Promoting Your Web Site

The next stage of setting up your home business, and perhaps the most difficult, is advertising and promotion.

Web site promotion is akin to direct response advertising in that the amount of exposure for your product is directly proportionate to the amount of money that you spend. Site promotion on the Internet is a slow and tedious task that requires the patience of a saint and the tenacity of a hungry lion.

The advantage to Internet promotion is that you have several avenues to explore before spending any advertising money at all. You also have the opportunity of reaching almost the same number of potential customers as a major advertiser does, virtually over night. Let us explore some of them. 

On line Classified/eZine Advertising:

Classified advertising on the Internet is an enigma to me. I have heard some people rave about the results and others say that it is a complete waste of time. I would classify this type of advertising as eZinerelated. Some people get really good results and others do not. Most eZines charge for placement although many of them do not. It really depends on the circulation of the eZine or newsletter and how well they have built their membership.

Remember that it's not the size of the membership but the quality of the members that's important.

The other advantage that classified ads may have is that you have the opportunity to describe your product with greater detail than say an online banner ad.  Although in advertising, sometimes less is better and you will need to test both to understand fully what works better for you.  You can also vary the copy from one ad to another by using different codes in your “mail to” address to test response.  Each of the classified advertising areas operates a little differently so be sure to read the restrictions before you list your ad. A simple search under classified advertising should lead you to hundreds of classified advertising areas.

The disadvantage in using classified ads is that they cannot be target specific as in AdWords type ads. This means that you cannot target specific demographic, buying or life-style characteristics. This means that you are posting your message to many people who have no interest in your product.    Your classified ad targeting on the Internet can be somewhat targeted depending on the site and audience. You do have some screening options and the ability to use some key words in classified ads, but for the most part, it’s fairly broad based. For starters you can go the cheap route with   . You can get started for as little as $10.00 to test your products viability in the market place. Remember though that advertising, on the whole, requires at least 2-3 months of exposure to determine if an ad actually works, so keep this in mind. 

Classifieds in Print Display Advertising:

Display advertising is another form of advertising for your web site, although mostly major corporations in their image building efforts have used it. It's not the most cost effective for a web sites as its most effective use is in direct response. The other side of display advertising is that it is very expensive and for the first time small web site business it may not be an effective use of your advertising dollars. If your budget allows however, you could consider using it but only as a direct response tool where the pay back is defined and measurable.

Search Engines/Organic listings:

Due to the demand for information, there are literally hundreds of search engines on the web today, each of them offering different searching capabilities to the user. Many of them are highly successful, although there are about four or five main engines that get most of the volume. The more established search engines and directories, such as Google® and Yahoo® to name a few, are predominant on most all browsers. Google has the lion share of search activity with Yahoo solidly in second place. MSN is quickly approaching the second spot however so it’s important to design around all three.

The reason for this is that each of the search engines have specific searching capabilities and categorize information differently, therefore what you may not find on one search site you may find on another. This variety in search capability offers the casual as well as the experienced user the ability to find information quickly and efficiently. Understanding how search engines work and how they categorize information will assist you in promoting your product. The importance of having a listing in Google® or Yahoo® simply put is free exposure for your product or service. These are commonly referred to as “organic” listings because, they are “home-grown” the cost is free and it’s based on your content. See my article “When It Comes To Traffic, Are You Organic?” 

Listing your URL, with all of the major search engines, is an absolute necessity in promoting your product. It is tedious and frustrating at times, but very important. Search engines provide another area of free promotion ( organic traffic ) for your site but you will need to spend the appropriate amount of time in developing the descriptions and keywordsfor each search engine. There are a number of resources on the Internet that are very helpful in listing your site with the major search engines. For example we offer plenty of free information on our site at our SEO Guide section..  

Many SEO experts will tell you that METAtags are irrelevant in getting your site listed, however they are important in providing key description information about your site pages to each of the search engines. In my estimation you should employ them into your overall site design. I don’t think anyone really knows for sure what goes into each of the search engine algorithms, so as a rule I recommend utilizing META Tags because they can’t take anything away from your total score and there is evidence that they may provide additional information to the search engines. See my earlier comments on META Tags.

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