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10 Best Places to Promote Your Site
Website promotion is an art. As a webmaster, I spend most of my time
promoting my sites. Without a big budget you cannot promote a site
overnight. Most webmasters don't have a big budget. So, they have
to do it the hard way.
- Keep promoting it day in and day out.
- Try different options.
- Use trial and error to determine what works.
- Spend countless hours to arrive at good places to promote the site.
Over the years I have promoted my sites at hundreds, if not
thousands, of different places online, some good, some not so good. I
want to share with you the 10 best places to promote your site so
that you won't spend as many hours as I have in finding them.
Before You Start Promoting Your Site
Be sure to create and include Meta tags on every page. Also, don't
use all of the free submit utilities on the same day since many of them
submit to the same search engines. Wait at least one week before
you use the next utility. You may want to open an email account on
hotmail or another of the free email services and use that email
address if you plan to submit to free for all links since many send a
confirmation email, or add you to a mailing list.
The Big Ten
1. Self-Promotion: This is the best place to start promoting your site.
And best of all it is free to use. However, for only $10, you can have
your data stored for one year so that you can promote your site over
and over without retyping the information. Self-promotion allows you
to promote your site to over 400 different search engines, indexes,
business directories, international indexes, directories and awards.
2. Jim Tools: This is another free utility that promotes your site to 400
search engines and indexes and over 200 Free-For-All (FFA) links
pages. Do not use Self-Promotion and Jim Tools in the same week
since many of the search engines and indices are same. Compared to
Self-Promotion, Jim Tools takes a lot less time to submit to 400 search
engines and indexes.
The two free utilities above let you submit one URL to 400 different
search engines and indices at a time. However, in some cases
submitting your home page URL alone isn't enough. You have to "deep
submit" your site. Deep submit is nothing more than submitting each
and every page of your site. If you have 100 pages in your site, then
you must use the above free, utilities 100 times to submit all of them.
(Deep submission is possible with Self-Promotion's paid service.) But
don't worry. You can use the following deep submit utilities to submit
multiple URLs at the same time.
3. Associate-it Free Submit: This free utility lets you submit all the
pages in your site at one time to 24 major search engines. All the
submissions are done in real time, you can watch the submission
results as they happen. Depending on the speed of your Internet
connection and the number of different pages you are submitting, this
may take any where between three minutes to a few hours. The good
thing is that you can start the submission and then surf the Net as
usual in a different browser window.
4. The Promoter: This is similar to Associate-it Free Submit, but it will
submit multiple URLs to 800 search engines, indices, FFA pages,
classifieds, etc. at one time. This works much like Associate-it Free
Submit. You can start the submission and then browse the Net in a
different window. The Promoter also notifies you when it's time to
resubmit your site.
5. Announce-it USA: One more free utility that submits multiple URLs
to 300 search engines, indices, FFA links, classifieds, etc. at one time.
This works like Associate-it Free Submit and The Promoter. You can
start the submission and then surf the Net in a different browser
window.
By using the five utilities above, you have submitted your site to most
of the search engines and indices. It may take anywhere between
three weeks to six months for your site to be indexed.
6. Open Directory: Recently, when Netscape purchased NewHoo, the
Open Directory, I was quick to submit my site to be included. The only
complaint I have with the Open Directory Project is that the editor in
the category you are trying to submit your site to may be your
competitor and may try to list your site lower in the list. But you can
submit your site to three or four different categories if it belongs.
Recently, Lycos and HotBot adopted the Open Directory, so getting
listed with the Open Directory may bring you a lot of traffic.
7. Direct Hit: A lot of search engines like HotBot, MSN and others
have recently adopted the Direct Hit search technology. Getting listed
with Direct Hit may also bring in considerable amount of traffic, but
your site has to be somewhat popular.
8. GoTo.com: Even though it is not free, GoTo.com can bring targeted
traffic to your site at a low cost. To get listed with GoTo.com you
have to open an account with a minimum of $25, then bid on
keywords that you would like to target. The minimum bid for each
keyword is $0.01. I would recommend bidding $0.01 on 500-1000
keywords related to your site. You can bid high on 5-10 keywords
that are really important to your site and bid $0.01 on others.
To generate 500-1000 keywords related to your site, use Jim Tools
keyword generator at http://www.jimtools.com. If you type in two or
three keywords related to your site, the keyword generator searches
the web for similar sites and compiles list of keywords by reading their
Meta tags. Usually, if you bid on 1000 keywords, you will get between
75-100 hits a day.
9. Yahoo!: Even though getting listed on Yahoo is a pain and it may
take up to six months, most sites get the majority of their traffic from
Yahoo!. Also try submitting to Yahoo! Local or International if your
site fits. If you submitted your site to Yahoo! and nothing happened
for four or five weeks, try submitting again in the same category, or
maybe in a different category. You can get good tips on how to get
listed on Yahoo! at search engine forums at
http://www.searchengineforums.com. Do what ever you have to do,
but get listed on Yahoo!.
10. PRweb: Press releases are one of the most effective ways to
generate traffic to your site. If written well, they can be very
effective. Over 90 percent of press releases are sent out by the
companies or sites trying to generate traffic or publicity. Write a press
release and distribute it free of cost using Prweb.
If you would like to add other good places to promote a website to
this list, please send them to me. I will try to add them.
Copyright © Riyaj Shaik, President & CEO of Associate-it.com, the ultimate directory of affiliate programs. Their fully searchable and categorized database includes reviews, ratings and descriptions of over 1,100 affiliate
programs. You can find tons of free information relating to affiliate programs and website promotion at Associate-it.com. Reprinted with permission. (My ParenTime note: we have not verified the links in this article, and make no guarantees to their successes.)
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