How To Effectively Promote Newly Startup Low Budget Online Businesses

Internet Marketing and Promotion - Promoting Low Budget Businesses

Ok, you have your website up and running 4 weeks ago. You have done the following thus far to promote your site...

a. Submission to Search Engines
b. Submission to directories
c. FFA (Free For All)
d. Free Banner Ads

For all that promotion, you are only getting 20 visitors a day. Now you ask the one million dollar question. How can I get more visitors to my site? You have a lowbudget and you want to know how and where you can promote your website to get more visitors?

Welcome to the real world of Internet marketing. To have 20 visitors per day is not bad for a few weeks old online business. Promoting your website is an ongoing process to improve search engine visibility and increase web traffic.

Search Engines

For a start, it takes months to rank well at the major search engines for competitive keywords. Google, Yahoo and MSN are currently the ‘big three’. You may rank well for MSN in a matter of three months but it may take up to a year to rank well for Google and Yahoo. Be prepared, you may not receive traffic from the major search engines for quite a while.

There was a time where you could rank well on the major in a matter of weeks. Webmasters employed html tricks, meta tag spamming, special doorway pages to rank high at the search engines. The scenario has changed. The major search engines have tightened their algorithms to prevent exploitation and their Search Engine Result Page (SERP) from being spammed by webmasters.

So, beware of any SEO company that promises high ranking in a matter of days or weeks. There is a difference between having your web pages indexed and ranking well. Your web pages may be indexed within 24 hours but it may months before they rank well for your keywords. Ranking well at the major search engines can turn out to a long, drawn process.

This does not mean that you give up SEO altogether. Learn about SEO and subscribe to excellent SEO newsletters to keep up with the latest SEO news and developments. Make adjustments to your web pages but don’t fall into the trap of SEO rat race that saps up all your time and energy.

There are other aspects of web promotion that needs your attention if you aspire to gain visibilty for your business.

Directories, FFAs and Banners

What about directories, FFAs and free banners? You are fortunate if you have a few click-through from free directory listings. The alternative is to get your website listed in Yahoo! Business Directory. The cost of listing is a tidy sum of USD299 a year.

FFAs are hopeless. Free banners are not really effective.

Pay per Click (PPC)

Pay per click (PPC) or Cost per Click (CPC) are text ads placed on websites, advertising networks or search engines. Google Adwords and Overture are the two popular PPC advertising on the Net.

Every time someone clicks on an ad, the advertiser is charged a specific amount. The amount does not exceed the highest bid the advertiser is willing to pay for his or her ad keywords. This kind of advertising drives targeted traffic to your site. A word of caution here though, unless you know the ins and outs, do’s and don’ts of PPC, steer clear or else you may blow your budget.

Content Distribution and Ezine Advertising

For a budget conscious online business the best ways of web promotion are distributing content and ezine advertising.

Write articles that are specific to your business and distribute them through article directories. No sales pitch and affiliate links at this stage please. Just include what is called a ‘resource box’ with your website address, email link and a short description (3 to 5 lines) about yourself and your business.

Article directories readily make available your articles for others to use in their ezines. This becomes free publicity for your business. Better still if your articles address the situations of your readers and provide solutions to their problems. This will established you as a credible source of information. In turn, you will have people who are predisposed to do business with you coming to your website via your articles’ resource box link.

Ezine advertising is another cost effective way of promoting a newly start up low budget online business. It puts your ads into contact with targeted, potential customers for your product or service. Conversion rates tend to be higher, because the people who clicked on the ad link are interested in what you have to offer.

Do the necessary, search engines and directories submission, gather inbound links, but spend the greater part of your time to researching, writing quality content, and developing a quality ezine to promote your site. Without systematic planning and clear directions, you will go in circles and ultimately give up altogether. Making lots of money on the Internet may not be easy nowadays, but not impossible.

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