Tips for promoting your website for free

For website owners who have already ensured they have great web content, the next challenge becomes getting visitors to their website. The best content in the world will more than likely not drive traffic without some effort.  Here are some tips for promoting your website for free:
Blogs - There are at least two ways that you can promote your website for free using blogs. Creating your own blog and writing relevant blog posts can help drive traffic.  Use a popular service like Ping-o-Matic to promote your blog post automatically.  Link your blog post to a relevant page of your website. Actively search for other blogs that contain material that is relevant to your website and review their posts. Leave well thought out comments and include your website link. Do not spam blogs with comments that are irrelevant as they will more than likely get deleted.

Social Bookmarking - Social bookmarking is another free option to promote your website. There are several tools available to help you find the most relevant bookmarking sites to submit your website. Free tools such as Social Bookmarking Service can help take a lot of the guess-work out of your social bookmarking efforts. Always make sure that you select relevant categories, keywords and tags for your promotion.

Social networking - Social networking sites are perhaps one of the fastest growing free tools on the internet for promotion purposes. While many people use Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn and MySpace for keeping in touch with friends, family and colleagues, they have grown to include a great deal of business promotion. Use these free tools judiciously to help promote your website for free. Read their terms and conditions carefully to avoid being banned for spam.
Article Directories - There are several article directories on the internet that allow you to submit articles and include links to your website. These free article directories typically contain categories ensuring that you can focus in on your niche.  Before you submit an article to any directory, find out what their policy is regarding self promotion. Some directories also allow you to earn money when you submit articles either through up front payments or from page views.

While many people feel they must pay for advertising through Google or other similar online advertising, there are several options that are available for free. Webmasters need every tool at their disposal, and these tips for promoting your website for free are a good place to start. The creation of a website can represent a huge undertaking and very often a considerable investment in terms of time, effort and even financial outlay, in relation to perhaps domain name purchase and hosting fees. This makes it even more important that one pay full attention to every aspect of ensuring that one’s website stand the greatest chance of knowing the level of success such exertions merit. Following the actual creation of the website, it is the effective promotion of the website which is most important in this respect and especially where the website’s creation has been costly, it is most desirable that such promotion be achieved for free.

The subject nature of any particular website will very often determine free promotional opportunities which are peculiar to same and are not necessarily applicable in general terms. It is better in the first instance, however, to consider free website promotional opportunities which are applicable to the majority of websites. This will allow these promotional efforts to begin working on behalf of one’s website while one ponders perhaps less obvious opportunities.

The most effective way of promoting any website is in establishing links to the site from other locations around the Web. These links will in the very short term serve to drive traffic directly to the website from browsers who happen to be interested in its subject from appropriate locations online, while in the long term, these backlinks will serve to improve the standing of the website in the search engines and thus the level of the organic traffic which it is likely to attract and receive.
The process of establishing inbound links to one’s websites - commonly referred to as backlinks - begins with carefully considering not only how to establish the links but where it is appropriate to do so. It is never a good idea to incorporate links on a website which is not closely related in nature to its content. The easy way to get started in this respect therefore is by submitting a website link to social bookmarking sites and one’s presences on social networking sites. As well as establishing the links, however, one should use each opportunity to tell people what information the website contains and why they will find paying a visit to it valuable.

The best way to obtain quality backlinks in the long term is less certain but will pay dividends where one is prepared to persevere and put in the required effort. Essentially, one firstly has to ensure that one’s website provides quality information on its subject. However well one promotes oneself and website around the Internet, where the site is simply not of a certain standard, other Webmasters and bloggers are not going to be prepared to provide links to it for the reference of their own traffic. This means constantly updating one’s website with fresh content and removing or replacing that which becomes out of date or no longer relevant.

One then has to do everything in one’s power to acquire a reputation online as being an authority on the subject of one’s website. This can be achieved in many ways, via social networking, forums and discussion boards and anywhere that one has the opportunity to promote one’s knowledge and one’s website. As one establishes such a reputation, people who have an interest in same are likely to seek out one’s website and other online writings. Equally, those who operate sites on the subject will be more and more likely to wish to link to one’s website as a recognised source of authoritative information, for the pleasure and benefit of their own visitors.

The simplest way of all perhaps to promote a website for free is to ask friends and online acquaintances to lend a hand. This could be in the form of mentioning it on their own social networking sites, incorporating a link on their related blog or website, or even simply by talking about it offline to those whom they believe would be interested. Often, the offline method of promoting online content by simple word of mouth is neglected, to a Webmaster or blogger’s great detriment.

The real secret to promoting one’s website for free is to forever be aware of the requirement to do so. Wherever one may be, in whatever one may be involved, the opportunity for website promotion may well present itself where least expected and only by taking advantage of each and every such opportunity can one genuinely ensure that the publicity afforded to one’s website is all that it should be and can be.