Site Promotion

[adamwhiles]

This may not be the correct forum, but I didn't know where else to post it. I was wanting to know if you all had any advice about promoting a website. Maybe a few methods or strategies you have used that worked quite well. Free and paid will both work. Thanks

[nogray]

There are a lot of ways to promote a site, but it takes some time and effort.

The best way to get conversions is in search engine marketing because you can target the actual keyword and ads for people who search. This is pretty easy and conversion rate is high, but it cost a lot for a lot of keywords (like insurance, cash advance, etc..)

You can find these at
[url=http://adwords.google.com]http://adwords.google.com[/url]
[url=http://adcenter.msn.com]http://adcenter.msn.com[/url]
[url=http://www.overture.com]http://www.overture.com[/url]


Second is contextual ads, this is a bit cheaper and you can place your ads in sites that are relevant to your topic. Usually the conversion rate is lower and it's cheaper than search engine marketing.

some sites
[url=http://www.adbrite.com]http://www.adbrite.com[/url]
[url=http://www.clicksor.com]http://www.clicksor.com[/url]
there are tons of them, just google it ;)_


Third is Email Marketing. This method have a very low conversion rate and can be very cheap. But there is too many things to take care of such as the mailing list, the canspam laws, spam filters, etc...

Fourth, Web Traffic (expire domain redirecting, pop ups, etc) This is the cheapest way to get traffic to the site, and usually conversion rate is 1 in 100000. Kinda like wasting money.

Fifth, banner placement on banners network (like double click). Banners usually get low traffic and the conversion rate vary from one campaign to another. It works best when the banner is placed in a highly trafficed site that is relevant to your site, but these sites are a bit pricey too.

==================================

Other than paid advertisement, you can do some of these stuff.

SEO, very important, but takes a lot of work and a long time. You'll need to optimize your site so it'll rank higher in search engines for your terms. When you get good placement, you'll get a lot of qualified traffic for free. A lot of details can be found at

[url=http://www.seochat.com]http://www.seochat.com[/url]

Posting in forums (like PHPFreaks)
Post and answer as many questions as you can in forums related to your site. Include you site link in the signature, people who read the forum and find your answers helpful will visit your site sometimes.

Submit your site to all directories you can find like yahoo directory and dmoz.org

I think this covers most online strategies, but you also can go offline and put a small ad in the paper or on the radio (if you got the extra cash)

[bobleny]

A real nice free effective way to promote your site is to create mini ads and full size ads. You know the ones on the right there 15X84, they super small and make some bigger ones. None of which should annoy people! Then you trade it. Affiliete program. You put someone else’s add on the home page and they put your add on the home page. Or maybe the full size adds on the link pages. Provides a lot of traffic!

You are going to generate the most traffic yourself! If I go to your site, will I stay? Why would I come back? Is there something for me to do? Is the content blane and boring? If the site looks outrageous! I might check back once in a while to see if you made it even cooler. So your site has to be useful or entertaining in some way.

Take for instance my site, [url=http://www.firemelt.net]www.firemelt.net[/url], go there check it out and tell me if it’s something you will come to often or even on a regular basis. No, you won’t. You might show up again if your bored and the link is handy. So my site wouldn’t thrive with people.
Now take [url=http://www.phpfreaks.com]www.phpfreaks.com[/url], go there, check it out, and tell me if your going to come back? Yes, almost every time. Why? Because of the content, you have something to do that interests you.

All I’m saying is that before you waist your breath advertising make sure people are going to go there and stay!

The name of the site is also important. You want to make sure the name is appropriate, easy to remember and stands out. I do a php search online and phpfreaks showed up. Hmmm, some one likes php. So I went there and was satisfied. If the name was say cheesewix I might not of went there.

firemelt, that’s a horrible name! I didn’t know fires melted???? firemelt has no insight as to what the site has. Where as phpfreaks, is clear and decisive.
[url=http://www.dictionary.com]Dictionary.com[/url], I know exactly what that is! Same with [url=http://www.yellowpages.com]yellowpages.com[/url]. They are decisive, clear and easy to remember.

So make sure the name of the site is , easy to remember, stands out, and is decisive.

This is also a good way to get yahoo to look over your site and add it.
[url=http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html]http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html[/url]

Simply using the appropriate meta tags will get your site on all major search engines. I didn't even use meta tags and it on yahoo and goggle at least.