5 Ways to Proactively Promote Your Website

A few months ago, I posted an article on my blog titled Did You Advance The Ball Today? In a nutshell, the article was all about doing something proactive every single day to advance your business.

 

You see, I'm a proactive marketer. I believe in trying to make things happen, as opposed to being reactive - waiting for something to happen.

 

In my opinion, success is achieved by doing lots of little things consistently over time. Doing the little things over and over and over again.

 

So what are the types of things you should be doing every single day? Well, we all have different ways of promoting our business. But these are a few of the methods I use everyday to proactively promote my various websites:

 

 

Out of all the marketing methods I use, article marketing is my absolute favorite. Why? Well, there are a variety of reasons. But the main reason is because article marketing allows you to laser target your traffic to the nth degree.

 

 Here's how: When you write an article and submit it to authority sites like SiteProNews or Promotion World, people go searching for those articles based on the subject matter they're interested in.

 

For example, bloggers seek out and read articles about blogging. Techies read articles about technology, and people interested in search engine optimization read articles about SEO, and so on and so forth.

 

The point is, people read about things that interest them. That means if you write articles about specific topics, the people reading your articles are already pre-targeted.

 

 

You've no doubt heard the expression "there's power in numbers." And social networking sites like FaceBook, Twitter, MySpace and a host of other social networking sites have a huge number of users - tens of millions, in fact. So, how can you use those numbers to your advantage?

 

Well, if you use social networking sites strictly for business purposes like I do, you can quickly build up a network of serious business contacts, and keep them informed of your business activities. For example, notification of new product launches, special sales, updates, announce seminars and teleconferences, etc.

 

I'm a Twitter user, and one of the ways I use Twitter to generate free traffic to my website is by posting free marketing tips for others to benefit from. I also post links to my latest articles.

 

Giving away something of value for free is a highly effective marketing technique, and an excellent way to build up your credibility and develop followers - as well as grow your mailing list. In addition, whenever I make a new blog post, I post a link to it on Twitter.

 

 

Optimizing your website should be one of the first things you do, after building your site. Focus your attention on basic SEO techniques. For example, make sure your title tags contain your primary keywords.

 

Also, make sure your description and keyword tags are all properly optimized. And don't repeat your keywords more than twice. Any more than that could be interpreted as spamming by the search engines, and your website could be penalized as a result. Using different variations of your keywords is the best approach.

 

Believe it or not, these simple but basic steps really do make a difference. One of my favorite resources for learning basic search engine optimization techniques is Jill Whalen's, HighRankings.com.

 

 

Search engines love blogs. Why? Because of their constantly changing, high content value. Also, relevancy. Relevant keywords is one of the primary reasons why blogs do so well in the search engines.

 

If you're not yet blogging and you'd like to give blogging a try, both Blogger and WordPress make it relatively easy to get started.

 

Okay, once you have a blog, what should you blog about? That's really up to you. I'm knowledgeable about marketing, so that's what I blog about. My advice: Blog about something you're passionate about. Blog about what you know.

 

 

5. Topical forums are an excellent way for you to promote your business. And the possibilities are endless. Name the topic, and there's probably a forum for it.

 

For example, if you were a virtual assistant targeting small business owners, you could join small business forums like StartupNation or Small Business Ideas forum.

 

The key to having success with forums is participation. You have to participate in the various discussions to get free exposure for your business.

 

So how does participating in forum discussions benefit your business? On most forums you are allowed to promote your business with something called a "signature file."

 

What's a signature file? A signature or "sig" file is basically a little advertisement (similar to a classified ad) about your business that is automatically attached to every forum post you make.

 

Anyway, the more you participate in forum discussions, the more members get to know and trust you - especially if you provide solid, useful advice. As a consequence, forum members as well as lurkers (people who visit forums but aren't members) will read your sig file and click on it.

 

I should mention that in order to receive a significant number of click-throughs, your sig file needs to be interesting and well-written. You need to give people a compelling reason to click-through to your site.

 

For example, this is one of my sig file:

 

"Which Online Services Can You Trust? Find Out Here."

 

Notice how I peak the readers curiosity with a compelling question? By the way, you can find forums that you're interested in by going to your favorite search engine and typing in a topic of your choosing followed by the word "forums." For example, "entertainment forums."