Promoting Your Business Website on the Internet

If you have a new website for your business and want to promote it, or you have a website you think is fantastic but the less-than-ideal traffic flow hardly makes it worth the cost of keeping it on the Internet, here are some tips for getting it into the public eye.

First, consider other websites that could benefit from linking to your own, and vice versa. Ask those websites if they would consider doing a "link exchange", where each of you will put a link on your website to the other's website. It's a good way to generate some additional traffic, and most of the people you approach will be happy to comply with your request. If there's a large number of websites you want to ask, consider sending out a single email to everyone; it saves you both time and energy, and unlike customer mailing lists it doesn't behoove you to personalize each and every email. Once you've put this link exchange into place, if you've chosen your affiliates well you should expect to see a slight increase of traffic onto your site.

Next, if you have time and a thick skin you may want to try finding an online message board or other forum with people interested in what you have to offer and post a link to your website. Many forums have rules about doing this, however, so you need to check with that board's administrator first to assure them your intentions are good and you aren't a spammer. Many administrators will appreciate you checking with them first, and some may even start a thread sanctioning your post to let visitors know you're legitimate. Most of the people who visit your site in this fashion won't ever return, but the increased exposure your website enjoys for free (and in such a short amount of time) is worth the effort.

One method that guarantees customer traffic is the lure of free information, otherwise called "tutorials". It requires a substantial amount of time and effort on your side, but once the tutorial is created, the positive response you generate will give you all that effort back tenfold. Create a free tutorial based on the subject of your business (i.e. "How To Make Your Company's Network More Effective" if you run a computer consulting company) and place it on your website or a website that hosts tutorials. The more places you submit your tutorial to-or paste a link to the tutorial hosted on your website-the more you increase your chances of getting seen. You could easily generate leads for months after your tutorial goes live, even if you don't do anything to your website during that time.

The last method to try is via writing articles on the Internet regarding your type of business. Submitting articles to companies like Associated Content or Digg.com with your name on them establishes you as an authority on your subject and sparks interest in others about the website you're promoting. The more thought-provoking or informative, the higher hits you achieve and the better your prospects for frequent/returning visitors to your website. Search engines such as Google especially love articles like these, and tailoring your articles for such engines (called SEO, or "search engine optimization") may increase your visibility in cyberspace; you want to keep keywords in mind, and sprinkle them throughout your article to generate more interest from the search engines.

Finding traffic for your website shouldn't be difficult, but many business owners get stuck when it comes to specifics about marketing and self-promotion on the Internet. With these tips in mind, customer traffic should greatly improve, benefiting both your web presence and your revenue.