Linking Up for Website Promotion
A retail shop will make no sales without human traffic, and similarly, a website will be totally useless if there is no Internet traffic. Assuming that the traffic will come just because it is there is a terrible fallacy, and sad to say, many companies spend thousands of dollars creating a beautiful website, but suffer eventually because of this assumption.
The first step to any website promotion would definitely be to submit your site to the major search engines. Some experts say that submitting to the three major ones, Google, Yahoo! and MSN (GYM, for short) would be sufficient, while others say that you cannot afford to miss out on the small ones.
Next, to increase the popularity of a website and get traffic to your site, you need incoming links. There are several ways to build links.
One could start go get free incoming links by submitting their websites to popular and free web directories, like DMOZ and Google Directory. Submitting a website to these directories usually take less than five minutes, but be sure to place your site in the correct category and provide a good overview of your site in the description, so people will be able to find your site from the directory.
Another popular way to get links is to search the web for related websites, and then writing to the site owner to exchange links. This method may be a little slower, because it depends very much on the response time of the site owner.
You could also contribute to online forums and leaving your link as you sign off, or with the evolution of blogs nowadays, leave value added comments on others’ blogs and again, leaving your links as you sign off.
If your time allows, and you are proficient in writing, you could write articles (with a link to your website) and submit to article directories like EzineArticles.com, or for the daring, publish a good press release, to be picked up by Internet news sites all around the world.
One thing to note though is that it is important how the link is established. Popular search engines will evaluate your site also based on the quality of the site that is linking to you, and the anchored text link. For example, if your site is about laser printers, the hyperlink with the word “Good Laser Printers” would be much more valuable than one that says “click here”.
So to sum up, remember, the traffic will NOT come if you do not actively promote your site. Remember, submit to search engines, and then get quality links from quality websites!
