How Do You Promote Your Business?

Before we get into the nitty-gritty of getting traffic, let me first dispel this common myth about an online business. And that is, if you want traffic to come to your site, you have to work. Too many people who begin an online business think that they can do a little work and people will show up at their site, click on their links, and they will be in the money. Granted, that's a nice concept, but without the work, it won't happen.

I don't want to discourage you, but be aware that Google usually puts you (website) in the sandbox for 6 months, just to get the flavor and legitimacy of your site. But that doesn't mean that you should do nothing during that time. It means that you can position yourself by beginning by doing some free methods of promotion that are available to you.

How Do I Get Traffic To Your Website

How do I get traffic to my website? A question that is always on any webmaster's or blogger's mind. As I said earlier,  the consistent methods of getting traffic for me has been through, SEO, PPC and linking. I'll discuss linking, SEO, and PPC and then delve a little more into the other methods of getting traffic.I also delve into some methods that may cause you some problems if you're not careful.


Linking

First, linking can be paid or free.  Below you will find some of the free methods of getting links.

Article Writing

Article writing is a good way to get one-way links and free traffic to your website. One important factor about writing articles is making sure that you create an article that is targeted toward your website and/or web page that you want to promote. Why? When you submit your articles to the free article directories you want the right type of website picking you up. For example, if you have a website on computers, you really don't want a website whose main topic is dogs to link to you. Though the search engines will count the link, it will be counted in the area of less importance. If your article is targeted correctly it will reach the right websites and pull up your page popularity ranking. 

Make sure you have a quality resource box at the end of your article. This is your calling call, or ad to bring people to your site.

As I mentioned earlier, article writing/marketing is a good way to get one-way links. And it's free, except for your labor. 

Contribute to A Forum

You can contribute helpful information to a forum, and leave your website signature or blog signature at the end of the post-if allowed. Be sure and follow the forum "etiquette" rules. You do not want to start off on the wrong foot, or be banned before you even begin. In other words- forums will not tolerate blatant advertising, just the sharing of information. 

My advice is simple, when you first become a member of a forum it is wise to just read and get the feel for the forum's environment. After you become comfortable with the forum etiquette,  it's time to contribute helpful information to its participants.

Once you have gained the trust of fellow forum members, you will gain increased credibility and eventually draw quality, targeted traffic to your site. However, do not think that people will suddenly be streaming to your site. It's not going to happen. This is a slow process, but it will bring traffic to your site slowly.

Ezine Advertising

This is a very good method of advertising your product, service or website. Some allow you to advertise for free, while others will ask for a fee to place your ad in their ezine. What is important here is that you choose the ezine that fits your target market.

If you decide to go with a paid submission to an ezine-know what the fine print says, and choose an ezine that has exposure to at least 500 subscribers. Less than that, will not benefit you at all. Remember marketing is a numbers game.



Pay-Per-Click

If you have the money to invest in Google Adwords or Yahoo Search or some of the other search engines pay-per-click programs, you can make some money. Here you create an ad or ads relevant to your affiliate program, and place a bid on the keywords you select. 

Working with PPC is not for the faint or heart. If you don't know what you are doing, you can lose your budget in short order.  You have to experiment with your ads, do some research and at least allow yourself a $100 budget before getting your feet wet.

In addition, I would advise that you read your affiliate programs rules, as well as, the rules of Google Adwords before jumping into the pay-per-click arena.  The idea with pay-per-click is that you pay only when the individual clicks on your ad. Check out my review on  Perry Marshall's ebook on Google Adwords or if you're just want an idea of how involved Google Adwords is check out my Google Adwords Basics page.


Pay-Per-Click Sites To Consider

1. 7Search
2. Google Adwords
3. Miva (formerly FindWhat)
4. Yahoo
5. Ask

SEO 

Search Engine Optimization is optimization of your web pages to gain page rank and position within the search engines. If done right, you can  pull people to your website by it relevancy.  If you're new to the Internet and Internet Marketing you may find SEO to be a little overwhelming. Take your time, learn,  and you'll eventually reap great rewards-traffic. Don't be afraid to make mistakes, that is part of the learning process. And....

SEO, whether some want to admit it or not, compliments Pay-Per-Click advertising and Adsense. Why? The common denominator is "keywords".



Other Methods Of Marketing


Viral Marketing

Create an ebook and give it away for free. Of course, you should supply appropriate links to the affiliate services and products that is relevant to the content you are writing about. And you should also encourage others to download the ebook, as well as, put the free ebook on their site.


Podcasting

Podcasting is another avenue in which you can venture out into advertising. If you get a following, you'll find that they will search you out-be it to your blog or your website. 

Email Marketing

Email Marketing is still a viable way to market, however, with all the rules that apply now, it is wise that you take the time to build your own email list. You can collect names and email addresses through an opt-in option for your newsletter, blog or product.

After you have developed a list, you will soon need the help of an autoresponder. An autoresponder can help to automate the process if you have a large list. If you have a small list-you can do it manually or possibly go with a free autoresponder. However, be aware, with a free autoresponder your readers will get the privilege of getting ads from the autoresponder service that gives you the opportunity to partake in the free service.

There are two types of autoresponders-online and stand-alone. Usually the online autoresponder guides you step-by-step in setting up your autoresponder.

A stand-alone relies exclusively on your knowledge.



Video

As you know, video is the big "in" thing on the Internet. In fact, 50% of traffic is through video, with YouTube taking in 12.5% of the traffic. 

Social Media Marketing

1) Squidoo - offers you another way to get you, your business or your products before the masses.
2) Social Media Marketing- Before partaking in this area, be sure to do your research. I would suggest participating in the chosen Social Media's forum before you ever start trying to market yourself, your brand or website. That way you have the favor of the community, you know what and how to market appropriately within their community. Note that there are many social media news networks, some are niche-based, others general-based.

Examples of Social Networks are:
Metafilter
Digg
Shoutwire
Newsvine
Sphinn
Tweako
Twitter
StumbleUpon
Facebook

Several notes: 1) If you do it right you can get a lot of traffic-but for the short term. As to return visits-maybe, maybe not-this is still a rather new medium.


Promotion Methods That Could Cause Problems

There are many different ways to promote your products, your services and website, as well as, methods that you should avoid. I'll give you a little explanation of each. As you will readily note, not all methods are created equal -- and are dependent upon the product, service or program you are promoting:


Submit to FFA Pages

The effectiveness of FFA, in my opinion, is rather useless if you are wanting to get people to actually read your listing. And, since Google has been looking closer at what the sites are linking too, you may want to choose a different promotional method for your site. FFA (Free For All) are link directories that are usually discounted by the search engines, and may cause you more harm than good.


Safelists

A safelist is a method of email advertising-it can be a free safelist or a paid safelist.  Once you join the safe list, you can send out emails to the members that have joined. In return, you also, must receive their emails. This method helps eliminate the fear of being called a spammer, because everyone on the list has agreed to accept your email. Please note, that some safelists can have thousands of members. So if you are thinking about joining a safelist, I would advice creating a yahoo email or gmail account because you will be inundated with emails.

One final note, safelists have been around for a long time. Some say they are becoming obsolete, others say not so fast. So, I'll leave that up to you.

Note: This is my personal opinion-I feel safelists offer a great method of filling up your email box rather quickly. But with minimal results.


Submit to Link Farms

Many people have placed their links into link farms. Link Farms were a good thing in the "good old days". But those days are gone. You will no longer get good rankings from the search engines. Instead, you may see your page ranking fall or your page removed from the search engines Index. Ouch!


Paid Linking-Follow the Google Rules

Linking has it's pluses and minuses, as you will soon see. Paying for links on a high ranking site, at one time, was a viable way to increase page rank.

However, since Google has been coming down hard on paid links-whether you were the site receiving or the site paying for the link-you should realize that you could see a lowering of rank for your web page or site. My advice, you should be aware of the Google rules before you make a decision to pay for links, it could cost you your business if Google decides you have crossed the line.


Rules To Follow If you Put A Paid Link On Your Site

1. redirect through URL that is blocked by your robots.txt file
2. Use 302 redirect through URL
3. Apply rel-"nofollow" attribute

Though these rules have caused a stir, the bottom line is this: Do you want to be indexed or not?  Or, if you don't follow the rules,  do you want to be de-listed from Google after you have put a lot of sweat and tears in your online business?. the decision is yours.