Learn the top tips for promoting a new website and blast yourself up the ranks of Google.
For many people, once they’ve invested their time in building and launching a new website, they suddenly realise something: it’s invisible!
Well, not literally invisible – but that’s how a fresh website with no marketing and promotion behind it can feel. So the next step is to find ways to make it as glaringly visible and accessible to a target audience as possible.
Many methods and techniques can be used to achieve ‘being put on the map’, so without further ado, let’s dive in and explore them…
1. Create Awesome, Compelling Content
While there are a number of key aspects when it comes to website promotion, it arguably pays to begin with your site itself. Why? Because visitors – especially the paying kind – will be making all kinds of snap judgements about what you have to offer the second they arrive.
If you’re looking to attract optimal traffic, you’ve got to ensure that your content (copy, blog, images, theme, etc) is awesome. More specifically, the content itself needs to be useful, insightful and user-friendly. What it definitely doesn’t want to be is vague, cluttered, and a nightmare to navigate.
Strive for ‘professional and inviting’ – a place where visitors will actually want to hang out for a while. Tip: Before you approach more outside/secondary methods of marketing, like social media, ask some friends for an honest critique of your site.
2. SEO, SEO, SEO!
That title may be a tad dramatic, but such is the power of SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Effective employment of this marketing technique will have search engine’s grinning, hopefully from ear to ear. The reward: Higher placement in search results, leading to the more traffic.
Top content creators will tell you that SEO is a pretty vast topic. Because it’s the truth. But that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily difficult to implement. By simply creating attractive, useful content (with concise, well-written, keyword-mindful copy, user-friendly navigation, etc), you’re already on your way.
Tip: Your website’s content can be make or break! So remember, when a search engine crawler finds your pages, aspects like grammar, style, and any words pertaining to your area of business and location, will be thoroughly analyzed.
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3. Get (Very) Social
Social media is more than just a buzzword – it’s become a way of life, connecting family, friends and businesses. Great website content is likely to deliver decent traffic to your site – depending on how competitive your field is – but without social media promotion also in tow, you’re missing out big time.
If billions of people throughout the world have social media accounts, then social media – across all its various mainstream channels including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram – is your way of connecting with an entire ocean of potential customers.
Social media posts allow you to introduce your business to new customers, while keeping new and existing ones up to speed with general news, product updates and special offers. Social media platforms are also excellent for building customer rapport/trust since followers can gain greater company insight, and also interact more casually through comments.
Don’t forget to include social media buttons on your website so that visitors can easily follow your various platforms with one click. And remember, while it is important to keep social media posts fairly regular, customers will soon tire if they’re not useful and relevant.
Tip: Another way to establish loyalty is to encourage website visitors to sign up for useful information (like a newsletter) in return for their email address. Over time, you can create a large email list, resulting in greater repeat traffic.
4. Extend Your Connections
With the social media side of website promotion addressed, you could try to extend your reach even further. You want the world – or at least your local community or a niche portion of the internet – to know about your brand and products, right?
And a great way to do that is by contacting others to share information (through articles, video reviews, links, etc) about your services. For instance, you could contact a local journalist to write about your new café, contact a website to post an article about your business, or contact a social media influencer to review one of your products.
This kind of method can involve a fee, but internet marketing can sometimes be achieved through simple favours. For instance, if you run a pet supplies company, instead of merely asking a popular pet advice blog to post an article about your site, you could offer to post an article about their site in return. It’s mutually beneficial, with only the cost of time.
Tip: Remember that building connections with other websites and influencers, etc, is also great for SEO. This is because, for example, when other sites post a link (to your site) on their blog, search engine crawlers take notice of this.
5. Explore Advertising Channels
If you’ve reached this step, you’ve already created great, SEO-rich content on your website, are working to build up your social media presence, and may have built connections with other sites, etc, to further promote your brand.
If you want to take it a step further, the only thing remaining is to get involved in some advertising (preferably the online variety given the internet’s reach advantages). While advertising can be achieved for free in some cases, it tends to be on a paid basis.
It is advisable to now take five, however; seriously ask yourself if advertising is right for you. Sure, advertising has the potential to significantly increase traffic on any website – but there’s a lot more to advertising than just picking a place, clicking a button, and getting your ad posted.
How you go about advertising your site is absolutely crucial. It needs to be well thought out, taking into account your budget and projections for viewership exposure and profitability. (And this: Is the juice actually worth the squeeze?)
When it comes to advertising, search engine and social media ads are frequently utilized by all manner of websites, ranging from SMBs to behemoth corporations. The why is easy: People can’t get enough of search engines and social media!
Tip: If you have financial concerns about paid advertising, why not turn your attention back to social media marketing for a while? There are many ways to gain a surge in followers, such as by running offers, competitions and free giveaways.
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