your small business.