Thursday, December 18, 2008

Online Web Site Marketing Strategies

By Stewart Woyo

It is finally finished. Your site is gorgeous, appealing and downright amazing. With your graphics and images painstakingly chosen, you just know you'll be rolling in the dough in no time flat. You submit your prize to the search engines and the directories and sit back to watch the money storm begin. You wait. And wait. And wait. Finally, a few weeks later, you know that a pretty site alone does not generate revenue by itself. The search engines aren't going to do the work for you, so you'll have to find a way to promote your site and get it in the public's eye. A solid strategy is the only way to get the traffic your website and business deserves.

Web site promotion methods are as varied as the online sites they promote. Each of them, used properly, can increase traffic to your site dramatically. In the interests of keeping this article short and sweet, I'll give you five to get you started.

1) Incentives are a great way to increase web traffic. Offer something for free, either a sample or a report. If you are advertising a product for sale, try giving away a free sample to anyone who visits the site. Offering a free report or free sample is another way for you to send some decent traffic to your website. This tactic is called "moving the free line". It is when you give the customer something for free, and in return, you incite an action from them, such as visiting your site.

2) If you are willing to spend money to make money, paying for traffic is a quick way to send visitors to your website. This also allows you to see if your website actually converts. Pay per click search engines and networks allow you to target visitors. With these, you only pay for visitors that actually land on your site. This very effective promotion method is best used if you have a specific targeted audience for your traffic.

3) Networking is probably the most cost-efficient way to send a lot of web traffic to your new site. Meeting and developing relationships with other marketers is a sure-fire way to send a bunch of free web traffic to your site, and may bring in valuable revenue. If you can arrange it correctly, forming a partnership with another business with a similar target market is a great way to swap buyer traffic. This is probably the best way to increase not only web traffic, but also revenue.

4) Content is king! Think about the sites you visit most often. They could be news sites, or weather sites. Maybe a site related to one of your hobbies. Why do you visit them often? Because each time you visit you read or see something new. Your content doesn't have to live on your website alone. Write articles and submit them to other websites and directories. Make sure they always reference, or better yet link back to your site. The person that was interested in your article will most likely be interested in your site. Before you know it you'll have created an endless stream of web viewers. Plus, as long as you update your contentthey'll keep coming back.

5) Marketing is often a visual concept, so online video creation and syndication is a powerful tool in your arsenal. Online video generated traffic is considered the most responsive traffic. Invest your time into making as many online videos as you can. These videos should be syndicated and submitted to more than a dozen of the web 2.0 video sites populating the internet. Not only will this method generate traffic from the viewers in the online video community, but it provides free search engine traffic as well due to the videos being ranked high in the search engines.

About the Author:

No comments: