Web Site Promotion - The art of ?

In order for your web site to be a success you must have visitors. You cannot ignore this fact and there is really no way to get around it. This leaves you three alternatives: you can hire a web site promoter to promote your web site, try to promote your web site yourself, or pay for advertising. Whatever you decide to do, you should learn about web promotion beforehand. If you hire someone to promote your web site, how will you know if they are using effective promotion methods? Not all promotion experts are credible, responsible, or effective and it pays to know what to look out for before you hire someone.

What you will learn here is basic web promotion. There is no trickery or special techniques; just the basic foundations of building a popular web site. Always remember there is more than one method of effective web promotion. Combinations of effective promotion systems will benefit your web site more than just using one method. Have you heard the saying about "putting all your eggs into one basket?" The same works with web site promotion; never depend on a single method for getting traffic to your site.

Myths, Scams, and general B.S.
Trying to drive traffic to your web site is confusing, stressful, and can keep you awake at night. There are many so-called "web promotion experts" that know how much traffic means to web site owners, especially to businesses that depend on their web sites to generate sales and leads. These so-called promotion experts will tell you anything they think you want to hear as long as you are buying their system, products or paying them for their services.

You need to be leery of Search Engine Optimization and web promotion experts that cannot seem to drive traffic to their own web sites or resort to "secret methods" to try to elevate clients' web site traffic and popularity.

There are no secrets to web promotion. All the knowledge you need can be found on the Internet. What sidetracks most promotion campaigns is the lack of patience and the forms of web promotion being used. There are many systems for generating traffic but there are only a few that really work. Most web site owners try to target search engines and directories for their traffic. This is a very good choice because search engines/directories generate a lot of traffic to web sites. Just keep in mind there is more to search engine/directory traffic than just building a web site and submitting it.

Many submission companies say that effective web promotion can only be achieved by submitting your web site on a monthly basis. This is total nonsense and can actually hurt your promotion efforts. Every search engine and directory has different periods of time they want you to wait before you resubmit your web site. This can be 30 days or more. If you submit your site to those engines/directories every month and their waiting period is 6 weeks or 90 days, it could be considered as a form of spamming.

Isn't all Spam bad?

How does submitting your web pages that are not optimized, at least a little, help your promotion efforts?

If you submit your web site and it does not have a good ranking for your keywords/phrases once it is indexed, how is submitting it again going to change your ranking or make your web site more relevant for the search terms you are trying to target? What is the purpose of resubmitting web pages that have not changed, have not been optimized, or are already listed in the search engine index?

Submitting web pages that are not search engine friendly or correctly optimized is a waste of time. Monthly submission is an even bigger waste of time and believing that a submission service will submit your web site to a gazillion search engines is even worse.

There are probably less than 10 thousand credible search engines worldwide. We already know who the big guys are but there are lesser known engines as well. Some are country specific, which means they only accept web sites from their own countries. Others are content specific, which means your web site has to fall within a specific category to be accepted. Some engines are PPC or paid inclusion, which means you have to pay to be added to the engine or pay for each visitor they send to your web site, which leaves out the submission company services since they are not going to pay for your search words or site inclusions out of the goodness of their hearts.

There are also web directories. Only a few are high profile but because of the money that can be made by search engines/directories accepting payment for including your web site in their listings or paying for each visitor, there are a large number of new search engines/directories launched all the time. But there is no where near the amount some submission companies claim.

So where exactly are these people submitting your web site?

That question should be thought out in detail before paying a company that claims to submit your web site to millions of engines and directories.

There is also a myth that creating and using Meta tags is a waste of your time. Many high profile Search Engine Optimization experts continue to use Meta tags in their search engine optimization services and advise that you do so as well, with emphasis on the Meta tags being applied correctly and not abused. Placing Meta tags in your web pages will NOT guarantee more traffic or a higher search engine rank, they are not a magic answer.

If you are in need of web promotion services, resources, or advice, you will find the so-called experts telling the Internet world about special programs, link farms, deep submission, cloaking scripts, gateway pages, traffic exchanges, exit exchanges, secret web promotion techniques, banner exchanges, and more.

When you use the Internet to search for information on the promotion of your web site, you will find an assortment of supposedly "proven" ways to generate web site traffic. There is so much information, misinformation, strategies, systems, and expert advice that it can be hard to sort through what is accurate and what is a load of... well you know.

Whatever you decide to do, always take your time before you jump into anything that sounds too good to be true, if you are in doubt ask for help or advice from someone more knowledgeable.

The reality
Sending traffic to web sites has become a multi-million dollar business. Internet traffic is the key to all successful web sites. Traffic is beneficial to people that have online businesses, workers from home who use the Internet for their primary source of business leads and sales, and small business owners that do not have the funds to launch huge online/off-line marketing campaigns. Web site traffic means potential clients, sales, and money. When there is money to be made, people will come out of the woodwork passing themselves off as promotion experts, marketing gurus, and foremost authorities on the subject of web site promotion with the answers to all of your traffic problems.

Building traffic to your web site will not happen overnight, next week or next month. Never let anyone persuade you into believing that it can happen overnight. Free promotion strategies like optimizing your web pages or reciprocal linking usually take time before you see a noticeable increase in your traffic. You must also allot some time for mistakes and set backs, everyone has a few set backs in the beginning.

Web Site Promotion - it's all about effectiveness
There are so many different systems, programs, and strategies being proclaimed as "the best way" to bring traffic to your web site. If all of these claims are indeed valid, why are there so many web sites that still need traffic? You cannot believe everything you read or hear; do not take claims of "millions of hits" or "make your counter scream" seriously. There are thousands of web site owners that have chosen the wrong methods of web promotion and they continually put an amazing amount of effort into making these systems work. Do not get involved with systems that sound too good to be true. Do not be one of the hundreds of thousands, or possibly millions, that get caught up in these bogus methods of web promotion. If you are going to devote time and energy to a promotion strategy, make sure it is effective. Never let any of your promotion efforts be a waste.

To increase the popularity of your web site effectively, you will need diligence, knowledge, lots of patience, and most of all, an effective system of promotion.

• Diligence
  Once you choose an effective system of web site promotion, you have to consistently work on refining it, making it more effective, and perfecting it. Putting a lot of effort into any promotion strategy or system that is not effective or does not work will force you backwards in your web promotion efforts and will hinder the success of your web site.
• Knowledge
  All the promotion knowledge you need can be found on the Internet; but again, do not let yourself get caught up in the marketing hype. Be suspect of anything that sounds too good to be true. Effective web site promotion cannot be accomplished overnight, in a couple of days, or in a couple of weeks. The submission of your web site is only a small part of web promotion. After submission, it could take several weeks or longer for your web site to be indexed. That is the biggest reason to make sure your pages are ready for submission. If you submit a web site that is not optimized, you will be wasting the submittal.
• Patience
  This is probably the most important element you will need in your promotion efforts. You cannot effectively promote a web site without it. You need patience to build the popularity of any business. Your promotion strategy will take time so you must be prepared for that from the beginning. You cannot create a popular web site overnight. You cannot create a popular business off-line or online overnight so do not listen to the so-called experts; they are only trying to sell you their system. All you will do is make them successful with your money. Stick with the system that you know is effective.

When you decide to create your web site, whatever it is about, you should plan to provide as much valuable information as possible throughout your web site. The search engines like valuable information and if you optimize your web site content with your targeted keyphrases, there is the potential of getting good search engine traffic. Other webmasters also like web sites with valuable content. If a Webmaster feels your information would be valuable to the visitors of their web site then they will want to link with your site. External links from other web sites is a good traffic generating strategy. You can actually create targeted traffic by starting a reciprocal linking program and exchanging text hyperlinks with quality web sites that have relevance to your own web site.

Creating a web site full of information certainly has many good points, especially if your products or services are relevant to the information you are supplying on your web pages. Your web site will gain visibility, traffic, popularity, and your products or services will be within your visitors reach.

Anyone can effectively promote a web site
That is if they are willing to learn the basics of building a web site designed to generate traffic. You need to learn as much as possible about search engine optimizing, link marketing, and the little things that will effectively get your site generating traffic.

Informative content on your web pages is the root of it all.

When researching the Internet for information related to web site promotion, you will come across a lot of information, some of that information will be bogus. You will have to rely on your instincts to help guide you in what to believe and what not to.

The best rule to remember is "if it sounds too good to be true it probably is."