The WebDev Buzz

The first major step in promoting the business website is to have it listed in a Search Engine. But being listed in a Search Engine may not generate enough traffic. Consequently, the sales are less than what was originally projected. This means that the website owners or developers must have a promotional strategy. Here are some techniques that are known to be effective.

• Joining a Discussion Board
  Popular discussion boards must be visited and the owner or representative of the website must join and share his knowledge or expertise. Direct advertising is prohibited in such sites, but a person may attach his signature file after posting his message. The signature file may contain the business name and the URL of the website.

  Obviously, the website owner or represented cannot just butt in and post his message without lurking first. Lurking will give him an idea about how a particular discussion board works. If possible, this technique must be done everyday. A comprehensive list of popular discussion boards can be found in www.web-source.net/web/Discussion Forums.

• Place an Ezine Advertisement
  Another effective technique in making the presence of the website known is to place paid ezine advertisements. This technique must be done weekly. To avoid redundancy or advertising in one company only, the web promoter must have a list of names of publishers, the place of publication, the advertisement dates, and the hyper-linked web addresses.
• Write Articles
  A monthly promotion technique is to write articles. The articles must be about the field related to the contents or purpose of the website. The articles may be informative or may be announcements about promotions. These same articles must also be distributed to other websites or ezines.
• Arrange Promotional Exchanges
  Promotional exchanges are excellent ways of sharing resources with other owners of websites. Such cross promoting allows the products, services, and publications to have more exposure. What the web promoter needs to do is to contact a fellow promoter or marketer to arrange the promotional exchange. A promotional exchange can be done by any of these:
  

  • Personal recommendations – This is considered as the most effective way
  • Exchange links – The links should be with websites that do not compete with the products and services of the website. The exchange of links also increases the ranking of the website in the Search Engine lists.
  • Swap Ezine Ads – This means the exchange of subscription advertisements with other ezine publishers. Such will allow free advertising.
  • Exchange subscription information – This involves the inclusion of a recommendation in the welcome message of the ezine.

The website promotional strategy need not be limited to the ones listed here. The web promoter or marketer can be creative. What is important is that the promotional strategy must be implemented consistently to achieve the desired results.