We’re all familiar with the term ‘one hit wonder’, and many artists or groups have had huge success with a single song, then subsequently nosedived into commercial oblivion with their following tracks.
The lifecycle of a website can be disturbingly similar, at least to a point. There’s a kind of gravitational force which acts on all websites, pulling them down the search engine rankings as they’re replaced with newer, fresher, more successfully promoted sites.
If you want to defy this natural force, you’ll need a promotional plan, many clever tricks, and a concerted effort from your web development team. With that in mind, here’s a list of 20 ways in which you can promote your website, and keep it as visible as possible.
1. Be SEO smart
Most of the time, your website will be found via a search engine, and the vast majority of folks out there are using Google for search duties. And where your site is placed in terms of the rankings in any given search is heavily influenced by how Google matches the words and phrases that people are using to search.
Consider altering the site’s content to include popular phrases that people are searching for, and find the magic words that you need using the Google AdWord keyword planner. This process – although there’s a lot more to it – is known as SEO, which stands for Search Engine Optimization.
2. Get reciprocal
The more links that external websites have to your site, and the more links you make to them, will be seen by search engines as a good reason to elevate your importance as a web location.
Therefore if you have commercial relationships, you can strengthen those by exchanging links and building a flow of traffic between your mutual sites. This is especially useful if you are part of a bigger conglomerate, where the group site can link to all the subsidiaries without the need for permissions.
3. Facebook ads
If you want to sell door-to-door, then you need to turn up when people are at home, and the web equivalent of this is catching them on social media. Despite some recent flattening of growth, many millions of people still use Facebook, and this platform has the advantage that you can target users of a specific age or gender, those with certain interests, or those who follow particular brands or celebrities.
4. Connect with influencers
Perhaps you can’t get an A-list star to blog about your products or services, but maybe you could find a blogger who has a dedicated following that they can influence.
Compared with celebrity endorsements, the costs will be minimal, and some might even cover a product for a free sample if asked.
5. Go beyond Google
Google may be the search giant of the world, but not everyone uses it. For example, in China, more surfers use Baidu. Submitting to all those other search engines aside from Google and Bing is a worthwhile exercise, especially if you do business in locations outside of the US and Europe.
Instead of submitting to each engine in turn, use a tool like Submit Express to hit a large number in a single operation.
6. Use YouTube
The right video on YouTube can rapidly attract tens of thousands of views, and can subsequently generate links in Facebook and Twitter. Even if it’s just a recording of a seminar speech or something made to promote a new product line, it’s all worth placing on YouTube to create interest and attract visitors to your website.
7. Be adaptable
Tracking and analyzing information from your website will tell you where visitors typically enter, and the pages they most often access. You can then concentrate on enhancing the more popular areas of your site – and deprioritize the sections which see less traffic – and that should hopefully see your visitor count grow. Not only that, but those who do visit will be more likely to come back, elevating your status with search engines.
8. Use Reddit
Modestly labelled as the ‘front page of the internet’, any news story or press release from your company should be put on here, with links to bring people back to your site.
However, be advised that Reddit users can take a dislike to anything perceived as overtly corporate, so be careful about how you position content and interact with the denizens of the site.
9. Be a community player
As a representative for your business, you might want to join appropriate Facebook and Google+ groups, so that you can tap into what they’re thinking, and how they react to product launches and promotions.
10. Be professional
If you post images on your website or social media, then make sure they’re really good quality ones, and even consider having them link to the full resolution original.
The same goes for video footage. Avoid portrait recordings made by a phone with no image stabilization, at the very least.
11. Answer questions
People love online experts who can answer questions, so be one of them. There are numerous question-and-answer forums run by the likes of Quora, Yahoo, and so on, which are all free to join.
You might also consider adding a question page to your site. You could then take the best answers, and use them to construct a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions).
source: Tech Radar
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