Part IV - Promoting your Internet Business
Lesson 10: Drive traffic to your website
Lesson 10:
Understanding the chapter: This chapter contains most of the online
marketing techniques that prevail as of now and are listed as per their significance.
The most essential, the most preferred and the method that fetches instant result
is on the top of the list. For example, Search Engines are the most preferred
promotion tool online, but you will not be able to rank on top if you do not have
sufficient number of reciprocal links. So before submitting your Site URL to a
search engine, you must try and get as many reciprocal links as possible.
You may be having the greatest product in the world and your website may be
beautifully designed. But if no one knows where it is, all your efforts and money
have gone to drain. There are many ways of promoting your website and all the
techniques may not work for everyone.
To get optimal result, you need to choose one method at a time and test it
thoroughly. Closely watch each of the methods. Focus more on the methods that
bring in good results and (slow down or) drop the methods that do not fetch the
desired results.
Before getting into promotion of your website, the most important thing you
must do is to have your product and the website completely ready. Be fully
prepared assuming that you are going to get orders on the very first day (though
you might not).
Reciprocal links
After designing and hosting your website, the very first thing you must do is to
create a list of websites that are similar to yours, yet not your competitors. For
example, if your site sells mobile phones, you could include the websites that sell
accessories of mobile phones. Personally visit their websites to analyze and
understand their website. List out the web pages that you would like to link to.
Decide the appropriate pages in your website where you could provide links to
those websites.
Contact the webmasters (or the appropriate persons) of those websites and
inform them that you are interested in linking to their websites and request them to
provide reciprocal links from their website to yours.
If you provide good content in your website (or if they find your website worthy),
they will be more than happy to link to your website. Ultimately they are also going
to gain link popularity by having reciprocal link to your website.
If you want to approach a website that is already very prominent, you may first
link their website from your website and then request them a link to your website.
Link exchange or Banner exchange
This is another way of getting reciprocal links. There are some websites that
provide a platform for various website owners to meet and exchange their links or
banners. These websites are the directories that have a list of people who are
interested in exchanging their links with other websites.
You need to choose the right websites and exchange your link or banner with
theirs.
Participation in Newsgroups
If you are not aware, a newsgroup (or group or discussion forum) is the
meeting place for a group of people having similar interests or in a similar field or
from a particular region.
Usually people meet to exchange their views, to learn from experts in the
specific field, to find a solution to their problem, to help others in solving their
problems, to make new friends or simply to pass time.
If you have experience in your field (i.e. the field related to your product), you
can participate in the forums or groups and help others to solve their problems and
you can provide your contact details including a link to your website. If your site
provides free information related to the problem, you can ask them to visit your
website to solve their problem.
Web directories
Search engines go out in the web and save the data in their servers. Then
when you search for information, the related sites from the database are
displayed. Web directories are different from search engines. Web directories
provide the information that is already stored in their database. Some directories
allow you to directly add your entry and most of them take your details and add it
manually.
Many web directories do not charge to display your information and some
charge a nominal fee. You need to select the web directories with respect to your
market i.e. the target audience.
We personally recommend you to use all the free listings before you start
earning from your internet business.
Classified Ads on the Internet
Some websites display your ads on their website, some display them on their
memberssites and some send out the ads via emails. Few websites provide free
services and others charge. You are advised to study the hosting sites before you
really start spending money on the advertisements.
As we told earlier you must first advertise using free classified ads.
Banner advertisements
These are more or less same as classified ads. Unlike banner exchange
programs, you are charged for displaying the banners. The charges are usually
per thousand impressions.
