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By
Rob Charles
You
have a successful company and decide to expand your company’s
presence onto the World Wide Web. You find a quality design
company that does a great job designing your site. You are
very happy, but do not be disillusioned, this is not the
Field of Dreams here. Just because you build it does not
necessarily mean they will come! Just like anything else,
you need to promote your site in order to ensure its success.
Here
are some great ways that you can drive a traffic jam of
people to your site, and start yourself on the path to success
on the Web.
1.
META Tags. It all starts with carefully choosing key
words with which people will be able to find your site when
they do a keyword search using search engines. You need
to put a little thought into how you think people will try
to find you on the Web. Once you come up with a list, your
Web designer will be able to attach these key words to your
site to make it much easier for people to find you.
2.
Search Engine Registration. OK, now that you have come
up with all your META Tags, you need to get your site registered
with the top search engines (i.e., Yahoo, AOL, Lycos, Snap,
Excite). Without this step, you could come up with all the
META Tags you could think of, but they will be useless.
Many design companies include Search Engine marketing within
the rates for design. It is essential to get yourself registered
with at least the top 10 search engines, but the top 25
is even better.
3.
Request Links on Industry Sites. Get yourself involved
with various trade associations that feature member sites,
and ask for a link. Even if you have to pay something for
a link, it may yield the kind of results you are looking
for.
4.
Promote your URL. This is an important one. Many a company
has built a site and went through some of the above steps,
but aside from that, virtually ignored their Web presence
internally. You need to get your URL on business cards,
stationery, company literature, brochures, classified ads,
journals, newspapers, trucks and anything else that you
can think of. Without doing this, you really are defeating
the whole purpose of having a site.
5.
Develop a Free Service. It is one thing to tell people
to visit your site for more information, it is another thing
to tell them to visit your site to check out the free “Appliance
information resource center” exclusively on your site.
Make no mistake, it is expensive in time and energy to take
this step, but very gratifying when you see the results.
6.
Request Reciprocal Links. Find complimentary Web
sites and request reciprocal links back to your site. You
can actually develop a separate page on your site where
you include reciprocal links. Make this a page that is at
the tail end of the navigation within your site, so that
people are not leaving out the back door as quickly as they
are coming in the front door.
7.
E-mail Marketing. This is a great way to drive an avalanche
of traffic to your site. This all starts with having a sign-up
form on your Web site where surfers can sign up for free
information. Automatically, you will be capturing their
names and e-mail addresses within the sign-up form on your
site. The next step is to develop your newsletter and send
it out to all who sign up to receive it. A good e-mail host
company will provide everything for you. All you should
really have to worry about is composing your newsletter
and sending it out. There is a time commitment involved
here, but it is well worth the results that you will receive.
One of the best things about marketing this way is that
everyone who signs up for your list is an “opt-in”
member of your list. This means that you can avoid the whole
“spamming”, or sending unsolicited bulk e-mail,
faux pas, which in the long run will really hurt your business
and reputation.
8.
Advertising. Last but not least is actually doing some
advertising to promote your site. As far as advertising
on the Web is concerned you really have two options. For
starters, you can purchase banner ads on appropriate sites.
Do some research and find out which sites will yield you
the best ROI. The other option is to advertise on targetede-mail
Newsletters. This is becoming more and more popular. Again,
you will need to do some research to figure out which newsletters
you will receive the best ROI from.
There
are other things that you can do to promote your site, but
if you take these 8 steps, you will be well on your way
to developing an e-business juggernaut!
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