How to Promote Your Website for Free
The best things in life are free. While that may not always be true, there are certainly a lot of great ways to promote your website for free. You just have to make sure you are persistent, consistent and diligent in searching for and implementing them.
One of the best ways to promote your website without spending a penny is to utilize social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace. If you have a personal account, make sure you place links to your business website. You can also mention it in bulletins and blog posts. Think about how many of your friends, colleagues and potential customers or clients are looking at those sites. Make sure you consistently remind and invite them to check out your business website.
Another way to promote your business website is to make sure that your business has a free listing on business networking sites like Merchant Circle and Sta.rtUp.Biz. These sites offer your business a free profile where you can post information about your business and can also post links to your own website. They also offer blog features where you can post business blogs. Make sure you include links to your website in your blog posts and in any other communication you use on these sites, even with other business owners. I recently found a fantastic supplier I wouldn't otherwise have known about because we were both members of one of these communities. I even have a link to my business website on my Helium profile (hint, hint).
Create an account for yourself on StumbleUpon and other social bookmarking sites. Then, make sure you link to your website. You'll want to also make sure that you share other useful sites because active members of these communities see blatant self-promotion as a form of spam and they hate it. But, your website is useful, isn't it? So, why not share it with the world. Just make sure you pick out some other favorites to share as well.
This is an old one and everyone should know about it by now, but if you're not utilizing it, you definitely should be. Put a link to your website in the signature line of all your email accounts. It goes out automatically every time you send or reply to an email and costs you nothing but a few minutes of your time to set up once.
Online classifieds and advertising resources abound. Some of them are worthless, but many, such as Craigslist, can be an advertising goldmine for your business. Make sure that any classified ad you post has a link to your website. Also, be careful to read and comply with the terms of use of these sites because the last thing you want is to be accused of spam. Speaking of spam, just don't do it. It's simply not worth the negative impact on the image of your business.
Link exchanges are available and I'm sure there are many opinions about them, but my experience with them has been that they do not offer the right kind of quality, targeted traffic you're looking for and actually only add unnecessary clutter to your website. My advice is to avoid these altogether unless you're looking only to beef up your traffic counts. A word of caution on link exchanges: some advertising programs like Google Adwords will penalize or even ban you for using certain types.
Another way to promote your website, while not free but definitely inexpensively, is to make sure that any piece of printed material you use for your business, from business cards to letterhead to shopping bags, has your website printed on it. Just like any other marketing message, the more people see your website address, the more likely they are to remember it.
The bottom line is to make sure that you are consistently getting your website address out there on a daily basis. Spend some time researching options for free advertising and promotion online and be diligent about following up on using them. A little creativity and innovation can go a long way as well. If you come up with an idea that you think will work, try it out. You might just be surprised to see your hit counter light up.