Website Promotion Crash Course

Email This Page

Use a simple 'email this page' function on pages of interest, such as articles and special offers, to allow the easy sharing of your information. Not only is your message furthered by your visitors, it's endorsed by them!

Printer-Friendly Pages

Have a link to 'printer-friendly' versions of your important pages for the same reason. This is also great in an office environment as important pages can easily be duplicated and distributed to interested parties, possibly for reference during meetings.

Write for Complimentary Sites

Find sites that relate to your main focus and contribute an article or offer to write a regular 'column' in return for a link back to your site. They benefit from the content, and you benefit from the click throughs. Try to choose well trafficked sites of course.

Freebies!

Pens, T-shirts, mugs, books of matches, etc. These are all great ways of getting that URL out. You might even try free postcards like we do here in Denmark (called 'Go-Cards'). Keep a bunch of nicely printed, preferably funny or interesting cards with your address at the counter, and let people take them to send to their friends.

You can find some great resources on the subject of viral marketing at Wilsonweb, and don't forget SitePoint's Guerilla Marketing information.

Promotion: Going the Extra Mile

What more could you possibly do? If you have read this whole article I'm sure you're now aware that there is literally no end to what you can do to promote your company's Website. Just use your imagination.

Here are a few ideas for further inspiration.

Discussion Groups and Forums

If, due to the nature of your business, you're particularly knowledgeable on a given subject, try to find email discussions and online forums that relate to your topic. Make sure you have a 4 line signature at the bottom of your posts that includes your URL, and answer as many questions, and offer as much advice, as you can. You'll soon see a whole bunch of new visitors to your site.

A note of caution though: no one likes a spammer. Offer your advice for free and don't dot your emails/messages with links to your site unless the pages you link to actually answer the poster's question.

Create a Reciprocal Link Program

Make a page on your site full of external links to on topic sources of further and complimentary information. When you've done that, go through those sites and send a short, polite request to each of them that they add you to their list of links. You can read more on reciprocal links here.

Don't worry if they don't want to link to you, and certainly don't remove them from your list -- this is a nice way to add value to your site and demonstrates a certain degree of authority on a given subject.

The Limited Litter Approach

A private detective called Steelsun who's been known to lurk around in the darker areas of the SitePoint forums likes to leave a few of his business cards in elevators when visiting clients in office blocks. He also suggested leaving them in those 'win a free lunch' fish bowls. Moreover, he swears to have gained more than a couple of paying clients this way!

The ingenious Steelsun also says that leaving business cards inside books on relevant subjects at the public library works well. This novel approach just serves to demonstrate that it's not always how many people that see your site that counts, it's what kind of people. Whether you approve of these methods or not you've got to hand it to the man -- that's creativity!

Get Cracking!

Okay, that's it. I hope you've found some of these tips and tricks discussed in this article interesting and that you enjoy implementing them. Have fun!