Web Design & SEO For Small Businesses

Most people when they think of website promotion, they think about search engine marketing. But actually there are different ways to promote a website without depending on just search engines to get targeted traffic. All you need to do is thinking in a creative way, try innovative ideas and different way how to promote it. Online Marketing is not just all about SEO it is all about Creative Marketing. If you can do it right, there is more waiting for your website to come out of sandbox, link popularity and dependency on Search Engines.

I have put together 25 different ways on how to promote your website online absolutely free.

1) Web Content optimization – Content is key to any website. If you website is optimized for search engine it will definitely going to be noticed and started getting traffic and links.

2) Link Building – Links are so crucial for online visibility not only to the search engine eyes but link from good relevant sites can bring you targeted traffic and get noticed.

3) Article Distribution – Article syndication is one of the best and cheapest way to promote your website. There are hundreds of article directories out there to promote.

4) Online Press Releases -Online Press Release or press statement is a perfect way to attract media attention or publicity for products and services of your business.

5) Freebies – Giveaways and Freebies can attract a lot of attention as well as links from other websites. If you can create a unique tool or useful free product online it can get noticed and drive traffic to your site.

6) Unique Ad Creation – Pay Per Click Campaign is all about how you create a good ad, the more unique the better, A well written ad gets attention of the search engine visitors and will click on your ad.

7) List Building Email promotion – List building or email list building is a good way to bring visitors to your website, if you provide a newsletter subscription or free advice on your niche you have the right to ask for the visitors email address and name which can be used for future promotions.

Blogging – Blogging is a newest buzz word out there every business are getting into this new web2.0 marketing technique. Blog commonly knows as web logs where visitors can engage in a conversation.

9) Sponsored Reviewing – A review about your website is another way to promote your website or blog. There are several blogs and website that does this.

10) Commenting – Comments on review sites and blogs is a another way to do a promotion. If you comment and engage in a conversation in blogs which is relevant to your industry chances people will visit your website.

11) Social Media – This is the new craze among marketers Place like Facebook, Myspace, digg and stumbleupon can bring in tons of traffic if you promote it properly.

12) Online Contests – Facilitate and run contests on your website can get viral if people willing to participate in contest will spread the word through their website and blogs.

13) Forum Posting – This is the place where like minded people hang around, So to get noticed you need to engage in threads asking question and answers related to your topic.

14) Video Marketing – Videos are an effective way to promote your website. If you can broadcast relevant videos related to your industry visitors will folk to your website.

15) Affiliate Marketing – affiliate, reseller, and associate programs will allow your products and services to be listed on other websites which increases sales.

16) Mobile Media Marketing – can be mobile advertising, mobile search, mobile messaging, ring tones… and this is still in its early stages.

17) E-books Marketing – E-book marketing is a great way to achieve popularity of your website, If you can offer free tips and ideas via e-Books which can be downloaded for free it can create a viral effect.

18) Joint Venture - Same Target Customers and Partner Up With other online marketers who share the same niche you can sell your products to their list as well visa verse. But doing joint ventures you can get targeted traffic.

19) Banner Advertisements – One of the oldest forms of online advertisement to get noticed online still it works if you can create a eye-catching banner ad.

20) Sponsored Links – Search Engines hate this but still you can get a sponsored link weather it is do follow or no follow on high traffic relevant website it is a great way to promote a website.

21) Testimonials – A strong guarantee makes it safe for prospects to give you a try. A customer who is indecisive about your product or service may go ahead and give you a try if there’s no risk. The guarantee will push many customers “over the edge” when there’s doubt about making the purchase.

22) Podcasting – Podcasting your website content is another way to promote your website. Your digital media files which are distributed over the web would be downloaded into media players and listeners will follow your website.

23) Classified Ads – Classified ads online through Craigslist.com, usfreeads.com, Squidoo, Hubpages is another way to promote your website.

24) Local Search – If you website is local based then you can submit you Local Search databases like Google, Yahoo and MSN local as well as other local directories.

25) Interviews – Finally if you an expert in your niche you can offer interviews in different websites and blog which will give more exposure to your website.

Hope these techniques if implemented in your online marketing to-do list you can see success in your online venture and also I think this atleast motivates you to start. If you feel that there are other different ways please, feel free to comment.

As a blogger what you need most is the traffic and as well as readers. Getting your blog exposed is quite a daunting task. Getting traffic to your blog is a sure indicator about is internet popularity. No traffic means no one is reading your thoughts and ramblings of your blog. Since the whole purpose of your blog is that you’re writing are heard in that particular niche you are operating. If your blog is optimized for search engine it can bring quality traffic and readers to your blog, so understanding of SEO is very vital for a blogger.

There are several e-books available online free as well as paid to master yourself how to optimize your site or blog, but not all of them could bring solution to your traffic problem. Picking the right one is key Aaron Wall’s SEO Book is one of the oldest SEO book as well as several today’s SEO experts where once the readers of this e-book. As you all know Search Engine algorithm changes very often and applying these old techniques won’t work, but Aaron’s SEO book is updated on a regular basis adding the latest trends going on the SEO industry.

Some of the important SEO techniques a new blogger should implement and follow are:-

1) Keyword rich blog posts – Most of the blogger doesn’t utilize the use of keywords in their blog posts. People finding information through Search Engines use key phrases to find information, that is they type in keyword phrases related to their search .Suppose they are looking for pet food they type in like healthy cat food and if you blog posts title and article doesn’t have that particular keyword phrase then it won’t appear in the search engine result pages (SERPs) There are several tool out there online for free as well as paid. My favorite keywords tool still is the Google Keyword tool.

2) Submitting to blog directories – One of the major factors in SEO is links and one of the best way to get link to a blog is submitting to directories which will gain some exposure to your blog as well it helps in getting your blog indexed. If you type in Google for blog directories you can get a tons of blog directories both paid and free ones. Search Engine journal has a good list where you need to submit your blog.

3) Install SEO plug-ins – SEO Plug-in is vital success to your blog to get traffic from search engine. Blogging platform allows you to have different plug-ins which makes blog more user friendly. Among those plug-ins are Simple Tags plugin. which allows you to create unique title, description and meta keywords which is great for SEO.

4) Link popularity – As I said above that links are one of the important factor in search engine algorithm, so you need to build link to your blog from external sites which is relevant to your content.  Interlinking of blog posts is very important too. One of the best strategies to build links to your blog is to write interesting and attractive blog posts which will differently help you get backlinks to your blog. Vanessa Fox from http://www.vanessafoxnude.com  has an interesting article about how to build links.

5) Blog often – Blogging on a regular basis is key to success. If you are posting 3 blog posts a week make it consistence. Since Search Engine bots love fresh content and the whole idea about a blog is to creating fresh content. Also SEO is all about content to be successful online you need to produce more interesting and relevant content on a regular basis, so volume blogging a term I use often in my blog is a very important factor in blogging.

Search Engine Optimization is not a difficult task if done properly you blog can get tons of traffic through search engines.

Today there are several social media web2.0 websites, getting traffic just from Google, yahoo and MSN is not that important. But for affiliate marketing does it is going to help to convert into sales.

Social media traffic is good if it is relevant. But useless if it is not-relevant. It is a new trend among online marketers to catch on the social media traffic. Also social media web2.0 websites brings in tons of traffic. Will it be helpful? Since the traditional method of getting traffic is through search engine optimization which takes effort and time or PPC advertisements which also needs time to optimize your campaign but also need a lot of money to see the ROI.

Here are some of the best methods to get traffic for affiliate marketing which will convert into sales :-

1)     PPC Traffic – Traffic from paid placement will convert better if you have a good landing page, Ad copy and keywords. One of the reasons it converts better is because People are taken to the right page for what they want. You are driving traffic to the exact page for what the visitors search query was. If you are able to do a good job with PPC you can make a killing.

2)     Search Engine Optimization – Traffic through optimized web pages converts better too, since most of the visitors reaches the web pages through navigating within the site. Also most of the visitors coming through search engine traffic are cautious and try to find a good deal with good reviews and comparisons with other products. Still SEO optimized web pages are good for affiliate marketing the only worry is it takes time as well as you are at the mercy of the search engine algorithm.

3)     Email Marketing – If you are an affiliate marketer and needs traffic email marketing is a good option but the conversion rate is very poor, but it is fast and cheap. All you need to sell a person is their email ID and send the traffic to the desired product page through that email. As we all know Spam is a big issue in emails, and so many email providers have spam filters. Getting through this spam filters is impossible and automatically your email is send to junk folder. Still there are ways you can get conversion. Try good Email Marketing services like Aweber who have a double opt-in email capturing technology. You need to capture email information through a squeeze page and create an email list; with this you will be able to successful.

4)     Social Media Marketing – Social media converts are little pathetic since it is not targeted.  But if done carefully it will be a tremendous success. Since certain social media sites like Myspace and Facebook can target certain demographics and age group. This is quite interesting since no other traffic can do that.

5)     Blogs – Blogs traffic can convert but needs to have updated often and affiliate marketing through blogs can be better achieved through reviews of the products. One of the good things about blogs is it is indexed fast and the blogging platform allows people to see fresh content.

6)     Article Marketing – This Bum marketing technique is little old but still some people rely on this, because they found it to be successful all these years. To build an Affiliate empire through article marketing is hard and takes long time and but provide good advice and linking to the right product in the resource box can convert better. Article writers are always regarded as expert in that particular field so; it converts only if you can provide a solution to the visitors for what he is looking for.

7)     Offline Ads – Placing ads on newspaper and niche magazine can convert but it conversion is really bad. It takes a lot of money to advertise on magazines and newspapers. One of the best ways to do this strategy is to advertise on certain niche magazine for example on magazines, newsletters and newspapers which is relevant to your affiliate product.

Happy New Year to all my blog readers. I hope all blogger would be looking forward for 2008 to be successful. 2007 has brought blogging to a new level for blogger both as a platform to convey message as well as for making money. Earlier in the beginning of the year people have read blogs but they where not aware of what is a blog?

Blogging in 2008
Every day thousands of blogs are bone every day, but just few of them survive, because keeping it updated with regular content is hard for every blogger. Blogging for 2008 is all about determination to provide quality and unique content for hungry web visitors. As we all know Internet is a tool to provide information, so providing quality and fresh content is key. 2008 will see more blogger try to blog with their own style of writing. Each writer has a unique way to express his thoughts that makes each blogger stand out from the rest of the bloggers.

Lucrative opportunity for bloggers in 2008
Blogging is going to bring in a lot of lucrative opportunity for blogger in this year. Because writing is hard task and to get content for blogs weather it is a personal, business or corporate blog they need well written content. So opportunity arises for bloggers in each and every niche. If you are blogger and want to make money online in 2008 be prepared to write a lot. Opportunity will come from each and every corner.

RSS feeds and Plug ins
RSS and blog plug-ins will make blog more advantageous to bloggers to get readers and search engine traffic. Traffic key to any successful blog, bloggers need to find different methods in 2008 to get more traffic to their blogs. Social media is still in its infancy, it can create a huge traffic for bloggers in this new year. Quality content is key to get bookmarked and diggs.

My Prediction for 2008
2008 would be a great breakthrough for bloggers, some people predicted blogs would be gone and will loose its popularity, but they where wrong. Blogging is going to stay, at least for few more years. So get prepared start immediately before it get crowded.

Below is 10 different ways you can drive traffic to your website or blog.

1) Bookmark button one of the easiest form of getting traffic is have a bookmark button on your all your web pages this can get traffic to your website from repeated visitors.

2) Article series – Have an article series on your website this will lead to more traffic since visitors would be curious about see the next set of articles and will visit again.

3) Forums – Give your visitors a chance to meet and share information about your niche. User generated content is a good way to gather unique content as well as get repeated traffic since visitors would be interested in posting questions and thread on the discussion board.

4) Guest blogging – If you are able to write on popular blog in your niche to write guest article this can drive a lot of traffic from that blog to your website.

5) Review your write by other bloggers – If you pay for bloggers to review your site can drive a lot of traffic depending on the popularity of the blog.

6) Provide RSS feed- Really Simple Syndication is a better way to make your sites content available to others, Have a RSS button on your blog or website article content for people to subscribe your content, RSS buttons can generate subscribers to your RSS feed as well as repeated traffic.

7) Create a Toolbar- If you have the ability of create toolbars it can generate traffic. Companies like Google and Yahoo and others offer free toolbars this allows them to remind of their website when users see their toolbar. There are several programming tools out there some of them free to create customized toolbars for downloading and installing.

Press Releases – Issue press release on a regular basis about your website and latest news and developments going on about your website, like latest products and news this can have viral effect and lead to more traffic and links.

9) Email list – Some internet marketers say that money is in the list, this means if you have a list your can send them newsletter once a week or month about your website. There are several companies providing email marketing services I recommend Aweber which is affordable and offers reliable services.

10) Offer something for Free – Internet is all about free information, to gain traffic you can provide free information of downloadable products, which will bring in traffic, Free stuffs can be a simple free report about your niche or free download products which will lead to a purchase or lead.