6 Sure Fire Ways on How to Promote Your Website Effectively

With everyone using the internet and being on their mobile device 24/7, businesses can greatly benefit from having an online presence. This means that as a business owner you understand the effect of a well-engineered website. A well-marketed website enables you to successfully promote your products, brand or services in the digital realm – hence, meeting your business goals.

So how do you promote your website?

Well, in order to know if you are utilising your site to the fullest, you must ask yourself these following questions:

• Are you promoting your brand to the right market?
• Are you getting visits from your website?
• And if so, are you generating leads and making sales?

Below are the top reasons why businesses invest in a website:

• Gain Online Presence (Branding)
• Feature & Sell Products and/or Services (Sales)
• Inform or Educate (being considered an Authority in their Niche)
• Build Online Relationships (become a Reputable Brand that People Can Trust)

Given the statements above, you can see why it is crucial for you to take the necessary steps to ensure that you are doing your part when it comes to promoting your website.

Here are the basics on how to market your website effectively online:

Search Engine Marketing

As the name implies, Search Engine Marketing’s purpose is to create online visibility in search engines – specifically Google. A study shows that search engines still takes the lead compared to social and email marketing.

Depending on your budget, you may opt to get an SEO or PPC specialist to help you with this – or you may want to learn to do it yourself.

On-Page SEO

When it comes to making your website search-engine friendly, you can start by familiarising yourself with the basics when it comes to “On-Page SEO.”

Some of the things you would need to know about “On-Page SEO” is to do “keyword research.” This means generating the right keywords for your business.

Use the Google Keyword Tool when deciding on a relevant phrase or “keywords” that best represents your business, service or product.

Create the “Meta details” for your site. These should include the keywords you’ve chosen. We call these the “Meta title and description” and your top pages such as the Home, About, Service, Contact, etc. should contain these.

e.g. meta title: BPO Philippines | IT Outsourcing | Outsourced

e.g. meta description (from the site’s source code) – Outsourced is a leading IT outsourcing company that handles outsource staffing worldwide. As a premier IT BPO Philippines, we offer high quality service.

Remember that you need to consider a formula when it comes to the length of your meta title and description. Your Meta title should not exceed 60 characters (include your business name); and your Meta description should not exceed 160 characters (again, include your business name).

Doing internal-linking building within your site is a must – specifically within your blogs posts. The idea behind this, is that when you link a post to another relevant post, your site’s visitors tend to stay longer on your website because they find that your blog is full of information that they want and need – or simply find interesting. Therefore, your blog post must be of value to your audience, otherwise they will leave your site and this will reflect in your stats – which you can view in Google Analytics.

Off-Page SEO

There are numerous ways of acquiring backlinks, but it’s important for you to know that you must only focus on producing quality backlinks – otherwise you risk getting penalised by Google. Having said that, building links is a powerful way to ensure that your website ranks high on Google’s search engine.

Here are Some Ways on How to Promote a Website through Backlinks

• Check your competitor’s backlink history with tools such as ahrefs and check their metrics to ensure that you only grab the best links (remember, quality is crucial here).
• Guest posting is another great way to build quality links from authoritative sites
• Article syndication
• Infographics
• Local listings such as Google, Yahoo!, Bing and Yelp
• Niche Directories
• Verify Google+ Local Listing (formerly Google Places)

Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) is another great way to produce traffic for your site and create exposure for your products and/or services. If you can generate the best keywords for your niche, coupled with compelling Ads, the possibility of your ads getting clicked is increased.

Your Advertising Options Includes:

• Text Ads
• Banner Ads
• Native Ads

 Content Marketing

Content is King. How often do you hear this from online marketers?

If you feel that creating copies is not your strong suit, you can hire a great copywriter who can produce the kind of quality content that represents what you want to communicate to your audience or market.

You simply create an outline and state your objectives clearly so that your copywriter can effectively develop a content that not only delivers results but also contains your thoughts and ideas on specific topics (after all, you are the expert!).

Otherwise, you may also want to incorporate the skyscraper technique which gives you an idea as to what people are interested in reading when it comes to your industry. Because truth be told, although content plays a vital role when it comes to ranking in search engines like Google, quality will always out-rank quantity.

This means that you must invest time in creating your articles. Your posts must be informative, entertaining and interesting in nature so that people will read it, talk about it and share it. Once your content goes viral, you will not only place your brand in the forefront of your niche, but you’ll eventually build a name for yourself and your business – making you an authority in your field.

Plus, blogging regularly can really drive traffic to your website. Many of today’s online marketers will testify that most of your leads will be coming from this medium – which is not surprising given that content lasts forever while paid advertising will only be useful for as long as there is a budget for it.

And if your content is really good, other sites can opt to syndicate this. You can make this happen by reaching out to other site owners within your niche and have them feature your article in their website with the intention of luring their audience to your site. To do this, you simply include an author’s byline.

There is also the comment section of your blog which I highly recommend you use. This is where people can leave comments and ask questions about your business and/or products. This is an effective way for businesses to build relationships with current and potential customers – in addition to interacting with people online and getting more site visits.

Don’t Forget To Apply The Following To Further Enhance Your Blog Post:

• Use long-tail keywords
• Use similar keywords within the content
• Use images, gifs, infographics, videos
• Include links from authoritative sites
• Link to relevant articles in your blog

Guest Blogging

As mentioned earlier, a great way to build backlinks and to increase site visits is to do outreach to authoritative websites that are related to your niche. You simply pitch some topics and ask if you can do some guests postings for them. Building relationships with the site owners and their audience is a sure-fire way to get the right leads for your niche.

Again, you may opt to do this yourself, hire a copywriter or get some people from your team to write about topics that are of value to your market.

Social Media Marketing

The power and influence of social media is simply undeniable!

You’ve seen influencers and celebrities getting paid more and getting chosen for projects over their contemporaries simply from the number of followers they have online.

The magic or appeal of social media is how interactive it can be. Engagement is key here.

It’s why social media icons and share buttons are a staple on many of today’s websites. This allows people to follow their favourite brands as well as the businesses that they patronise.

Is it any wonder why it has become an advertising platform for many of today’s popular social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat, LinkedIn, etc.? It’s that effective!

You can read more about this in our previous article on SEO VS SMM: The Online Traffic Showdown.

This brings us to the conclusion as to why businesses rack their brains out in coming up with fun and creative ways to lure people to their site while promoting their brand, products and services through contests, polls, surveys and giveaways. This is a very good way of leveraging the power of social media. Oh, and let’s not forget to exploit the power of a Hashtag (#) when doing any of these popular methods.

Now if you’re reluctant to spend on social, you can choose to utilise this medium by incorporating an editorial calendar in order to capitalise on your SEO and content marketing efforts so that it doesn’t go to waste.

Infographics

It’s a fact that visual content gets shared more and infographics are no exception.

Not only are these informative in nature but also much shorter compared to written content – not to mention more visually appealing and interesting.

If you’re not adept in creating visuals, then you may hire and conceptualise with a graphic designer. Otherwise, an alternative would be to use Visual.ly.

How to market a website using infographics: Below are some places where you can share your Infographics:

• Blogs
• Directories
• Document Sharing Sites
• Email
• Outreach (blogs and sites of similar niche)
• Press Release Distribution
• Social Media

Email Marketing

In this digital age, the assumption is that everyone has an email that they check regularly.

Therefore, I cannot stress the importance of building an email list when you start your business. This is a crucial component in promoting your website – and anything that has to do with your business.

Email marketing is viewed as a more personal approach towards your target market – which is why, in terms of customer acquisition, it wins hands down over social.

Not only is it inexpensive, easy and effective, you can also measure its performance and customise it – so don’t be afraid to get creative with your email newsletter campaigns.

So there you have it. Your top six (6) ways on how to promote a website on the World Wide Web.

By incorporating these consistently in your marketing routine, you’ll see your traffic increase, your social network expand and grow, as well as gaining visibility in search engines while attaining brand recognition within your industry.

So what are you waiting for… go ahead and start promoting your website using these sure fire methods that’ll bring more exposure and revenue to your brand and company.