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8 ways to promote new content on your website
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!
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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!
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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!
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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.shtml
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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!!
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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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!)
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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