Build it and They will Come …… Not Exactly
10 Things You Can Do to Promote Your Business on the Web for Free or Low Cost
1. Use Your Primary Keyword in Your Domain, for example: www.keyword.com
Whether you purchase a separate domain (recommended), or host it on a blogging service, try to ensure that your URL contains the primary keyword you want to optimize for.
Know your keywords: These are the words people type into the search engine box to find things on the web.
See if what you think the keywords are is correct by using Google keyword tool http://www.googlekeywordtool.com/.
- Use it to find popular keywords related to your product or service.
- Use it to check your website or web page to see if it is projecting the keywords you want.
2. Use Your Primary Keyword in Your Meta Tags, Header Tags and the Title of Your Posts
If your primary keyword is "business blogging" make sure that the word business, or blogging, or both, appear in your headers (the H1 or H2 tags) as well as the title of each of your posts. Use bold to highlight them in paragraph title, sections…
Meta Tags are the title, description and keywords at the top of each web page's HTML or code. You may not have access to this if you are part of a larger site
3. Use Your Secondary Keywords in the Body of Your Post
If you want to get listed in the search engine index for secondary keywords, use them infrequently in the body of your post, and pepper your post titles or links with them using appropriate grammar.
Don't overdo thisor your posts will end up sounding unnatural and spammy to readers.
4. Use Your Keywords in the Anchor Text of Links
Keywords in links have more importance than simple text.
Use your primary and secondary keywords in the anchor text of links when linking to other websites or to other pages on your main site.
Link keywords where they naturally appear in the body text, but again, don't overdo it, or you'll end up with spammy looking pages.
Use in keywords in menu items.
5. Make Sure Search Engines Can Spider Your Web Page Easily
Set up your website so that the side navigation bar is present on all pages.
Make sure your archives and previous posts are accessible from all pages of your website so they get spidered easily.
6. Get Backlinks from Other Blogs or Websites
Links pointing to your website/ web page are essential to get your website high in the search engine listings. # of links pointing to your site = popularity and trust.
- * Submitting to Website Search Engines and Directories:To find directories do a Google search for the “topic of your website” directory and “submit to search engines”. Use free submission at sites like submit.com. Be sure to do the major ones Google( http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl ) , Bing ( http://www.bing.com/webmaster/SubmitSitePage.aspx ), Yahoo ( http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit/ )
- Link Exchanges: (something BBM members can do for each other!) Many similarly-themed websites are often willing to exchange links with other websites and form richly interlinked networks or communities.
- Write articles which include your bio and a link to your website. Good Places to post articles include: ehow.com, squidoo.com, goarticles.com, http://knol.google.com/. There are many do a search for ”free articles”. Become an advice columnist for Adviceandinfo.com
- Trackbacks: Blogs have trackbacks. You can also get links back to your blog using trackbacks. One of the disadvantages of using Blogger is that it does not automatically create trackback urls that others can use to link back to your posts.
- Comments: You can also get back links to your blog by posting legitimate comments in response to posts on other blogs.
7. Update Frequently – at least monthly, it is better to post articles bi-weekly or weekly.
There's no better food for search engine spiders than fresh content. Post and update frequently using all the rules outlined above and there's no reason why your blog will not get you top rankings.
8. Social Networking
Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Myspace, linkedin…..Set up a Facebook page for your business - it’s easy, intuitive, just like setting up a personal page. Writee about your business to customers.
Post regularly – use Social Oomph to schedule posts to twitter, Facebook, Google buzz, and blogs (It's low cost $20/month), or free, just for twitter
Submit your web pages to as many social bookmarking sites as you can go to http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/social-bookmarking-websites for top `15 sites
10. Promote Daily and Evaluate Monthly
Spend about 15-30 minutes a day growing your web presence
Monthly look at your website statistics, check to see how may visitors your had, which sites are sending you traffic, which pages are popular, which keywords are bring you traffic
If you can afford it, use a virtual assistant to help you do marketing and promotion, or use services like Social Oomph so you can schedule posts and better manage your time.
Results take 3-6 months – sometime sooner but usually that long before the search engines have your site indexed and begin sending your visitors.
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