Web site promotion strategies?

January 3, 2005 6:54 PM

What's the best way to promote your website? Of course, More inside.

This question goes a bit in depth.

I'm curious about the most effective way to promote a website (not just my own - this way I'm not just interested in self linking here)

I'm looking to compare methods (and possibly adapt some or all.)

Do you pay for your promotion? Google Adwords?

And if Google is the end all/be all of search results, what's the most efficient way to raise your rank?

posted by filmgeek to computers & internet (8 comments total)

I really think it depends on the website. That said, textads on mefi aren't too bad...but I'm more partial to disguising sites as gmail invitations on slashdot.
posted by angry modem at 7:08 PM on January 3, 2005

1) targeted textads - so if Metafilter was your websites kind of crowd, then yes, a MeFi Textad.

2) If it's a blog link other blogs (famous or not) in your posts, trackback when relevant, and make (relevant) comments in related blogs.

3) Google textads are pretty good, try a few of those.
posted by dabitch at 7:14 PM on January 3, 2005

Post on Usenet, which is underrated.
posted by inksyndicate at 8:07 PM on January 3, 2005

26 Steps to 15k a Day
posted by Hildago at 9:00 PM on January 3, 2005

with so little information in your More Inside, it's almost like asking 'how long is a piece of string'

is your web site a brochure site, or a commercial site? And if the latter - then is it b2b or b2c?

completely different approaches if you want to sell to other businesses vs to end-consumers.

what industry is the company in? do they usually sell through long-established relationships that they now want to extend online, or do they sell on volume?

is it a new product, and you need to educate your customers about features etc - or is it a well-known product and you want to compete on price?

search optimization is only one of many elements in a web promotion strategy. just because your web site is online, doesn't mean that you will only use online tools to promote it. don't forget traditional marketing methods as well

promote in the media that will be most likely consumed by your target market. the more you know about the demographics, psychographics and geographics of your target market, the easier it will be to develop successful marketing strategies and techniques for your site

google alone won't cut it
posted by seawallrunner at 11:00 PM on January 3, 2005

It depends. I promoted one of my sites by feeding the news out to a couple of influential Web sites (weblogs, del.icio.us, etc) and the news spread out from there. Once it was on all the blogs, the traffic went nuts. 800 Google backlinks and a PR6 within two months.
posted by wackybrit at 2:31 AM on January 4, 2005

Content and a good product/service.

SEO and marketing etc. will get some people to your site, but that's no guarantee that they'll stay or even return again unless the site itself provides something substantial.
posted by erisfree at 3:48 AM on January 4, 2005

It's kinda dorky, but I bought a classified ad on fark for a site I run. From there, the word started to spread...

I would suppose, though, that how you promote your site would depend on what kind of site it is. E-Commerce? Community? Blog? Tool?
posted by ph00dz at 6:48 AM on January 4, 2005