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8_ways_to_promote_new_content_on_your_website
| 8 ways to promote new content on your website
After months of rebuilding your website - adding great content
filled with profitable, keyword-rich copy (all due to Dr Ken
Evoy's excellent 5-day Affiliate Masters e-mail course, no
doubt) - your site is now ready to be uploaded to the Internet!
But how do you go about promoting this new content? Well, you
need a plan!
===== Side Bar ===== It's easy to receive Ken's 5-day Affiliate
Masters e-mail course! Just send a blank e-mail to
mailto:tamsshopping101@sitesell.com and get day 1 of this great
course in your inbox TODAY! ===== Side Bar =====
WEBSITE PROMOTION PLAN
Yes, you need a website promotion plan! And you need a schedule
for that plan. And once that schedule's finished, you need
another, long-term plan - site promotion is never over! Some of
the activities that you should plan to do are listed below; you
can probably think of others, more relevant to your site: do!
===== Side Bar ===== For a long-term plan, and some long-term
activities, read my article called Promote Your Site Every Day!.
You can find it :
http://www.shoptour.co.uk/webmaster-promote/promote-your-site.sht
ml ===== Side Bar =====
1: TELL YOUR E-MAIL SUBSCRIBERS
Tell your e-mail subscribers! This is an easy first step to
take, to promote a site redesign (or new pages on your site).
Subscribers have been expecting an announcement, anyway, because
you've been referring to the redesign in earlier newsletters
(haven't you?).
This is your best opportunity to really go into detail about all
the great ways your site has improved, and all the new benefits
your subscribers will find. You could even (cheekily!) run a
competition to encourage subscribers to visit your site, and
find those inevitable bugs, before the rest of the web does!!
===== Side Bar ===== If you don't run a newsletter, this is one
(of many) great reasons why you should! Listbot, Topica,
e-circle are just a few services that provide free,
ad-supported, newsletters: - http://www.listbot.com -
http://www.topica.com - http://www.ecircle-uk.com ===== Side Bar
=====
2: TELL YOUR FRIENDS, FAMILY, ANYONE
Tell friends, family and others who are (legitimately) in your
address book. Make your e-mail personal, and friendly. And
better still, just talk about how your site now benefits or
involves them. That is, just discuss: * your new link to their
site * your promotion of their affiliate program * their new
article, now on your site
Even busy friends and family, need to be 'encouraged'! Always
focus on benefits, but *get them* to visit!
3: TELL THE NEWSGROUPS
Tell the newsgroups about your new site, but only do this if you
are a regular contributor. Simply announce your site - check
that site announcements are allowed, first! - with a few good
reasons why members should visit! Better still, contribute to
the newsgroup, and simply leave your URL as part of your
'signature'.
A great place to find suitable newsgroups is -
http://www.deja.com/usenet/ (now http://groups.google.com)
4: WHAT ABOUT SEARCH ENGINES?
DON'T just blast your new pages to all the search engines /
directories! This may seem like spam to them, and your new pages
(or even your whole site) may get banned. This is because some
search engines need to be told about new pages, others don't.
And directories generally just like to know about the main page
on your site (unless you've just added a lot of content on a
completely different theme).
Search engine policies change regularly, so find out from others
by visiting a search engine forum, or asking someone you
consider to be an expert. An excellent place to find search
engine advice is http://www.searchengineforums.com [HELP! and
New Member Forum].
(So what did *I* do? I just submitted one new page to the major
search engines. This page has links to all of the other new
pages, too, so the search engine spiders should eventually index
all of my new content. I visited searchengineforums first,
obviously!)
5: DON'T FORGET PAY-PER-CLICK SEARCH ENGINES!
Add more keywords to your various pay-per-click accounts. This
is a great way to make new content available, quickly. (You just
have to wait for keyword-approval by the pay-per-click
administrators).
Choose profitable keywords (high demand, low supply), identified
when you began creating new content. But, as you pay for each
click, it's important that you only get clicks from your
potential customers; so choose your keywords, title &
description carefully.
===== Big Side Bar ===== Don't know what Pay-per-click search
engines are? They are search engines, like GoTo, that allow you
to choose how highly your site ranks for a particular keyword.
So you make a bid on a keyword. And if your bid is highest, your
site features highest on that search engine's ranking, for that
keyword. And for each click your listing generates, you pay the
amount that you bid to the search engine.
Pay-per-click search engines are proving to be an excellent way
to get extra traffic. Especially when you consider that results
from GoTo, the main pay-per-click, feed into highly-placed
sponsored links on many of the major search engines. ===== Big
Side Bar =====
To learn much, much more about pay-per-click search engines
visit this excellent site:
http://www.PayPerClickSearchEngines.com/
6: FIND OTHER PROMOTION SOURCES
Search engines are not the only way to promote your site. There
are webmaster resource sites, freebie sites, and even Britney
Spears fanclub sites, all of which depend on new content! You
name it, there's a site resource dedicated to it!
So use your favorite search engine to discover these resources,
and check out their linking policy. Then, if possible, get a
link! (You may even want to visit some of the links on the
resource site, and get links from those sites too!)
With some persistence, this should bring you a lot of
well-targeted traffic. (Free Sites, for example, get most of
their traffic from one such resource: The Free Site -
http://www.thefreesite.com )
7: WRITE AN ARTICLE
Writing an article (like this one) is a great way to promote
your new content. There are so many sites willing to accept
articles, and so many editors willing to publish them in their
newsletters. Just write about your new content (but not about
your site), making it interesting and informative to a general
audience. Then, in the author-byline, refer to your new content,
and provide a link to it.
For example, I found a great site, Find Sticky, just from
reading an interesting article about sticky content, written by
the site's webmaster. I enjoyed the article and checked the
author bylines to see who wrote it, then visited his site -
http://www.findsticky.com
===== Side Bar ===== Don't know how to write an article? Just
write about what you actually do, and the sites that you visit.
Then read a few good articles on 'how to write an article', and
compose away! It *isn't* difficult, and it can be very rewarding
(not least because of the contacts you make with those that
actually publish your articles!) ===== Side Bar =====
The following sites accept free articles for publication:
http://www.ezinearticles.com http://www.ideamarketers.com
http://www.marketing-seek.com http://www.certificate.net
http://www.web-source.net http://www.theukmarketer.com
http://www.MakingProfit.com/articles
8: GET VIRAL
Viral marketing is that elusive creature that can literally,
*literally* create a STAMPEDE of traffic to your site; just on
the continued recommendation of others. Think Am-I-Hot-or-Not?
or Hotmail or Hampsterdance or ICQ or Napster...!
So how do you go achieve viral marketing?
Simple! Come up with a completely original, innovative, easy-to-
use, easy-to-talk-about Wow!-of-a website... OR
Try one of these more common easier-to-achieve approaches: -
allow visitors to create virtual greeting cards on your site -
create free ebooks that include content (or articles) from your
site, and then heavily promote the free ebooks - put free e-mail
on your site - put 'recommend-this-site' links on your site -
etcetera
Back to the article from Find Sticky. I actually found that
article in a newsfeed from Moreover! It seems that if you write
articles on a weekly basis, then it's possible to get your
articles syndicated via Moreover. So, with no effort from you
(apart from writing regular articles) you can get a link to your
site (and your article) on hundreds, even thousands of other
websites! http://w.moreover.com/site/publishers/index.html
As for Moreover - the newsfeed company - a link to their site
goes on *all* syndicated content. Clever, eh!?
~ ~ ~ Viral marketing brings more traffic to your site than any
other method! But it's a lot easier talking about it than doing
it!
BONUS: WRITE A PRESS RELEASE
Writing a press release is a good idea, but only if your site
redesign *is* newsworthy - and only you know that! - your
release will be pretty much ignored, otherwise. If you insist on
writing a release, why not submit it to PRWeb
(http://www.prweb.com). They check the releases before
submitting them to interested parties. They'll reject your
release if it isn't properly written (or newsworthy). They do
all of this for free, too!
CONCLUSION:
You've worked so hard on developing your website further, with
new content or a site redesign. And now you need to work just as
hard to promote this new content! So get a promotion plan, and
work through it, and then continually promote, promote, promote!
Enjoy your journey
About the author:
Steve Nash is webmaster of http://shoptour.co.uk - a new-look UK
shopping directory: find shopping sites quickly AND save money.
He also edits a newsletter called Promote! Promote! Promote!
Subscribe by sending a blank e-mail to
mailto:pppromote@getresponse.com
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