Web Site Promotion and Internet Marketing (Part 2)

This is part two of a two-part guide. Please click here to visit part one!

In the first part we dealt with the basic concepts of how to setup the foundation of our new online venture, by finding and building upon a profitable niche, and making our content easy to understand and easy to categorize with some basic SEO practices.

The second part of this guide will assume you have optimized your website and content and that you are ready to begin spreading the word and attract customers. Bear in mind that opening the flood-gates too early is a fantastic way to ensure that potential customers will never return to your website ever again. I recommend taking your time and making sure your website is rock-solid before you begin marketing in earnest.

Social-bookmarking and web 2.0 platforms are the revelation of the last decade. The reason an important part of Internet Marketing revolves around these trends is due to two simple reasons:

• The sheer volume of people who use them
• If done correctly, and if what you have to say is engaging enough, word of mouth will do a large part of your marketing for you.

Are you surprised to find out that many individuals and companies make a living with Facebook or Youtube? I didn't think so! And while this is not our ultimate goal, we are marketing our website after-all, there is no reason why we shouldn't tap into these resources.

I usually find that the greatest mistake that people make is the assumption that bookmarking everything, is better than bookmarking specific things. I truly believe that some self-proclaimed gurus are shooting themselves in the foot when they claim that "a backlink is a backlink". In theory I can see why: Whether or not the content is interesting it will still be crawled and provide a valuable path for crawlers to access your website, possibly increasing the rate at which your hosted content is indexed in a search engine. In practice however, you are flooding the web and offering your potential customers sub-par content -- the collateral of which I need not explain. 

So, in keeping in line with my ethic of gradual whitehat Internet marketing I recommend the following procedure. 

1. Create engaging content of interest related to your niche, this content should be generated with the sole purpose of being link-bait for relevant traffic.
2. Use one of several free or commercial tools to make this process easier. In an ideal world you should do this manually, but I'm aware many of us simply don't have the time.
3. Support you bookmarks, engage with your readers and answer comments.
4. Promote other peoples' work. What goes around comes around.

By far my favorite free method of marketing my projects. Article marketing is an amazing return on investment -- and if you don't believe me, you might ask the incredible amount of article directories that have sprouted up (you're looking at one!) to cater to this new demand.

Why the high demand? Google seems to absolutely love links from authority article directory domains, and I'm inclined to agree with them. Instead of a wordy sales pitch, article writers must provide information and benefit to the reader beyond their own ambitions. This method of marketing works for everyone. Readers are informed or entertained and businesses provide a legitimate service, improve their search engine rankings and generate more traffic.

There are various techniques that increase the efficiency and power of article marketing, however. Here are a number of them:

• Link Wheels! - Tie your articles together strategically (check the link to the right for more information).
• Posting articles on separate domains - Try to spread articles on the same topic on different domains. There are plenty of options.
• Focus on quality and relevant links - Google loves and recognizes knowledgeable hubs and rewards them with trust. Through trial and error I've come to the conclusion that articles of around 800 words work best, make sure all your links point to relevant content!

To many, monitoring how a "link empire" is growing is a vital part of search engine ranking. To me, this is a natural process that derives from everything we've discussed thus far. To others link popularity is a free-for-all that can be manipulated and twisted to ones advantage with blackhat tools such as comment scraping and profile nuking. I advise against these techniques due to the fact that Google can, and will penalize sites that are caught abusing this system. Use these services at your own risk!

Having said that, manual link building such as directory submission undoubtedly has its benefits. Make sure you vary your submission information to avoid being tagged as a spammer!

There are many advantages to using premium advertising campaigns such as Google Adwords. You are guaranteed targeted traffic that has a high probability of converting. I simply don't have the time to go over how to ensure a healthy ROI (return on investment) with these services, but I advice using them when you are confident you can provide a service or product that is desirable. Otherwise it is a waste of money.

For more information regarding advertising campaigns, please visit this link.

Thank you for having stuck with this guide! I hope you've found it informative and I wish you the best on your next campaign. Please let me know how it goes on the comment module!

Thoog.