Website Marketing Strategies

Photo by wili_hybrid

Today let’s talk about website marketing strategies. Whether you have a blog or a non-blog website, if you don’t have any visitors, you will not get very far with your internet business.

So you need a strategy to market your website.

Here are some of the possible elements of your strategy:

• On-Site Marketing

  I don’t know if that’s a defined term, but I’ll use it anyway. Your marketing efforts need to start on your website itself. Everything on your site should reinforce the brand and image that you are trying to portray.

  For example, if you’re a web designer, your site should be well-designed to show off your design skills.

  If you are an internet marketer, your site should show signs that you are a successful internet marketer. Whatever you think an internet marketer’s site should look like, think about incorporating those elements into your site.

  If you are trying to portray a professional image, then make sure your site looks professional and not amateurish.

• Social Networking

  No website marketing strategy would be complete without some social networking included. It is just too powerful a method to ignore.

  This would include things like joining social sites – Stumbleupon, Digg, Reddit, and many others. Some are niche-specific also. Become active on some of these sites. This will help your website to become known.

• Blog Networking

  Even if your website is not a blog, you could benefit greatly from networking with bloggers.

  Find out which are the top blogs in your niche. Start reading them and commenting on them.

  You might even consider starting a blog of your own, in addition to your site. It’s best if you have the blog right on your site, but even a Blogger blog would help. If you use an off-site blog, be sure to link to your main website often.

• Search Engine Marketing

  Search Engine Marketing deals with making your site visible to people searching with a search engine such as Google.

  You can try to get ranked high in the organic (non-paid) search results by optimizing your site for certain keywords. If you try this, try to get ranked for long-tail keyword phrases first, that is, longer phrases of 3-6 words, rather than trying to rank for the more competitive 1 or 2 word terms.

  You can also market your site in the search engines by pay-per-click paid listings. This often is very effective, especially if you are selling a relatively costly product and have good conversion rates. If that’s the case, you can afford to bid high enough for pay-per-click listings, knowing that you will get your money back when people purchase your product.

• Article Marketing

  Writing articles and distributing them to article directories is a tried and true method for marketing your website. Your article will have a short bio, also called a resource box, at the end, with a link to your site. Any website that uses your article must keep this link to your site with the article. The more articles you have distributed, the more links back to your site you will have.

  The better quality your articles are, the more they will be picked up by other websites, and the more links you will get from this marketing method.

• Forum Marketing

  Every niche has some forums or discussion boards. You just need to find them.

  Forum marketing does not mean that you start posting blatant advertising for your site in the forums. This will be counterproductive and will hurt your reputation.

  You should post helpful posts in the forums. Be a good participant and try to be as helpful as possible. The way your website will become known from this is that you are usually allowed a link in your signature. This link should point to your website.

  That’s all the advertising you need to do. You don’t even need to mention your site otherwise. If you are helpful, the forum members will eventually check out the site in your signature.

• Paid Advertising

  You could advertise on other sites in the same niche as yours. Many websites and blogs accept paid advertising. You could also advertise in ezines.

• Get Creative

  The above strategies are just scratching the surface of what you can do to market your website.

  Get creative and think up some ideas of your own. Also, when you see the creative ideas that others have used to market their sites, write them down. You probably won’t want to copy them exactly, but they can help give you ideas for your own marketing.

Implementing Your Marketing Strategy

It would not hurt to write down your marketing strategy for your site. You can use some of the above ideas or think up your own.

Just don’t think that your website will magically become known without a conscious strategy for marketing it. You really need to come up with a marketing plan and make yourself a schedule for implementing it.

It could be as simple as writing down the various ways you plan on marketing your website, and then writing each of them on your calendar so that you are sure to actually do them on a regular schedule.

- Pat Doyle