Dont Put All Your Promotion Eggs In The SEO Basket

One of the most frequent questions I get asked by my clients is "What is the best way to promote my site?" If a brand new webmaster asks me that question then I will take as much time as I can possibly muster to answer their request, before they learn about and put on the SEO and ranking blinkers so many webmasters wear with pride.

Allow me now to state the obvious, the success of any website is in direct proportion to the amount of visitors it receives. If success is about visitors then why on earth would any intelligent business person devote 95% of their promotion time and budget to a single method of advertising their site?

Imagine for a moment you are the advertising executive for a large automobile company. Your company has just released the most economical car ever and your job is to make sure everyone knows about it.

Which of the following would you do?

1. Place a full page ad in one or two car magazines, then spend the next year rehashing and tweaking the wording of that ad, because it wasn't creating the sales you wanted.

OR

2. Advertise in every magazine and newspaper you can find, start national TV advertising campaigns, make sure you have slots on every commercial radio station in the country, advertise on billboards, in cinemas, sponsor sporting events and what ever else you could think of.

It doesn't take a genius to work out the second idea is a much better plan. Now this may come as a shock to you, but the major search engines are not the only source of visitors to your website. Many SEO gurus are quick to point out to you that search engines are the only way to achieve substantial traffic. That is simply not true. One disturbing idea promoted heavily by the SEO world recently is that "Links are dead" My answer to that idea is, if links were dead then there would be no web.

Links are how people travel the web, whether they are text links, banners or email links to visit any site you need to click a link. Google itself is one enormous searchable link database.

Let's states something even more obvious. Google is not the only site on the web that links to other sites. There are directories, there are banner exchanges, and the big one there are hundreds of millions of other websites. How many of those carry a link to your site?

For any keyword or phrase on the major search engines there are millions of sites vying for just 10 first page places. Are you really devoting all your promotion time to SEO with those kinds of odds?

There is also much talk of the value of links, and nearly all of it is based on the value of links in a search engines eyes, and how that will or will not improve your rankings. STOP!!! You need to get this!!! The value of a link is how many times it gets used, clicks and visits NOT rankings.

While many will object to this statement SEO is nothing more than educated guesswork, why do I say that? Simple because Google, Yahoo and MSN do NOT tell SEO experts how they order their results. Just the opposite they regularly change how their results are ordered to stay one step ahead of the SEO experts. Why do they do that? Because they do not want their results manipulating period! They want one thing, to deliver accurate search results.

Don't take my word for this, go and get the words from the horses mouth here.

http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html

Notice the all the advice is geared towards building your site for visitors not for search engines.

If you really want to build steady long term traffic to your site, then advertise your site in every legal way you can. Yes it requires time and a consistent effort. As a wise man once said " The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary". In closing, how many of the following have you used to advertise your site? If you haven't done them all maybe you need to.

Have you:

Listed your site in a couple of hundred directories?

Exchanged quality visible links with at least 200 sites?

Exchanged banners with sites in your genre?

Started a small pay per click advertising campaign?

Written articles to do with the genre of your site and offered them to other sites for free inclusion in their newsletter or on their site?

Had your site reviewed by a review site?

Donated a product or free membership to a competition on another site?

These are only a few promotion methods that will bring visitors to your site. There are many many more if you use your imagination. This is also advertising that will not be undone in one minute by a Google algorithm change.

Am I saying don't optimize your site? NO I am saying don't rely totally on SEO for your traffic.

Are you putting all your promotional eggs in one basket? If so, isn't it time you stopped and gave your site the best chance of success.

Gary McHugh is co author of HonestLinks.Net, a site dedicated to teaching webmasters to exchange links that bring traffic. He also runs his own web design and hosting company 2001web.com

---

Web Site Promotion: How To Use The Power Of Perpetual Marketing To Heat Up Your Sales

You may ask, what is perpetual marketing?Perpetual marketing means when... Read More

Sales Marketing: 10 Proven Secrets To Market Your Website Offline

Some Internet marketing experts have claimed that the best way... Read More

Benefits of Website Localization

Benefits of Website Localization Maximising profit today... Read More

Complete Novice Builds Business Using Press Releases on the Internet

My name is Barbara Mascio. I am the founder of... Read More

10 Cool Ways To Attract People To Your Web Site

1. Give people a free subscription to your e-zine. Almost... Read More

Your Internet Marketing - What It Could Be Missing

How would like to have an email list of thousands... Read More

Seecrets on Website Promotion: Marketing Plan for Joe Nogood Gift Store

Joe Nogood owns a small but thriving gift store. He... Read More

How to Set Up Your Own Free Ad-Tracking Links and 7 Reasons Why You Want To!

Any time you use a URL in an Article, Web... Read More

Marketing Tips for Your Web Site

Here are some simple and easy tips on how to... Read More

To Link or Not To Link - That Is The Question

You know the drill. Everybody claims that in order to... Read More

How to Develop a Local Traffic Base

Getting a loyal traffic base for your website is an... Read More

Grassroots Marketing Campaign

Many people, in a rush to spike sales through the... Read More

7 Ways to Promote Your Website Locally

Now that you've built your new website you can sit... Read More

3 Fast Ways To Get Free Content For Your Home Based Business Website

Is your website looking alittle bare? It's okay, you're about... Read More

A Successful Link Exchange

Interested in boosting your link popularity, raising your Google PR,... Read More

Rich Media - Exploring New Territory

Until recently, audio, video, Flash, and static graphics were all... Read More

SuperCharge Your Website With Multi Linking

Here's a fairly obvious Multi Linking Strategy that is probably... Read More

Capturing Leads on Traffic Exchanges

There are 3 basic components to capturing leads on free... Read More

Time to Tell A Friend

The internet has the capacity, sometimes, to divorce not just... Read More

3 Super-tips To Build, Promote And Profit More From Your Website!

Are you happy with your website? (Does your business even... Read More

Unique Selling Propositions - USPs

Got one? Two? Three?If you have competitors, then you should... Read More

Website Promotion: 10 Phenomenal Tactics To Reinforce Your Profits

Here are the website promotion tactics to reinforce and increase... Read More

Increasing Link Popularity WITHOUT Exchanging Links

Yes, it can be done. Here are 7 ways that... Read More

Can What You Dont Know About Web Analytics Hurt Your Site? Yes is an Understatement!

Web analytics. Don't worry, it's not as boring as it... Read More

Google Pagerank ? Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains Certified Master Point of View

Google is the most popular internet search engine and even... Read More

Website Development and Promotion Tips for Internet Marketing at Home

Managing your online business from home is a great way... Read More

Web Site Advertising: 10 Blockbuster Secrets To Make Your Web Site More Profitable

Do you want to make your website more profitable?If you... Read More

How to Get Directories to Submit Your Site - With this 5 Steps Guide!

So you have completed that new site and want to... Read More

Promotional Tools That Work For Online Businesses!

Promotion... also known as selling. Not an easy task in... Read More

Free Online Advertising: 10 Dynamic Secrets To Make Your Ad Stand Out And Ignite Sales

No matter what you're marketing or promoting, if your Ad... Read More

Link Building Secrets - Promote Your Website with a Proven Tactic

Building links to your website is of huge importance and... Read More

Set Your Site on the Right Trajectory by Submitting It to Every Directory

Webmasters across the globe are involved in a race to... Read More

Kick-Off Your Web Traffic Virus!

Have you noticed lately how savvy webmasters are using simple,... Read More