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Cheap Internet Banner Advertising – Friend or Foe?

It is not a hard fact that website marketing is one of the important factors in promoting website. On the other hand it is no easy task as well. So how do you market your website? Well, as a website owner, I have personally learnt so much in regards to creating, maintaining and promoting a website online. Tips and techniques offered here will save you time and cash regardless of the kind of website you own.Website Hosting Plans

First you would need a good and reliable web hosting company that offers steadfast service at reasonable price. But make sure you do not just go with very cheap company out there. First thing about the note you are going to send to your existing customer. On the initial page just give the introduction of your website and make sure the page is not too busy. It is ok to use some of the attractive text and eye-catching graphics to draw viewer’s attention. If you are actually serious about the website business then purchase a domain name from Netfirms for just $5.95 and get your web hosting from the world’s best web hosting provider HostGator.com for just $0.01.

Preamble

Additional reasonable priced technique of letting people come to know about the website is to make some of home flier or brochures. It does not require being great and neither it takes time to make it. Basically, your flier needs to carry a big bold, positive heading, which creates desire for people to it lift up. Incorporate your fresh website address in attractive text; comprising a couple of short sections explaining out the main features of it and how it would serve them.

Display Ads Marketing

Listing your website address via display ads marketing is another cost-effective way for promoting. These are nothing but your local news paper and class papers that people read it on daily basis. Most, if not each papers, have a system and/or Internet marketing services directory group besides a categorization associated to main business. If you use newspaper or handset book for display advertising, visibility of your website address or e-mail address would give great response.

Business/Visiting Cards

Even though this may look like a very obvious technique to promote a web site, many webmasters yet fail to study counting their web site address and e-mail address as part of their big business contact information. However, note that having website address on your business/visiting cards are important and may have huge impact when it comes to business.

You might try these tips and techniques to get started when promoting your website to the existing clients and actual world. In fact, there are loads of other technique as well to attract attention such as creative site marketing, article submission and many other tools you can try out. However, try as many different methods as possible, go with great experiment with different copy to see what works best with you. I always enjoy getting feedback on my articles, as feedback is important for me to improvise on my writing. I hope you enjoyed this article as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Blogging is something that every body would do it for a reason. Maybe to express themselves, to share an interest or just may desire to make money online. Whatever could be the reason, we all blog to get heard. And so you require audience, traffic in search engine terms. So it is worthless to spend time on creating a blog and nobody reads it. Here, you first need to understand that Internet is a vast place. Many billion web-pages available with little time for end-user to grasp what you say. Hence, once are done with creating a blog, added high-quality content to it and have a few blog monetization plans in place, you would further require a steady stream of targeted traffic to build your own distribution. Following are few best and easy ways to get traffic to your fresh blog.

Blog Should Be Search Engine Friendly

Make your blog a search engine friendly one, as search engines like Google and Yahoo are probable to deliver at least 40% of your website traffic. You can make use of blog-software such as WordPress or Expression engine to get search engine friendly standards. Even working with such software is pretty much fun and simple.

RSS Feeds Are Must

RSS feeds are must to any blog be it fresh or old and yes they are the easiest way to build repeat traffic. With RSS feeds user would be reminded on a regular basis about your existence of site. As once people subscribe to your blog they would keep receiving messages from blog. Each of your blog entry you do is a great chance to get those readers back to your blog, so it becomes very important to maintain your RSS feeds in a top-notch level.

Directory Submission Is Required

Whatever you may feel about directory submission, they can yet be valuable. You may not get tons of traffic but can act good for backlinks, the received links would certainly make you rank in popular search engine such as Google, yahoo and MSN. You can submit your site to popular directory such as DMOZ and Yahoo, may be you have lesser chance to get listed but they are very effective. Getting listed in directory would surely bring traffic to your blog.

Make Use Of Social Networks

There are plenty of Social Networking and Bookmarking Websites such as Digg, StumbleUpon, Del.icio.us, Faves, Diggo, Furl, My Web, Fark and Simpy. All that you need to do is to write an interesting article, submit it to the social media sites and ask some of your surrounded people to vote for your stuff. If your article remains at the front pages it would no doubt bring you tons of traffic. If not, try writing a better article and submit it again.

Keep Replying To Other Blogs In Your Niche

There could be thousands of other blog about your related topic, which could be hunted through Technorati. Make replies to their post and let them know your blog exist. Here you need to write a little big and meaningful comment, so that at least some of the reader clicks on your link. If not now, the author might add you in near future if your postings are really good.

E-Mail Subscriptions

Blogs and RSS are comparatively new terms and the huge masses of internet users are yet not entirely well-known to them. So to capitalize on your readership, you require giving people a chance to subscribe to your articles and contents using a technology they’re actually well-known with and that technology is e-mail. Still when feed readers and other aggregators are universal for tech knowledge webmasters and blog authors, 3/4 of readers are commonly subscribed via e-mail and not via RSS feeds.

Article Submission

Submitting your blog related content to article directories is a thing you have to try at least once in a week. Each time your article gets selected by any webmaster is a fresh chance to arrive at potentially thousands of brand new readers. Additionally, every time one of your content gets published on the article submission sites, it means you have a link back to your site, which in turn increase search engine ranking. Few of the well known article submission sites are GoArticles, ArticleCity and EzineArticles.

How true it is, when something is been recommended to you by someone, you’re far more probable to follow that link than you would if you go thru that in an advertisement. This is even truer if that link carries a bookmark. Social bookmarking is relatively a new concept. A site that has social bookmarking could lead search engines and visitors to sit up and notice your site. This is because the content on such sites increases minute by minute, resulting search engines spiders to appear again and again.

In general terms, social bookmarking is a practice of saving bookmarks on the sites that provide this facility, and “tagging” them with relevant keywords. A simple bookmark allows you to store the address of Web Sites you desire to visit in future on your computer. Bookmarking sites in fact carries a very high value with search engines. Hence, when your Web Site’s link keeps popping up on the usual social networks in everyone’s list, it is just like a nod from a higher Page Rank domain that your website is relevant.

So, how is social bookmarking done? It is simple, to make a set of social bookmarks, you require registering with any social bookmarking sites. It will permit you to save and store your desired bookmarks, add up preferred tags, and allocate individual bookmarks as public or private. Surfer to these sites could search for sources by keyword, or as well by popularity and view the whole community bookmarks, tags and other categorized schemes, which is been registered and saved by other users.

For unlimited linkbacks and traffic

Social bookmarking opens the doors to new ways of classifying information and identification. As it has been around for quite some time and was initially designed to assist the users categorize and save their preferred web site link online, Search engine optimizers’ experts soon found the potential for utilizing this to get their sites more linkbacks and traffic, in turn high page rank. It is also experienced that if you do not submit your web site to social bookmarking sites, your sales and traffic goes for a toss.

Search engines rank sites based on the robotic crawlers or by spiders, whereas social bookmarking sites are hand-made by the people. Each link submission it done by individual, not by any computer-generated algorithm, so it holds even more value for customer. In fact bookmarking becomes vital the moment you register your web sites for others to access. Because, when you bookmark and share them, the results grow as the group of people sees your sites on list after list.

Further your web site link gets bookmarked by other people and you get unlimited linkbacks and traffic also increase. The purpose is simple; this interlinking is done to create more traffic to your content, your domains and to your affiliate links. The best ways is you can have a system in place before you start up with social bookmarking so when some body falls into your channel of links, either directly through your bookmark list or some body else’s, you are just ready to convert them into a lifetime customer to your business.

In our modern world, webmasters use various tools and portals to measure site popularity. Generally speaking, site popularity can be measured in two ways:

• Link Popularity – How many resources are linking to one single site.
• Traffic – How many people visit your site.

The tool that measures link popularity is Google’s PageRank. And as most of you know, PR is Google’s method for measuring site importance on a scale from 0 – 10 (10 is the highest). On the other hand, the tool that measures traffic is Alexa Rank. Just to make sure you understand what Alexa Rank is, I will provide you with its definition.

Alexa computes traffic rankings by analyzing the Web usage of millions of Alexa Toolbar users. The information is sorted, sifted, anonymized, counted, and computed, until, finally, we get the traffic rankings shown in the Alexa service.

Although, a lot of webmasters do not trust Alexa Rank, there is nothing currently that’s better than Alexa and that’s why many have no choice rather than to use it. Furthermore, Alexa Rank and Pagerank are used to determine the right price for selling any sorts of advertising on your directory.

It’s worth noticing that the lower your Alexa Rank is the more popular your site is. For example, very popular sites, such as Google or Yahoo have really low Alexa Ranks (2 and 1).

Just like there are ways to increase your PageRank there are also various ways to increase your Alexa Rank. Finally, ten ways to increase your Alexa Rank are:

• Download and use the Alexa Toolbar. Remember that Alexa assigns rank to specific site according to their Toolbar. In other words, your site will have lower rankings (higher traffic) if your visitors use Alexa Toolbar. So why not to use Alexa Toolbar and increase your rankings for free?
• Tell your visitors to use Alexa Toolbar. Since users with Alexa Toolbar are more valuable to your (they help to increase your rankings) why not to increase the percentage of those users and get lower rankings in Alexa? You can do that by personally recommending users to use Alexa by emailing them, writing posts about Alexa and inform why people should use it or placing Alexa promotional banners.
• Use Alexa Rank Widget on your directory. The Alexa Widgets help Alexa track your visitors and thus it helps to assign your lower Alexa Rank. Moreover, a single click on the widget is considered as a single unique visitor. If you want to insert Alexa Widgets on your site, then you can find them here.
• Ride the Alexa Redirect Train. Alexa Redirect Train is a way of increasing your Alexa Rank by giving a link to your site as Alexa Redirect. For example, Alexa Redirect Url for Directory Kit is “http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?www.directorykit.com”. A single click is considered as unique visitor. If you want to join Alexa Redirect Train, then please click here.
• Get reviews on Alexa. Ask visitors/friends/family members to review your site on Alexa. By getting reviews on Alexa you are showing to Alexa that your site exists and is active and thus Alexa will index it more frequently and assign lower Alexa Rank.
• Optimize your site for the webmaster related theme. With general directories you don’t have to worry about it since most your visitors are webmasters, who have the Alexa Toolbar. However, if you are thinking of starting a niche directory and want to have low Alexa Rank, make sure it is webmaster related directory. Something like a SEO directory but not a biology related directory.
• Collect webmasters emails. Nope, you are wrong, I don’t want you to spam other webmasters nor sell their emails. However, I want you to add them as one of your contacts to one of the popular messengers that best suits you. Such as Google Talk, Yahoo Messenger, or MSN Messenger. Once you have a good base of webmaster friends you can use it to improve your Alexa Rank by asking them to review your directory.
• Post in popular webmaster forums. Popular webmaster forums are great free promotion tools when you have reached decent amount of posts and good reputation. Use your avatar and signature links to promote your directory or sites.
• Announce your directory on forums/ask to review it. By announcing your directory on forums and asking to review it, you get a number of benefits. First of all, you get submissions. Secondly, you improve your Alexa Rank since the audience is webmasters. Thirdly, you don’t spend money.
• Try Using UpMyRank.com. I am not sure if this works though because I have never used it before. But I got a couple of good feedback from a number of webmasters. The quote below explains basic idea behind the site:

Simply join and start viewing other members websites with our AutoSurf software. You will earn a credit for every 3 ads you see. Best of all you can leave the AutoSurf program on all night and all day and earn credits while you sleep!

In conclusion, I would like to summarize that webmasters are the key people who help to improve your Alexa Rank. Use the ways, described above, to target your directory for webmasters and thus boost your Alexa Rank.

 You’ve got a blog, and you’re creating content. However, unless you take an active role in promoting your blog, you won’t get the traffic you deserve.The no-promotion equals no-traffic conundrum especially applies to blogs in highly competitive niches, such as the Internet marketing niche. However, while it may be possible to rely solely on your RSS feeds for traffic in less competitive niches, the more you promote, the more your traffic will grow.

A tip: while promotion is important, it’s not a substitute for content. Keep adding content to your blog, as you promote it.

Big tip: try to market your blog every day. This may not be possible, but if you can, this persistent marketing effort will pay off hugely over time.

Let’s look at three simple, easy and no-cost or low-cost methods of marketing your blog.

1. Writing articles for promotion – cheap and (still) effective

Write articles for others. You can write articles for article directories and for other sites. The second option, writing exclusive articles for other sites in your niche, is more effective. Article directories are becoming swamped with junk content, and this devalues your articles by association.

2. Press releases – both free and paid, get results

It’s interesting that some of the major article directories are now offering free press release posting. Press releases have always been an effective way of promotion, and you should use press releases to market your blog.

Don’t forget to post your releases to your blog, too. A press release section of your blog provides great historical information for a journalist who wants to do a story on your blog, and it also orients new readers to who you are, and what you do.

3. Advertising: try small ads on popular sites

At some stage, you’ll need to spend money to make money. Once your blog is earning an income, spend some of that income on advertising your blog.

Small ads on large sites work well, as do ads in ezines.

Tip: although there are many ways to advertise, don’t start advertising your blog until it’s generating an income for you. Unfortunately, when it comes to advertising, there are no guaranteed results.

So there you have it: three ways to market your blog. If you can, do a small marketing task each day, even if it’s only writing 100 words of an article. Once marketing becomes a daily habit, your blog will have a constant flow of traffic. Persistence in all your marketing efforts is essential.

Unless you prefer to keep your blog private, you’re probably blogging in hopes of reaching people. Bloggers who are just starting out may find that it takes time to get the word out. Promoting a blog isn’t for the shy. If you want to bring in the masses, you’re going to have perform a little shameless self promotion. What follows are some tips for alerting the world to your blog.

1. Content is King

First and foremost, you can encourage millions of people to visit your blog, but the numbers won’t mean squat if you don’t keep them coming back for more. You’ll need to provide useful content. It’s not enough to provide the same news as every other blogger in your niche topic. You’ll have to come up with something new and unique and provide thought provoking analysis. Your blog has to say something and say it well.

2. Participate in Like-Minded Forums

Even if you’re not a joiner, it pays to visit forums so the rest of the people in your niche group know about your blog. If your blog is about knitting, visit some knitting and craft forums. If your blog is about earthworms, visit earthworm, soil and gardening forums. You don’t have to post a lot of “hey come visit my blog” type comments, but if you add a link to your blog in your signature, it will appear in every post. This is sure to bring in traffic.

3. Visit Other Blogs

Search for other blogs falling within your niche and pay them a visit. Be sure to comment so they’ll visit your blog too. If you have something interesting to say about your topic, others may link to and even discuss your blog.

4. Add Tags

Don’t forget your tags! Not only do tags help search engines pick up your blog, but they also help to direct those who are searching for your topic. Make sure you add as many tags as necessary. For instance, if your blog post is about roses, you’ll want to add tags for roses, flowers, gardening, soil, planting, thorns, aphids, and other related keywords.

5. Add Links

Not only is it important to add relevant blog links to your blogroll, but you’ll also want to link to other blogs in the text. The blogger on the other end of the link might just reciprocate, leading more traffic to your blog. At the very least, he’ll add a reciprocating link to the side of his blog.

6. Technorati is Your FriendBy claiming a blog with the blog search engine Technorati, you’re making it available to others who might not have otherwise heard of you. The more you post and the higher you are ranked, the more likely others are to turn up your blog during a search. Your Technorati rank depends on how many others link to your blog. If you want other bloggers to offer up links to you, you have to provide good content, an eye pleasing template and build up an active community.

7. Submit Your SiteIn addition to submitting your site to all of the blog search engines, you will need to ping all the engines every time you update. To do so, utilize a free service such as Pingoat or Ping-O-Matic to ping all in one fell swoop.

8. Install an RSS ButtonMake it easy for others to subscribe to your blog by installing an RSS button.

  9. Read Up on the Latest Traffic Building Techniques 

If you’re really serious about blogging, visit blogs about blogs. The top blog bloggers offer great traffic building tips in addition to other helpful information.

  10. Analyze Your Stats In addition to the above steps, you’ll want to implement a stat tracking service such as Site Meter to keep track of hits and traffic. Your stat tracker will not only let you know how many people are stopping by each day, but they’ll also let you know where everyone is coming from. This will enable you to determine which traffic boosting methods work best for you.  

It takes time to build up traffic. Above all else, don’t give up. It may take up to a year or more for yours to become one of the top blogs in your niche.