How To Promote Your Web Site

You can design and create the most beautiful web site in the world.   Your site can be content rich, loaded with Flash, Java Applets, great offers, give-aways and more.   But if you haven't gotten yourself listed with the search engines, established synergistic links with other (non-competitive) online businesses and advertised your web site in many of the ways suggested in our web site, you have nothing but an unknown masterpiece of web design!   In short.... "Very Few People Will Know Your Site Exists!"

Hundreds of millions of people are exploring daily, the thousands and thousands of web sites that reside on the World Wide Web.  Attempting to make yours stand out amongst the crowd can be like trying to make one tree stand out in a forest.  So... let's look at a few things you can do to attract visitors to your web site:

1. Write an article (or series of articles) that might be useful to a another site or popular newsletter with prospective clients.  Offer to supply them to the other site's administrator, webmaster or editor.
2. Let your site evolve by way of updating: change it often, add features, promote the changes in your signature file and through online news distribution services like Internet News Bureau.
3. Use separate Meta Tags and titles for each page on your site and submit each page to the directories (like Yahoo!) and search engines (like Alta Vista).  Please realize that today, you will probably have to pay for a listing with many of the search engines and directories.
4. Create a signature file after your name that includes your URL, and participate in forums, discussion groups and mailing lists frequented by your potential clients. You won't need to include overtly commercial ads for your site, the information will be in your signature file.
5. Write a paragraph that succinctly explains the "who, what, where, why, when and what your company does. You'll need it anyway for all brochures, reports, press releases or sales letters you'll write about your company.   If you can substitute the name of any other company in any company profile sentence or mission statement and make the same sense you haven't arrived at a strategy.
6. Develop a Newsletter for your own business containing useful, relevant information to send "free of charge" to prospective customers and clients.  Utilize an "opt-in" scenario, but be certain not to spam!  There is an ever increasing distain for unwanted e-mails.

Imagine for a minute that your mission statement indicates that: "We at All-Star Furniture Company, are dedicated to supplying the highest quality standards of workmanship and customer service."  You could just as easily insert "Copycat Clothing Company," or "Super Star Sporting Goods Ltd.", or any other manufacturing company in that statement.   Add more to it.  Rework it.  And keep working on it until you've got it right.

Of course, doing one or two of these things, in no way constitutes a valid marketing or promotional campaign.   The cumulative effect of doing all of these things we've discussed, along with an effective, well planned ad campaign and more, is what's necessary to get you results. 

Remember that remarkable thing that occurs if you don't market and promote your products or services properly....."nothing!"