Promotion Tip:
Promote Your Site Without Going Broke

by Larisa Thomason,
Senior Web Analyst,
NetMechanic, Inc.

Yahoo wants your money. LookSmart wants your money. So do Inktomi, AltaVista, Overture, and others. They're happy to list your site - if the price is right. The up-front costs of some paid inclusion programs make even prosperous Web sites cringe because a promotion campaign may take months to pay off. Fortunately, there are still ways to effectively promote your Web site without emptying your bank account.

Find Free Submit Opportunities

Many search engines are setting up paid inclusion programs where sites pay a fee to be listed in the index. Commercial sites pay Yahoo to review their pages, but there's no guarantee of inclusion. Meanwhile, LookSmart has joined Overture as a pay-per-click engine where sites are charged a fee each time searchers click on their link.

The advantage to all these programs is speed: your site could be available to searchers a week after launch.

The disadvantage is cost. What happens if you burn through your entire promotional budget in the first few weeks? $299 here, $78 there, $1.25 per click somewhere else, and soon you're spending real money!

Some webmasters just can't afford to use this strategy right away. But don't despair. There are still free places to submit your site.

• Search Engines: Most search engines that offer a paid inclusion option also allow sites to submit for free. They just don't guarantee that free submit sites will be listed quickly or updated on a regular basis. Go ahead and use the free submit option to get the process started. You can always pay to get in later.
  
  
• Free Directories: All submissions to the Open Directory Project (ODP) are free. Since the majority of directory editors are volunteers, many sites wait for weeks or more for an editor to have time to visit their pages. Increase your chances of being accepted quickly by carefully following ODP submission guidelines. You may also apply to be an editor yourself.
  
  Another option for non-commercial sites is the Zeal directory, maintained by LookSmart. Volunteers (called zealots) have to pass a test to prove their familiarity with LookSmart editorial guidelines. Once you've passed the test, you can submit non-commercial sites for free. Commercial sites must be submitted via LookSmart.
  
  
• Specialty Search Engines: These are great for sites devoted to more esoteric topics like medical research, antiques, or other specialized interests. Submission is usually free. While they deliver less traffic to your site than general search engines, the traffic you do get is quite targeted. Read our January 2002 Promotion Tip to learn more about specialty search engines.
  
  
• Web Rings: This is another good option for niche sites, non-commercial sites, or special interest sites. A web ring is a group of Web sites related by topic. There are Web rings devoted to hot sauces, political causes, pets, woodworking, and more. The traffic you get from other members of the Web ring will be targeted traffic. However, most Web rings accept any sites that are on topic, so the quality of other member sites may be low and that could reflect badly on your site.

Give Your Site A Virus

Actually, we're talking about "viral marketing," where savvy webmasters use email, print advertising, and word-of-mouth to promote their sites. Common, easy-to-implement techniques include:

• Send to a friend: Include an email link on your important pages and encourage visitors to send the page to their friends. People are more likely to visit sites recommended by people they know. Large news sites like the New York Times and MSNBC use this technique.
  
  
• Signature Lines: We certainly hope you aren't wasting the optional signature line in your email program! Include your full name, site URL, and a pithy description of your site on every email- even personal emails. Just think, the cool joke you send to 10 friends could bring you hundreds of visitors if your friends forward it to their friends, and so on.
  
  
• Bookmark This Site: Use some simple JavaScript code to encourage repeat visitors with a "Bookmark This Site!" icon on your page.
  
  
• Leave Some Messages: Online message boards and bulletin boards are another good way to draw attention to your new site. Include your site URL in your signature line and user profile. Consider setting up a special email address for message boards though: email spiders gobble them up like candy. You could get more spam than legitimate business queries.

These are all easy and free ways to promote your site and encourage visitors to return.

Use Alliances To Your Advantage

Search engine and directory alliances are an often-overlooked way get your site into directories and search engines that would otherwise charge for submission.

The most obvious is the Google/Yahoo alliance. Commercial sites have to pay to submit to Yahoo, but can submit to Google for free. Google provides secondary results for Yahoo searches. That means you could turn up in Yahoo via your Google listing, even though you never paid Yahoo.

The ODP is connected with many large search sites and the Zeal directory provides results to LookSmart. Almost all search engines and directories augment their search results with results from other search sites.

These relationships give you more opportunity to get your site in front of visitors.

Make Friends With Other Webmasters

This free promotion strategy - increasing your link popularity score - is one of your most important tasks. Many search engine ranking algorithms use link popularity to rank sites because they think it decreases the number of spam sites that hit the top of the ranking.

Link popularity requires work. You have to create content that is valuable enough for other sites to want to link to you and then convince other webmasters to put a link on their site. Make linking easy for them by sending them a personal email and specifically noting where your link would fit best.

Stay away from services that offer to get you a huge number of links in a short time. You may actually get links, but they won't be targeted and you're usually required to put a lot of unrelated links on your own site. That decreases the value of your site to visitors.

Even worse, this type of link farming strategy can get you banned as a spam site by search engines!

Power Up Your Site

Just getting into a search engine or directory index isn't enough - even if you do it all for free. You also need to be at the top of the ranking because most searchers don't look past the first few pages.

Use Search Engine Power Pack to boost your site. For only $99 a year, you get access to proven techniques that help increase your site's search engine rank.

It's a great, low-cost way to optimize your site for individual search engines, submit it, and track your rank.