You have created your website, uploaded your products information, and left your contact information on the website. Now you are about to promote your website. There are numerous techniques that you can use to mark your web site, whether a new web site or an existing one. However, the major three of them are search engine marketing, pay-per-click advertising, and bulk email marketing.
Web Site Submission & Search Engine Marketing
Everyone wants the best placement in the search engines and directories as more and more people use search engines to find what they want. But which search engines should I register with? It is estimated that the top 20 search engines account for 95% of web traffic combined; Google, Yahoo!, AltaVista, Excite, Infoseek, Hotbot, Lycos and WebCrawler. Actually, Yahoo isn’t really a search engine, but rather a directory.
Paid Advertisement
Paid advertising includes fixed-rate banner program in portal websites (e.g. Yahoo) and pay-per-click advertising in search engines (e.g. Overture). Banner Advertising is one of the oldest forms of online marketing. The click-through rate (people clicking on the ad to visit a website) can be relatively low. But it’s not on click-through alone that you should assess banner advertising effectiveness. It can also raise your brand awareness and reinforce brand recognition.
Pay-per-click is alternative if you want immediate traffic to your website. As its name suggest, you only pay for clicks. Many search engines provide such opportunities. Major of them are Google AdWords, Overture, LookSmart, etc.
Email Marketing
E-mail marketing can be effective only if it is permission-based. Continually sending unsolicited emails can be prosecuted. If you are accused of sending spam you can run into trouble, ranging from impolite responses through to loss of internet access accounts and the destruction of your business reputation. In short: don’t spam your customers. They won’t like it, and you won’t like the results.
Affiliate Programs
Affiliate programs are great tools for promoting your web business. Affiliate programs are a lot like networking marketing. Affiliate programs pay other websites for referring people to your company’s products, services or web sites. The commission that you pay to them can vary between 5% – 15% of the purchase price for any product or service that they referred someone to and they made a purchase.
Link Exchange
Link exchange program is free, but is a very efficient technique you can use to increase traffic to your web site and boost your search engine rankings. The benefits of having a large number of relevant web sites linking to yours are two-fold: Direct Traffic and PageRank for link popularity.
