Promote
Online Promotion
Here’s a quick overview of some of the tried and tested online methods you can use to build visitor numbers, or ‘traffic’ as it’s referred to in the business:
- Search engine optimisation (SEO). Search engines such as Google can send enormous amounts of traffic to your site, if you appear high in their rankings. That typically means appearing on the first page or two for your major search terms. SEO is a huge, constantly-changing topic that’s far too big and complex to go into here, but if you’re going to be running a business website it’s definitely worth investing some time in learning the basics.
- Forum postings. Join an online forum that deals with your area of business (there’ll be one!) and start posting contributions. Include a link and a short description of your business in the automatically-generated ‘signature strip’ that goes with each post (setting it up is easy on most forums). Remember to post meaningful, useful, friendly contributions. If you’re only posting to draw attention to yourself you’ll soon be written off as a ‘forum spammer’. Like any community, you’ll find you get as much out of it as you put in.
- Write a blog. Writing an interesting blog about your business is a great way of attracting regular visitors to your site and building relationships with contacts. Post comments on other blogs in your sector to attract readers. As with forum posts, make sure you’re saying something interesting and useful. Having a blog on your site is great for SEO, too, as search engines love sites that feature regularly-updated content. hostranet hosting accounts come with blog functionality at Intermediate and Professional levels.
- Pay-per-click advertising services, such as Google Adwords and the Yahoo Publisher Network. Buy ads on search engine results pages and targeted private websites based on your keywords and topic areas. You only pay when someone clicks your ad. It sounds like a great system, and it can be – but it’s also easy to overspend if you’re not careful. PPC is one of the top ways of driving business on the web, but make sure you do your research before jumping in!
- Stumble upon is a tricky service to explain in just a few words, but basically it sends broadly targeted visitors to your site based on how many Stumble upon users have ‘voted’ for it. You can rely on free, organic SU traffic or pay $25 per thousand visitors. Click here to visit Stumble upon and learn more.