Website Promotion (Step 8)

There are many ways to promote your site so it is best to have a website promotion plan to help achieve top ranking.

Submit URL

You can submit to the search engines free by using the links below.

Google - Add URL Link (Google based search engines include: AOL Search, CompuServe Search, Netscape, MySpace Search)

Yahoo! Search Add URL Link (Yahoo! based search engines include: AltaVista and All the Web)

MSN Live Search Add URL Link

Create a Site map

Google, Yahoo! and MSN joined together in November 2006 to support industry standard for sitemaps. The official site for this venture is located at sitemaps.org.

If you have not created a sitemap for your site because you believe it is to difficult, now is the time to do it. There are many free sitemap generators online to help you with this process.

Here is one place that will let you create your sitemap for the major search engines. XML-Sitemaps.com. Google will even help you create a sitemap.

I used Xsitepro to build this website and they have a built in sitemap generator. I just go to the "other" tab on my menu and click on Google Sitemap. The step by step instructions walk you through naming the file (or use default), putting priority on each page, and much more.

Submit your Site Map

Google - Add sitemap (you will need to sign-up for Google Webmaster Central. It's free and they have many tools to help enhance your site.)

Yahoo! -To add your sitemap to Yahoo, you will need to have a Yahoo! ID (it's free to sign up) You can submit it with the same link for add URL above for Yahoo!

MSN - As of the writing of this MSN does not have a direct URL to sitemap submission. As soon as they do, I will post the information.

Ask.com - Add sitemap- (once you arrive on the page, go all the down to the bottom and you will see the question of "does Ask.com support sitemaps - follow their procedures)

Social Marketing/Networks

This is a great way to help drive traffic to your site, but it can be confusing on where to start and what to do. Social Media Science (formerly SEO2020) takes website marketing to a level that no other company online is doing.

Free Website Promotion Techniques

If you don't want to manual submit your URL or site map one by one, use submitexpress to submit your URL to 40+ search engines and directories.

Submit original articles to Article Directories: EzineArticles, Articlesbase, GoArticles just to name a few to help increase web traffic. If you submit an article to all three of these, make sure you do not submit the exact same one to each of them, change it at least 60% before you submit so you won't get dinged for duplicate content.

The search engines regularly "crawl" article directories, so you don't need to also submit your URL to the search egines. This can help you cut down on the time consuming task with your promotion strategy.

Create a blog with Blogger.com or WordPress (just to name a few) about your site and link back to your site.

Create your own page on squidoo. It's free to join and you can create a lens about anything that you want. It is search engine friendly also, which helps getting the word out on your product or service.

Another way of increasing website traffic, is to start helping in discussion forums that are within the theme of your website. You can find many forums by doing a search on Google (or search engine of your choice). Try "your theme forums", "your theme discussion groups" (change your theme to your keywords). Don't sign up for every forum you find. Pick out a few that you can become active in and will remain in for a long period of time.

TrafficSwarm can be another method you can use in your website promotion strategies. It is free to join up and there are many ways to pick up extra points. Here are just a few ways for you to earn credits:

• Set TrafficSwarm for your home page - receive 1 credit each time you open your browser
• Click on other user's link from your home page - receive between 1 - 1,000 credits for sites that you visit
• Play the TrafficSwarm Lottery with some of the credits you have
• Freebies - receive these for varies reasons

Additional Resources

Free search engine optimization ebook

Use web site traffic statistics software to help find out how your visitors found you. This is great in helping to find out what your traffic is using as keywords to find your site.

Find many more ways to generate targeted website traffic.