How to Market your Web Site
Ok, so you finally have your own web site or blog, where do you go from here. The most important thing you can do is provide interesting, unique content for your readers. At first this seems like a lonely task, you are writing all this excellent content, devoting countless hours to the task, only to have almost no visitors. Well my advice to you is keep your nose to the grind stone and keep writing quality, original content that other people would want to read. More and more people will come as they slowly find your web site and if you have interesting, well written content, they will return.
So you have the hard part done, you have a web site and or a blog on the internet and it contains some useful unique content, now its time to start your web marketing campaign. If you have a web site and not a blog, then start a blog, Blogger and Wordpress are the most common, Wordpress has more peer respect, but I like the ease of use of Blogger.
Make your blog a relevant theme to your web site and use your blog to link back to (market) your web site. Just be careful to never use the same content on your blog that is on your web site. Submit your blog to Feedburner and make sure it has a RSS feed. After each new post submit your blog to a pinging service like Ping-0-matic and Ping Goat. Also submit your blog and web site to the main directories like:
Technorati
Blog Catalog
Blogarama
Blogwise
Globe of Blogs
Bloggernity
Bloghop
Bloghub
Blog Universe
Submit your web site URL to Google
ExactSeek - Add your URl
Submit URL to Yahoo
MSN URL Submission
The next step is to get links pointing back to your site and blog. This is very important. I am not going to cover social book marking here except to say it is a good idea to visit a lot of forums that are relevant to your site and make posts there linking back to your web site and blog, just dont spam, first get accepted into the forum with a few valid posts. One of the best ways to get your web site added to the Social Bookmark world is to down load this Socializer software into your blog or web page. My favorite social bookmarking sites are StumbleUpon and del.icio.us, you have to install their tool bar, but it is well worth it. You can also use Squiddo, where you can build your own lens, which is like a mini web site, which you can use to promote your web site. Plus dont forget about Twitter, don't use it (Twitter) just to promote your web site, don't be a spammer, but make your Tweets fun, follow others, retweet other good Tweets and provide interesting Tweets to your followers.
If you are going to have others post to your blog or write for you, make sure and establish writing guidelines so there is standardization on your web site and blog.
Reciprocal linking has gotten a bad rap, but for new web sites it is a great way to bring in some traffic and visibility to your site. Just go to Google and type in similar key words that you are using and Google will show you the best web sites to get a link from. Make sure the site is relevant to your topic and, obviously, that they have a links Resource page. It is time consuming and sometimes frustrating as most established sites wont want to give you a link, just be persistent. The best way to do this is to first add their link to your links page, then send their web master a personal e-mail complimenting his site and then asking him for a link back. Just check your own links page frequently to make sure that you dont have any dead links and after a month or so, remove the links from the web sites that just refused to give you a link back.
The most important, effective, but most expensive procedure is to get listed in prominent paid directories. You are not really paying to be listed in the directory (wink wink), you are paying for someone to review your web site, and if it is a quality web site that would provide something interesting and original to its potential visitors, then you will probably be accepted. There are literally thousands of directories out there, so which ones are worthwhile. That is a tough question and if you ask twenty so called experts you would get about 15 different answers. Why, because those experts usually own the directories or they have friends who own them, so getting an honest answer is difficult. That is where I come in, I dont have any vested interests in any directories and I have been studying this dilemma for the last six months. I have tested these links and have found that Gooogle gives these directories a lot of respect.
I am going to pretend you are on a strict budget and want to get the most bang for your buck, so I will only list the directories that provide excellent value. Take your time and get listed in the below directories over the course of a few months and vary your description for each listing. Here are some good tips when evaluating a directory.
Start from DMOZ and work your way down the list.
http://www.romow.com/Sports/American-Football/
http://www.2yi.net/sports/american-football/
http://www.1linkdirectory.com/
http://www.excellentguide.com/
http://www.cascandra.com/index.html
http://www.01webdirectory.com/
http://www.asimpledirectory.com/
Dont put a bunch of advertisement on your site or blog right away, first get established. There is nothing that turns people off faster than a brand new site all covered with ads. So there you have it, a lot of work, but be patient and if you follow the above guidelines after about six months you should start seeing a lot of traffic from Google.