Article in SEM

Alright, here I’m going to outline a few ways that you can market your website for free. That’s right - for free! There are some advantages and disadvantages of this, but I’ve found mild success in these. This bring traffic to your site, and sometimes targeted traffic. However, this, traffic, is only one component. You need a good design and good content.

The first method of free advertising is directories. There are hundreds, thousands even, of directories across the internet made by webmasters trying to make a quick buck. I’d suggest staying away from paid directories, but free directories: chances are they won’t hurt. Submit to directories if they’re free, particularly niche directories specific to your topic. It’s up to you If you want to submit to directories that require a reciprocal link (a link back) but if you don’t, that’s fine: there are hundreds of non-reciprocal directories that are more than happy to accept your link for free.

Market on related sites, forums in particular. This is very helpful if what you’re marketing is a forum of sorts as you get people who are interested in both the topic and niche you‘re marketing and are interested in posting on website forums. Be sure not to spam or excessively advertise it. However, you can place links in your signatures on most forums - and while this sometimes counts as a backlink, the best part is that it will bring visitors to your forum. If the users on the forum in question see your link after reading a good, constructive post, their bound to visit your site, forum or not, especially if it is a related website. Be sure to include strong, descriptive anchor text.

You can also do a link exchange. This is one of the oldest way of advertising your site for free. Trade links with other webmasters who run similar websites, this way, both of you benefit.

Another useful tool, albeit one that is not well know, is topsites. There are various websites across the net that are topsites and contain lists of sites that are the “top” of their category. These such sites care both specific and vague depending on the site, but you’re bound to be able to find one on your particular niche. In most cases, users can vote for your site, which then pushes you higher up the list, towards the top. This is a good tool to bring you in some extra traffic, many times highly targeted.

Social networks is a great way to generate huge amounts of traffic. The downfall here is that it is often untargeted. Myspace is the primary network I’m speaking of here - if you have a site that people, namely teens, like, you’re bound to have success. Such high success sites include proxies, media sites, forums, graphics and several other topics.

The last form of marketing I’m going to briefly highlight is viral marketing. Word of mouth. Make your site something great, give it content that users will love and come back for - content that will make them tell their friends about.