Posted by kristinewirth on August 19
Nothing matters more than promoting your website if you’re looking to get more traffic. Especially if that site is brand new. It takes a lot of hard work and effort on your part to get a site up and operating and as soon as it is, you’ll also want to plan as to how you can get that site seen by as many people as possible without having it cost you an arm and a leg.
Thankfully, you don’t need a small fortune to start marketing your site; there are lots of free ways to get yourself started online and here’s just a handful of them to help get you started.
Pingbacks for your blog
If you run a WordPress blog on your site, did you know that if you link to another WordPress blog within a post you make on your own site, the site owner of the website you are linking to will automatically get notified that someone has linked to them?
This is known as a pingback and it’s very likely that the owner of the blog you’ve linked to will return the favor. This is a great way to get links to your site from associated blogs within your area of expertise.
Write a Free e-book & Give it Away
As a way to get more people to view your website, take some of the content you’ve already added to your website, re-write them a lttle bit and then compile it into a PDF e-book.
This not only gives people who visit your site a free gift just for visiting but will also give you the opportunity to showcase your expertise on a certain topic.
When you create your PDF e-book (and you can do so for free using Open Office), don’t forget to add links back to your website within the footers of the book.
Once you’ve done that, you can add this free e-book to your own site to entice people to sign up to your mailing list, or you can simply give that book away to free e-book sites that are already getting plenty of traffic such as:
Publish Articles
If you’ve been online for any amount of time, you’ll already know that writing articles is one tried and true approach to getting links and website traffic. This is because it works. Write articles that center around your area of expertise and submit them to well-known and popular online article directories.
When you write your short biography of yourself that’s included with all of your articles, remember to use the keywords and phrases that you want to rank well for within your anchor text. And also remember to link to other pages within your site as well, not just your home page.
It’s also important to note that not all article directories are created equal. There are a few standouts that will get you the most traffic to your site.
These are:
Answer Questions
There are lots of sites that have popped up online over the past couple of years that let anyone at all ask a question about any topic whatsoever. Since these websites are typically organized by category, it’s relatively easy to find a question within your area of expertise that you can answer. This answer can also include a link back to your website.
Some of the more popular sites that fall into this category are:
Online Classifieds
Online classifieds are yet another way to get more visitors to your site. Some of these websites are free and others require you to pay a minimal charge. In either case, they’re all usually extremely affordable for the massive amounts of exposure that you can get.
One important factor to keep in mind about online classified sites is to use the keywords and phrases that you want your site to be found for within the advertisement itself; especially the title of the ad.
Within the ad, you also want to give people who view your ad a reason to come and visit your site. Are you offering them something for free? If so, make sure that they know what it is. Make your ad as crystal clear as you possibly can so that when people do eventually visit, they’ll know what to expect once they get there.
Some classified ad sites to consider are:
Remember to read all the terms and conditions for each individual site as they will each be a little different.
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Posted by kristinewirth on August 16
In business, one of the most complimentary things you can do is use somebody’s name either in a discussion with them or, more importantly where internet business is concerned, within an email.
People like to know that they’re not just some anonymous face to you or some random number. And apart from giving them a call up in person and having a discussion with them, the next best thing that we are able to do is use their own name when speaking to them; even if it is just virtually.
Just consider this for a second. Have you ever walked into a store and actually been addressed by your own name? If this is a store you visit frequently, this likely has happened to you and you most likely were impressed by the owner’s capability to remember who you were; it made you feel like a person and not just another customer.
It makes a world of difference in the off-line world. It shows that the store that you frequent actually cares about you enough to remember your name. And it’s likely that this personalization brings this business more clients than they ever believed possible simply because they remembered who you were.
Online however, it isn’t as easy. We don’t get to see people face to face on a continuous basis. Sometimes we can create videos for customers but it’s just a one-way street. They can see us, but we’re not able to see them.
They hear from us when we send them emails, but this is normally never a two-way conversation.
But, this being the case, we can help a little bit by personalizing the emails that we do send to our subscribers.
Many auto-responders today let you personalize your emails with the subscribers name. Aweber is just one of those auto-responder programs.
As a matter of fact, you can add all sorts of customization to your email that contains details related specifically to every subscriber.
This works because once the subscriber signed up to your list, their name was typed into a special field that the auto-responder company knows directly corresponds with their first name, last name, or both.
And you can make use of this information to show your subscribers that you truly care and that you don’t just consider them “another prospect” or just another number on your subscriber list.
Since a person’s name is so important to them, whenever you do send emails to your list, make sure that you add this name to the subject field of the e-mail they get.
Not only will this get that e-mail noticed more than just a normal subject line would, but it also shows that you care enough to make it personal to them.
And all you should do is to insert the customization code that your auto-responder company provides you with and they’ll take it from there by automatically filling in that person’s name wherever you’ve inserted that code.
As a matter of fact, research has shown that including that tiny bit of customization to your mail messages will not only increase your response rate, but that the e-mail will probably be opened more frequently. Furthermore, those who see their names often within an email message are usually more open to the message included inside of that email.
All this customization however, can’t begin unless the form that the subscriber initially used to sign up with contains a field where the person can enter their name. Most auto-responder companies add this by default but if yours does not, you’ll need to be sure it does get added to your form. Otherwise you won’t have the ability to personalize any emails whatsoever.
Overall, using somebody’s name even if it is merely within an email can increase your response rates and even improve how somebody thinks of you and the services or products you provide.
Posted by kristinewirth on August 13
Marketing with articles, for as long as it’s been around, may have seemed to have lost it’s punch over the years. Or at least that’s what lots of people believe. But actually, it’s quite the opposite.
Many prosperous website owners will tell you that writing articles and submitting them to online directories is how they got their start on the internet, and they’ll further tell you that they continue to do so. This is typically due to the fact that it works. Plain and simple.
That said, one of the keys to successful article promotion is to stick to a few easy rules to make sure that first, your article gets read and second, that once someone does finish reading your content, they click through to your site.
Here are some great tips you can follow when using article marketing as part of your overall strategy online.
- Take a look at what’s popular. Many article directories like EzineArticles.com for example, let you view the most published and the most viewed articles within a certain subject area. To see which articles are the most popular in the market you’re writing for, do a search for your topic, click on any article and then scroll down to the bottom portion of that article’s page. Here you will see the articles that have been published and viewed the most often.
- Make your title intriguing. It must be a topic that people have an interest in and that will have the ability to get plenty of views online. Using article titles such as “5 Ways to…”, “10 Reasons Why…”, “Top 12 Reasons Why ___________”, are some frequently used and incredibly effective titles.
- No self promotion. One of the reasons other sites turn to article directories for immediate and free content is because the subject which has been written about is a good choice for their own website readers. It will be quite challenging to get other sites to publish your articles if all you do is promote your own personal product or service.
- Use great spelling. If your content is a hot topic that is getting lots of views yet there are numerous misspellings within the content, it most likely won’t be published by other webmasters. Most article directories these days run your submission through a spell-checker first before you can publish the article so it will catch many of these mistakes but just to make sure, run it through your own spell-check first.
- Make it easy to read. Use bullet points or numbered lists to make for easier reading.
- Be clear and succinct. Avoid long drawn-out paragraphs and break up your content into manageable parts. Your content shouldn’t leave the reader wondering what your content was about in the first place.
- Grab attention within your authors resource box. Keep in mind, your authors resource box is your “take”. This is where you’ll encourage the reader to visit your site. Tell them why it would be advantageous for them to download an e-book you have written or to sign up for your newsletter.
- Don’t stick to just one directory. When distributing your content don’t just stick to one service. There are several well-known directories online that you can submit your articles to. Just be certain that when you do, you are submitting unique content and not re-using the same article over and over again.
Once you begin the whole process of writing and submitting articles and submitting them, you will start to notice an increase in visitors to your website.
This traffic will not only come from the directories themselves but you’ll often note that other sites who have chosen to publish your article will also be sending you visitors.
This is the biggest advantage of marketing with articles since that one piece of content that you submitted may be used by numerous locations online thus increasing not only the visitors you get, but it can help you get those valuable and much-needed back links to your website too.
