WEB/DIGITAL Best way to promote a new site

[Toiletcake]

How would you go about promoting and driving traffic to your new web site? I am talking about day 1 forward. I understand there is a process getting the site indexed so Google pics it up. I am not to savy on Internet marketing so I figured I would start here with my research.

Steve

 

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[CRBFL]

It really depends on the content of your site and your goals. Are we talking about a personal blog, e-commerce site, affiliate marketing landing page? You have the whole spectrum from just writing good content to Black Hat SEO. Hell yesterday I found someone selling 10,000 unique hits. I guess another thing to think about is, what purpose does your traffic serve? All you looking for huge numbers of visitors so that you can justify selling ad space or do you need conversions for PPA or PPC campaigns?

 

[Toiletcake]

This would be an e-commerce site. I am looking for traffic to purchase what I am offering for sale. I was talking to a friend that knows more about the subject and he said the folowing,

"The way to get listed in 24 hrs. is to get ur link on a pr6 page. Because pr6 and higher are spidered by googles search engine once every 24 hrs. Pr3-pr6 take about 3-7 days pr1-pr3 take about 7-21 days or more. But even if you are spidered by google in the early days it really wouldn't matter because you would be ranked in the 300th position. Because your small amount of links would be outweighed by the other guys. We can start to see results in about 2-8 months. Its best to get started When the site goes live. Even if its not fully finished. So when it is finished we can already have 1 foot in the door"

Does this sound accurate?

Steve

 

[thenewguy25]

This would be an e-commerce site. I am looking for traffic to purchase what I am offering for sale. I was talking to a friend that knows more about the subject and he said the folowing,

"The way to get listed in 24 hrs. is to get ur link on a pr6 page. Because pr6 and higher are spidered by googles search engine once every 24 hrs. Pr3-pr6 take about 3-7 days pr1-pr3 take about 7-21 days or more. But even if you are spidered by google in the early days it really wouldn't matter because you would be ranked in the 300th position. Because your small amount of links would be outweighed by the other guys. We can start to see results in about 2-8 months. Its best to get started When the site goes live. Even if its not fully finished. So when it is finished we can already have 1 foot in the door"

Does this sound accurate?

Steve

Okay, A pr6 site will get you indexed but it will not matter much when it come to ranking. The easiest way to start (especially if your site hasn't launched) You will need to start writing articles about your product and posting them on one of the three top article sites (ezinearticles, goarticles, and articlecity) These sites have a high page rank and will be your first back links. This will also help you get more one way links by people posting your articles on their sites with your bio box. You should do at least 10 articles over the first 2-3 weeks.
Next, you need to pick a link exchange site. There are many different ones out there. I find that the ones that build link circles or 3 way links work best (site 1 links to site2 which links to site3 which links to site 1, you will have lots of links with out linking to each site directly). This is how you get targeted keywords
These are set and forget, the most work you will do after this, is writing new articles linking to the new pages you ad to your site.
The next step is to join related forums or social networks. For the forums put your site url in the sig as a link with a keyword. Post useful info to the forums and you get free 1 way links. For the social networks (squidoo, myspace, Direct Matches, Yuwie, etc) build a page around your website with links to various pages. The more networks you join, the more links.
You can also build a customer base on these sites by adding friends or contacts and inviting them to view your site. The easiest way to get them to your site is to ask them for advice or an opinion:
(hey[name]
i just built a site about____________, I would love for you to check it out and let me know what you think.
Thanks for your time
[yourname]
If you need me to go into more detail, just send me a pm or reply to this post. I will be glad to answer your questions.
Jay:smxF:

 

[Jonleehacker]

There are many different ones out there. I find that the ones that build link circles or 3 way links work best (site 1 links to site2 which links to site3 which links to site 1, you will have lots of links with out linking to each site directly).

With all respect newguy this is very dangerous advice to give. 3 way link schemes are very easy for Google to pick up and will often end up getting your site banned. Usually one of the 3 sites will end up being "caught" by Google since they will overdue their linking and then Google will de-index every connected site. I've had it happen to me when I was inexperienced and looking for shortcuts to high rankings.

The best advice I have now for link building is go slowly and carefully select the highest quality sites to get links from. Here's a section of an article that I wrote about it:

Go to Google and Enter Your Money Phrase

With the SEO FireFox Toolbar turned on and Google showing 100 results per page, then go to the 3rd page and view results 301 - 400 for your term.

Look for:

* A title tag that is properly optimized for your term
* A .com domain
* A nice clean URL, no dynamic variable names
* An aged article
* An article (and page) without or with few, outbound links

Be picky!

When you find the right page, email or call on the phone and offer to buy a permanent link or create a reciprocal link.

It really only takes 3 or 4 high quality, well themed links to rank for most phrases if you website is well architected and properly themed.

 

[Jorge]

Dont forget to make comments on blogs and websites related to your market leaving the url as your signature

 

[biophase]

I just went through this and am still going through this. In fact, I wrote about some of my results on my blog last week. I just started an ecommerce site literally on Oct. 20th.

My site was online but not live on October 1st. It was indexed by Google on October 3rd. I was not ranked in the top 1000 for any search terms except my URL (of course). I started the following campaign on October 20th.

Here is what I did to get traffic:

1) Google Adwords - I did the standard paid for clicks. I got about 30 clicks a day. I figured that I just needed to get some traffic onto the site to help boost its SERPs.

2) Article Submission - I wrote 3 articles and submitted then to free article sites with my site's link on them. This was to get me backlinks and also get my keywords out there using the article text.

3) Blogging - Started a blog that complimented my site. I wrote 5 articles on the blog and included the 3 that I submitted to article sites.

4) Giveaways - I decided to have a contest that giveaway my product to one person. To enter all they needed to do was comment on my blog and leave their email. I wanted to capture email addresses this way. My adwords campaign just said, "XXXX for FREE!" and converted very well even when located at the bottom of the google search. I have over 70 entries so far.

5) Blog Contest - I decided to giveaway some money via blogging contests. These contests require a backlink to my store with proper anchor text from a blog to enter. I have about 30 entries here, so 30 more backlinks!

6) TNX.net - I signed up for this to give it a try. Not sure how its going but they've placed an incredible amount of links out there. For example, you can get 12,000 PR0 links for $20/mo. I know that they aren't high quality, but sheesh its $20 for 12,000! Note: you pay more for PR1+ links.

Results?

On Day 1 -
All keywords - not in top 1000

On Day 7 -
Keyword 1 - #526
Keyword 2 - #84
Keyword 3 - not in top 1000
Keyword 4 - #54

on Day 15
Keyword 1 - #79
Keyword 2 - #68
Keyword 3 - #9 (WOW)
Keyword 4 - #61

I'm starting to get organic traffic now. Also, I should note that my blog posts rank high for longtail searches too.

 

[Jonleehacker]

you can get 12,000 PR0 links for $20/mo. I know that they are high quality, but sheesh its $20!

bio, dude, be careful. More is not better, in fact huge numbers of links too quickly is a sure fire way to trigger Google's spam filter (Google hates unnatural linking of any kind - including bought links).

5 - 10 new links a week max, especially if you are distributing articles as well. Go for quality, meaning buy PR4 instead of many PR1 or 0. That way you should avoid some of the 'bad neighbour' sites that are in TNX.net

Slow and steady wins the race & Quality over quantity are the linker's mottos!

 

[biophase]

bio, dude, be careful. More is not better, in fact huge numbers of links too quickly is a sure fire way to trigger Google's spam filter (Google hates unnatural linking of any kind - including bought links).

5 - 10 new links a week max, especially if you are distributing articles as well. Go for quality, meaning buy PR4 instead of many PR1 or 0. That way you should avoid some of the 'bad neighbour' sites that are in TNX.net

Slow and steady wins the race & Quality over quantity are the linker's mottos!

Thanks, I don't think they all get switched on at the same time. But I am distributing my links from PR0-PR3 sites. I didnt use my points on 12,000 PRzeros.

 

[thenewguy25]

With all respect newguy this is very dangerous advice to give. 3 way link schemes are very easy for Google to pick up and will often end up getting your site banned. Usually one of the 3 sites will end up being "caught" by Google since they will overdue their linking and then Google will de-index every connected site. I've had it happen to me when I was inexperienced and looking for shortcuts to high rankings.

The best advice I have now for link building is go slowly and carefully select the highest quality sites to get links from. Here's a section of an article that I wrote about it:



When you find the right page, email or call on the phone and offer to buy a permanent link or create a reciprocal link.

It really only takes 3 or 4 high quality, well themed links to rank for most phrases if you website is well architected and properly themed.

How fast did you build your links? I have been doing this for a little while now and I have not had any of my sites banned. I have a subscription to 3way links which builds your links over time. It is not done all at once. For my sites that are in the system, I only link with people that are in the system (no one from outsede). This is why I said to search for one and did not recomend one. There are sites out there that build links too fast. I generally get 10 -25 links per month on each site. the linking is built slow.
You can find the basic steps i take on jon leger blog: http://jonathanleger.com/
It is the niche case study post. He does everything pretty much the same as I do. I don't use all of the programs he mentions. :coffee:

 

[santiago]

I'm not sure if it is ok to link to other forums - if not, I apologize, remove this. That said, you can go to webmasterworld.com and you'll find tons of information - perhaps a little overwhelming in fact.

To get people to your site, I'd suggest -
1. Buy into some PPC campaigns, Google Adwords is the most popular. Be very careful and there is a whole industry around optimizing ads/keywords.
2. As others suggested - develop some links. Do this slowly and sincerely. I'd shy away from buying into link farms and/or buying links - those can get you in trouble.
3. Write articles and/or blog that gets picked up and directs traffic to you.
4. Write/distribute a press release announcing the site. I had one of my sites take off when the press release got twisted into a front page article in USA Today's money section.

Most important - this is going to be an ongoing process. Monitor your progress, make changes, and keep doing..

Good Luck!

 

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[CactusWren]

PR 101 here, please.

Any favorite press release submission sites? Is the old fashioned media list best?

Thanks.

 

[Diane Kennedy]

Thank you for this thread. I built my site via an optin list, pretty much the old fashioned way (books, media tours, PR articles) . This is very interesting for me.

Cactuswren - I belong to PRNewswire. They come out with the features for each week that editors across the country are looking for. For example, one week in February they may be looking for anything to do with financial education for kids, senior medicine, etc... There are usually 4-5 topics per week. I haven't done one in a while, but what I used to do was put up an article on one of the financial education topics, keeping it right on topic and then give contact info. Sometimes my article would just get picked up, often I'd get a call from AP, LA Times, WSJ, Bloomberg, one of the big boys who would then interview me to use as a quote in an article.

I've had as many as 2,000 sign up in less than 24 hours off of one of those articles. I find it's better than just doing a press release because you're on topic for exactly what is going to be pushed nationally during that period.

 

[AndrewG]

Diane, how much does that cost?

 

[mglshark]

PR Web also does the same, they will help you write the press release as well. Different packages, the $80 one is considered the best bang for the buck. They also sell "how to" press release book as well.

You can also get people from form groups at Facebook as well. Put your site in DMOZ (free). Any sell for .99 cents special info reports on E Bay, with links taking them back to your site. About you page on E Bay can have your links as well, just follow their guidelines.

Some others I heard / done - Squido, Delicious, Stumble, RSS feeds, Pay a Post, Forum / Chat board sign links (after putting in good info). Just don't overdo and look spammy.

Finally your business card - do you promote your site to people you know and meet where you live? How about Craigs List using the free special reports? How about any time you sell something used on Amazon / E Bay - put a PS on the invoice / email with link (if it relates) "for more info come to my site" - again follow the posted guidelines they have.

Some great ideas here - keep them coming!


mglsharkson

 

[CactusWren]

Thanks Diane! Thanks shark! Great stuff.