Getting Publicity for New Web Sites

I love making graphics. If I had my druthers I'd sit and do that all day, but time is a valuable resource and it can't all be spent on pleasure.

If you want your site to be a success you need to spend as much time promoting it as developing it. Once a site is established you can back off some if you're happy with the level of traffic, but getting people to a new site that has few links pointing to it is a real challenge.

You should use the strategies listed here before you submit your new site to search engines. Why? Some search engines won't list your site if there are no links already pointing to it. It's a tactic some search engines use in an attempt to keep low quality sites from populating their data base. Granted, most search engines do not do that, but most do use link popularity to varying degrees. If your site has no links, it will have no link popularity, so your chances of ranking high are greatly diminished.

Submit your site to directories but hold off on search engines until you get at least a few links pointing to your site. That way it won't be left out of search engines that don't list sites without some links pointing to them, and your site will have a better chance of being listed higher with links pointing to it when it does get listed.

Of course, you can always buy advertising and bid at pay-per-click search engines, but the thrust of this article assumes you are looking for free methods to protote your site. Here are a few free strategies beyond search engine promotion that I use to get new sites off the ground.

Apply for awards that link to the winners. Below are a few web sites that list award sites to get you started. Should any (or all!) of these sites go dead, just do a Google search for award sites, there are hundreds or maybe thousands of award givers, and dozens of sites that list them.
WebSite-Awards.net
AwardSites.com
Absolut Project
Treasures of the Web
Avoid applying for awards where the award giver doesn't link out to the award winner. These are just webmasters looking for easy links. The awards are purely vanity awards and will do nothing to bring traffic to your site.
You can also offer your own award. Most sites that win awards link them to the site that gave them the award. Before jumping into it, decide what type of sites you'd like to award and draw up your own list of selection criteria. For best results, try to find an unexploited niche of sites offering a particular type of content. If your award is designed for a niche group, your chances of them accepting the award and linking it to your site are very good. The niche you identify should be a part of your content also, for credibility.
Unless you already have a popular site, you'll probably need to start small, awarding home pages similar to your own. Not only do you get a link from a page you probably wouldn't have, you get to make someone happy at the same time. It's really a win/win situation.
This isn't as good a strategy as it used to be, but it does still work when you find the right awards. Unfortunately, the oversaturation of awards with little importance, and especially that of meaningless junk awards, have diminished the effectiveness of this strategy.
Frequent newsgroups in an area you have a topic interest and some expertise. Answer or ask questions and include your URL in your signature file. A good post in a popular group can bring in from a few dozen to hundreds of new visitors in one day.
Same as above, only for discussion boards, blogs, and discussion lists.
Hunt down reciprocal links. If you're just starting out and haven't developed much traffic yet, offer to give well-established sites a front page link for a normal link on their link page. Tell them you'll leave it there for 30-60 days and then move their link to your link page. As an alternative, you could use my random content script to rotate front page links and offer them a front page rotating link plus a permanent link on your link page in exchange for a link on their link page. The key is to offer them a better positioned link than you're asking for because of the difference in traffic levels.
Submit original articles to ezines. Include your web site address in the resource/credit box. Having your article in front of thousands of eyes at once creates a great traffic spike. In my best experience, my traffic jumped by 7,000 new visitors in one day. Not a bad spike at all!
Start your own ezine/newsletter. By sending your newsletter regularly to people that want to hear from you, you increase the number of repeat visitors, you increase the number of referrals, and eventually increase the links to your site and your sales if you have a commercial site. If you publish an ezine, you can also find other publishers to trade ads spots with.
Run a contest and submit it to contest sites. People looking for contests aren't the best prospects for sales, but it will increase traffic and some of them will look over what else you offer besides the contest. Here are a couple contest listing sites to get you started, you can find more with a Google search:
FreebieList.com
FreeContests.com
Sign guestbooks. This isn't real productive, but if you're already there and just starting out, it can't hurt and you never know, if the right person reads it and visits your site it could lead to more than you expected.

You can have the greatest site or product in the world but it's doomed to failure if you fail to realize the importance of marketing it. Yes, it's work, grab a favorite beverage and dig in!

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