Promoting your business’s website Online

Many people ask me. ‘how do I promote my business’s website online?’. Of course there’s never one single answer to this question. In a nutshell when it comes to your website content is king and you should always keep that in mind when you are brainstorming and putting all of your content together that there should always be a wealth of information within your website. Its also about getting links and knowing the targeted area you are in or looking to be in.

Did you ever see that commercial on Sunday afternoon or late at night where the guy is living in the house of his dreams in Hawaii and he wants you to join him in his rich successful world? He tells you how easy it is going to be and how he wants you to be a part of it and you are mesmerized for a while but eventually come back to reality. Many people believe this is how it is on the internet. They believe you put up a website and the masses will come. Unfortunately this is not true! Just like in the real world you have to be smart, work hard and be persistent. If you put up a website and think it will be live a never ending vending machine you will most likely fail.

Promoting your website is much like marketing and promoting in the real world. You need to make friends and be a master networker to be successful. The more people you know and the more people that know you the better off you are going to be. What does this mean? Basically you want to always know or have seen many of the websites in your niche area so that you are aware of what your competition is doing, how many people are doing the same thing you are doing and how they are doing it. In short you always want to know your surroundings.

Links, Links, Links
Getting links is just as important as the content that exists within your website. You could have the most beautiful website in the world but if no one knows about it then it is worth nothing. Where do you get links from? There are many places and it can also greatly depend on what type of website you have or the areas you are looking for links. First you want to cover the basics such as online yellow page listings and then work your way into more relevant areas of where you feel getting links would be best.

Below is a list of ideas/areas where you can get links:

• Online Yellow Pages and Online business directories
• Local listings like Google Maps, Yahoo Maps & MSN Maps
• Other business websites that you know or work with
• Niche Directories close to your area of business
• Resources, Blogs and News websites with relevant information to your business
• Social Networking websites

Blogs and CMS systems
Yes blogs and cms systems are great for promoting your website because they allow you to post articles and pages of information on your website in addition to the pages that already exist. Whats great about these types of systems is that many of them have rss feeds which broadcast your feeds onto the internet and onto other websites. Don’t know what to blog about? Use your past experiences to talk about stories of your past customers and how your services helped them. Talk about problems and solutions or how your product may have changed or helped a business. Keep in mind that if you do setup a blog its a good idea to make posts often. Blogs can get ‘stale’ if you make one post and just leave it there.

Social Networking Sites
This is an easy place to get links but keep in mind that it may not be ‘relevant’ to what your products or services may be.

Video Sites like YouTube
If you already have a video this can be a great place to add your video and put links back to your website. People do search for videos just like they search for things on the search engines and videos can have a much bigger impact than any website. So bottom line if you have a video take advantage of video websites.