Everybody knows how to market your website. And everybody knows how to tell you the "secrets" to top search engine listings. All they want is $29.95... or $29.95 a month!

Everybody lies. Well, not quite everybody, but everybody who wants your $29.95! Marketing a website is WORK, and it relies on the same time honored principles of marketing that have always applied. Yes, there are some newer tools to use, but traditional rules still apply, just as they do for all business practices.

Tips here are aimed at starting a website with very little. If you have the money to hire a promotional expert, you do not need this (it will cost you WAY more than $29.95!). Guidelines about effectiveness times and reasonable expenditures are based on the assumption that you do not have money to lose, and that risks and costs must be low, relying on work instead of money.

There are all kinds of instructional aids on how to market a website. Many are written by industry recognized experts. The problem is, they only know how to do what they do for a living, and what they do is cater to large corporations. What they do, they do well, but when a low budget startup owner reads their advice, the end result is not going to be a sense of empowerment or of having been educated. The result is an overwhelming sense of despair as they read through instructions that flash dollar signs behind their eyeballs at an ever increasing rate.

These instructions assume you have NO money, or very little money to invest in marketing your site. We assume that you are starting a business because you NEED money, not because you already have it and just need to know how to spend it wisely! So we focus on hard work, and a variety of economical strategies to slowly build a solid customer base over time.

If you need more information on website building, see Building a Webstore on a Shoestring, and Basics of Building a Website. If you need to purchase website services, please take a look at what we can offer at Adventure Tech-Web. We work hard to keep things affordable and functional.

Once your website is built, uploaded and functioning in the way you want it to, you have to announce to the world the great things you can do for them. An unannounced website is like an unlisted phone number. Fine if you don't want anyone to find you, but deadly if you do.

A word of caution. Marketing tactics for websites take time. Without aggressive marketing and generally a lot of money behind it, it will take three to six months to begin to pull in orders, and eight months to a year to just know whether or not your baby is going to survive. So give it a year before you throw in the towel, and keep your day job until you know it will keep working. The web can be a slow moving vehicle to market in, but it DOES gain momentum, and once you get going the results can be amazing. We know this from personal experience. We have done it not once, but several times ourselves, and we have helped our clients do the same thing.

So if it is so slow, you want to get your site registered and promoted as soon as possible, right? Yes and no. You want to start the marketing process as soon as your site is READY to be viewed, and READY to be a useful tool. Unless you are submitting to Yahoo or another directory that wants all your t's crossed and i's dotted, then you can submit your site as soon as you have usable content in place. But if you do that with some directories or listing services, they will just toss out your listing. Read the rules and you'll know.

It is very much like opening a storefront in town. You want to make sure your store is functioning on a basic level at least before you start running ads or have your grand opening. A "Coming Soon" announcement on a page or two won't hurt if your visitors can still get the most commonly needed items. This is true of all but those few directories that have policies for requiring things to be completely finished. Also if you want to enter any contests or competitions it has to be totally finished, with no under construction pages, or promises of things coming.

Please do not upload a website with nothing but your business name and no product listing or instructions for people to get what you offer. At the very least your website must have a good description of what you do, and instructions for how to get it, plus good contact information to reach you by email, snail mail, and phone. Less than this is an insult to the person who just decided that out of all the search engine hits they could choose from they would try you, and then waited for your page to download. They won't come back when you are better prepared, you lost them permanently.

If you sell products, your website is more harm than help if you do not list products on it. People will go away if it does not have products listed by name and type, and a price - even if it is a price range. They need to know that you have a standard mode of operating and pricing, and if you don't list what it is or how much, they feel uneasy trusting you. A shopping cart is a great tool to help you sell much better, but you CAN sell products without one. You CANNOT sell them without detailed listings. The web is all about information, and people come to your site to get information. If you do not list information that they feel you can easily put out there (after all everyone else does), then they will feel you are unprepared in all your business dealings. Again, they won't come back, you lost them for good.

So make sure your site has the minimum degree of function for what you are selling, and that it will actually serve to gain you customers instead of losing them before you publicize it in any way. Search engine registration can go into effect in as little as a few hours, or as long as six months, depending on the engine, how they manage it, and how busy they are. Don't count on lag time though, be prepared for hits right away, even if they don't come.

So once your website is functioning the way you feel it needs to in order to be useful to your audience, it is time to announce it. If you are waiting for the big secret to setting your website apart from the masses, I cannot give you that. There are general guidelines though about what does and does not work.

What Does Not Work or is a Waste of Time

1. Submission Services. In general, these are a waste of time. With the one exception listed below. Many search engines do not accept auto-submissions, and automatic services (or even services that promise to submit your site monthly) do not personalize the listing so it may not be working in your best interests.

2. Frequent submissions. This is NOT necessary. Unless your site undergoes domain name changes, new section additions, or other major changes, re-submission is not necessary because once your site is in the listing it is regularly spidered anyway (checked on by a robot). Some experts will tell you otherwise, but we have proven this with our stats tracking. The search engines that don't do this aren't usually big enough players to count anyway. Some of the big ones TELL you not to resubmit!

3. Coding tricks to increase your rank in the listings. The so called "secrets" used by people who tell you there is one are either commonplace tactics (which everybody uses so it gives you no advantage), or they are things that will get your listing kicked out because the spider detects them as dishonest or unethical. Invisible links or text, meta tags for unrelated content, words repeated too many times on your pages, etc, are all things that raise a red flag and hurt your listing.

4. Listing with search engines and nothing else. Search engines are just the beginning.

5. Free Classified sites. Your ad does not stay on long enough to have any effect, and it just results in your inbox filling with SPAM.

6. Search Engine Optimization. Ok, I'll get in trouble for saying this, but for a shoestring startup, trying to rank in the search engines against the big guys is not realistic! You'll end up focusing your energies on what is NOT the key issue, and you'll waste time trying to fight a fight you cannot win. There are other MUCH better strategies to put your limited funds and time behind! Make sure your content contains good descriptive text that uses common and alternate keywords for your site, and then focus your energies elsewhere. The people telling you otherwise are usually trying to sell you their service or book.

7. Submitting each page on the site, or even more than one page in a domain. If your page is linked to any other page in the site, then the spider WILL find it. Just run a link validator that checks all the links in your site, or use your server log (if your web host provides reporting) to check for 404 errors (broken links), and then LET the search engine do its job!

Things that Work - When done Right.

1. There is no magic solution. Website marketing is a combination of traditional and contemporary marketing tactics that combine into an overall sensible strategy. No tricks, just persistence and creativity. The best promotion consists of seeking out every potential source to ethically let people know what you have that can meet their needs.

2. I said that auto submission services generally do not work, but I do recommend SelfPromotion.com, because his forms are customized to each search engine or directory, and he gives you instructions for submission for those that require manual submission. He also lists many other sources to submit to. It is a paid service, though you can use it free, you only pay what you think it is worth. Otherwise, there are no shortcuts to simply taking the time to submit your site to each search engine or directory that you want it to go to. You do not need to use a service, every search engine has submission pages that you can find and submit your site (some can be very hard to find!). This is a necessary step, but only the most basic step. Self Promotion is worth using because he gives you the links to all those pages and instructions on how to make it work best.

A search engine is like a telephone directory for the web. It lists addresses and a description for each website that it knows is there. The difference is, if you want to be listed in a telephone directory, you do nothing... you only do something if you DON'T want to be listed. It is the reverse with websites. The search engines and directories only know you are there if you tell them. Each one has a way to do that, and a page, somewhere, that lets you submit a site. Usually you submit, they list, automatically. Some review it first and decide where to put you. Some review your site and deny it a listing... but not many. The submission page can be hard to find, which is one reason I recommend SelfPromotion above. He gives you a pretty comprehensive listing of places to submit to, and gives you the URL for the page that you have to go to in order to submit it (for sites that do not accept auto submissions). You don't have to go looking. The two biggies on his search engine page that you must manually submit to are Yahoo, and Google. And you really want to submit to those, because many search engines contract out their search services, which are provided by Yahoo or Google.

3. Use link exchanges. This is time consuming, but does give you traffic if you are thoughful about it. And links are becoming more important in search engine listings, because Google and some others now count how many sites have links back to your site to determine how good your site really is. Go to sites that might have viewers who are interested in what you sell. In other words, a site reporting on pets may be interested in listing your site for pet supplies. Large and successful sites will not exchange links. They will expect you to pay for advertising. Smaller sites though consider a link exchange a reasonable trade. Be sure you do list their site where it will benefit them. You can also try a link exchange service. There are several free ones. Be sure you choose one though that only exchanges appropriate links! And put information prominantly on your site to invite others to exchange links with you (screen them if you are concerned with suitability).

I'd steer clear of traffic exchange programs that rely on pop-up or pop-under windows to display the links also. Because they will slow down YOUR site, and make your site an annoyance to your visitors.

You can try Banner Explode if you like. Check it out at http://www.supermomunlimited.com/freehits.htm. It is a free program, just perpetuated by people who are willing to post links for other people so they can get their own links posted. Advantage is that it is free and takes very little time to set up. Disadvantage is that you may not approve of the five links you need to place on your website. But you can choose where you put them, and how you list them. If it does not work, then you lost nothing but time and a page on your site.

And be sure to read my article on The Power of Cooperation at http://www.skinnyshoestring.com/sohotools/cooperation.htm.

4. Paid Ads. Depending on how they are done, they can be successful. They are generally most successful when placed in specialty locations rather than general ones. Paying for listings in search engines (by click through, not by impression) will usually be effective (though not all search engines....) Recommend Google Adwords or Overture (NOT Site Match which is expensive and ineffective, just the regular keywords) - but it is EXPENSIVE, and may not be practical for you until your site gains some momentum through other strategies. Paying for ads on a news type website when the ad is not targeted will likely not be effective even though lots of people see it. Targeted ads are the most effective because they reach the people who are looking for you anyway. They are also the most expensive type too. We look for niche sites that offer low cost ads, but which get significant traffic, and pay for ads on those sites, within what we can afford - we paid for one successful ad that cost us $30 per year on a niche site. This has helped increase our traffic and deliver interested visitors. Look for complimentary site content that is not directly competitive.

5. E-Zines. An email newsletter can be effective. Publish news related to your product or service that people want. Set up an "opt in" newsletter, which you have a way of letting people subscribe to. Make sure they can cancel as easily as they can subscribe, and never send it to anyone who did not request it. A good e-zine will have between two and four articles of genuine interest to your audience, and will have ads for your products or business in a way that makes them visible but not so obnoxious that it drives your readers away. You can generally find people who are willing to write for it in exchange for a listing of their business below the article - it is advertising for them too then. You can either run this yourself by creating an email "group" of addresses in your email program (instructions coming soon on our Shoestrings Startup Page!), or you can use a free listserver like Yahoo groups or something similar. There are also paid services which have no ads. Either way, find some eZine Directories and list your eZine there.

6. PayPal Shops and other specialty listings for services you use. If you use a service that offers a free shop listing, use it. Some are more effective than others. With PayPal Shops, you get visitors who are looking to buy. That means your visitors come looking to make a purchase. PayPal shops also reports your weekly traffic. Many services online offer a free listing in their directory along with the service.

7. eBay. Ok, eBay is helpful for some businesses, not for others. Services bomb there. And most items sell for less than they are actually worth on the open market. But if you use eBay for liquidations that can help your business. And you can open an eBay Store (for $16 a month plus sales commissions) if you have regular inventory that you feel could sell there (or predictable drop shipped items). Whether it works depends on what your product is and whether people are looking for it on eBay, and whether they want to pay regular price for it. eBay is also a great place to research current market value of items. Generally items will sell for 10-30% more in a storefront than on eBay. Be careful to follow their rules about linking to your website, and don't expect to use eBay solely as an advertising venue. They want their commission on sales - that is the purpose of their existance, so if your link drives sales away from eBay, it is forbidden.

8. Cross links. If you have more than one site, then you can cross advertise within your own sites. If people trust you for one thing, they are likely to trust you for other things. Cross link with friends also, it helps you both. Many of my sites have a Related Links or Special Links box, in which I place cross links. You can also build a Links page, where you can place links for other businesses.

9. Press releases. You can submit a press release announcing a new site, a change, or an event. These work best when they are sent with a personal note outlining the high points so that anyone who does not want to read a self promoting press release can get the overview quickly and know if it is of interest or not. If you host with iPowerWeb you can access their instructions on writing a press release.

10. Publish in other people's e-zines. Write an article for other publications, and list your URL and a one line description below it. You offer a free article in exchange for your two line ad. People are more likely to click on that ad line because you have just written an article that demonstrates your expertise and helps them feel they can trust you. You can also submit articles to online article databases (try SearchWarp) - be careful about following their guidelines though, and do not make advertising the focus of your article. As a general rule, any article you submit anywhere should be based on sound information, and not on just getting your link out there.

11. Use a signature line. Set up your email software to use a signature. It should be short - usually just your website URL and a one line description to interest people in clicking on the URL.

12. Put your URL on all your business literature - letterhead, envelopes, brochures, and business cards should all have your URL displayed. Some business is generated from customers you have never met, but a lot can come from people who will order from a website on their own time but would not get around to ordering from you personally.

13. Give something away. Now in order for this to be successful you will have to advertise it, either locally or nationally in some way or other, and you will likely have to pay for the ad. But you can run an ad that gives something away, even if it is just a catalog. What you give away can be a fun event or other thing that helps people remember you, and sends them home with someting with your business info on it. Aim for something fun, informational, or useful - but keep it cheap, and don't spend more than you can afford in the hopes that it will bring in enough to pay for it.

You can also trade something in exchange for a link. Give away images with your URL watermarked on them. Exchange services for a link on their site. Give away anything that you can afford to give that will get you some advertising in exchange. And trade for permanent link placement whenever you can.

14. Put meta tags and Alt tags into your web page. Alt tags won't make a lot of difference unless your title page is all graphics. Same with meta tags to a certain extent. It is NOT a magic way to influence search engines! But include them in case the search engine looks for them (include them in your template and you won't have to set them up over and over). Use Alt Tags on your images so if someone has their browser set to not display images (or if your images are blocked for another reason) your site will still be usable. This is especially important if you use image links for your navigation. Alt tags are just a courtesy that do help make your site work for a few people and it helps them trust and appreciate you more.

15. Forget Search Engine Optimization, and Focus on Content. The most important thing you can do to improve your search engine listings is to create good content, with descriptive text. If your product is referred to in two different ways, make sure both ways are listed in your site. For example, this site has the words "small office, home office", but we also include "work at home", "small business", and "business opportunity" as phrases that we use interchangeably with the other ones, because we don't know which of those terms someone will search under. We do not cram the text full of keywords, we use them in context, in a logical and reasonable manner throughout the site. Keywords are the words people are most likely to use when looking for your site. Don't fuss about them, just use them wisely through your content, and make sure that they are all used in an open and direct manner (no hidden text, etc). Good content will ultimately help you more than any other strategy in ranking with any search engine, because the major search engines DO look for metatags, but most will not count keywords in the metatags unless there is content to support their presence in the tag anyway. And if you leave out the metatags, the search engine indexes the site based on the text in your site. So put in good content, backed up with good descriptive text. That is something anyone can do with a little thought, even on extremely tight resources!

16. Make sure your site is easy to navigate, and welcoming to your audience. This is what makes the difference between whether people will just stop by, or whether they will purchase. If it has a personal feel, and if they can contact you directly if they choose, then it is even more successful because people will buy more readily from someone they feel they know a little and like. Bringing in the traffic is just the beginning. Once they get there they need to feel able to trust you to honor an online purchase agreement, or that your information is trustworthy enough to bookmark and come back to.

17. Webrings. A webring is a service that lists you in their directory, and you can move from one site in the directory to the next, hence the name "ring". We have found that they can be a successful way of bringing in small amounts of traffic for certain topics. They won't bring in a flood, but you'll get consistent hits from them, and when you are in the stage of counting visitors one at a time, membership in a webring can help.

18. Specialized Directories and listings. There are a ton of specialty listings online. Do a search on keywords for your site and you will likely find some directories to submit your site to. Make sure they are not just trying to get your email address to SPAM you... They should exist as a resource for people with similar interests, not as a means of preying on you.

19. Start an Affiliate Program. This is no magic solution either. In order for your program to be successful, you have to advertise IT. But the nice thing about it is that once a few successful websites have your link on it, the affiliate program has the potential to bring you customers who would not otherwise know about you. It extends your marketing reach by plugging into the marketing circle of other website owners. Information on starting an affiliate program can be found in our Affiliate Marketing tutorial.

20. Keep advertising to your existing customers. Don't be obnoxious about it, but send email or mailed notices to your existing customers announcing new products, specials, or giving info on how to use your products. Stick flyers or coupons into boxes of items you ship. Include incentives with everything you communicate on a routine basis. Put an extra "tell a friend" coupon in with your marketing materials also, and satisfied customers can help you to advertise to their friends.

21. Host a download link. Some software authors who publish free software cannot afford to keep their own webspace. Free space does not work well for downloads that get a lot of traffic, so there are a couple of software publishers that are always looking for hosts to park their download in. If you want this to work to your advantage, you need to do two things: Ask the software publisher to link to a gateway page on your site instead of directly to the download. That way you can greet the people who are downloading with an ad for your site, or with other ads. This way it can generate traffic for you. Secondly, put a link to that page on your home page, and on any other page in your site where it might be useful. Label it with a name and description that will clearly indicate that it is a free software download and the name of the software. This triggers the search engines to pull up your page on searches for that software, which gets you more traffic. Make sure you have sufficient space and bandwidth to do it though. iPowerWeb offers an excellent hosting service that will answer the need for under $10 a month (REALLY worth it!) unless your site grows explosively, and then they offer more extensive services for higher prices.

22. Perhaps this should have gone at the top of the page - Use Business Cards! Put your business name, slogan, description, logo, and URL on the card. Put other contact info as well. Carry the cards with you everywhere and hand them out to anyone who might be interested. Find stores that have card stands, where you can put a fistfull of cards and restock as needed. People remember you better, and will be more likely to check back later if they have a visual reminder of who you are and what you do.

23. Put a downloadable brochure on your website if you have a product catalog or if you market something that people like to think over. That lets people print out the brochure and mull it over offline. It is a courtesy to your customers and a selling tool that costs you almost nothing. Be sure to put it in PDF format (see the tutorial on making downloadable publications - http://www.skinnyshoestring.com/sohotools/publications.htm for instructions and free software tips) - it is important to use a file format that ANYONE can read, and PDF is the best format for that. This also protects your documents from alteration by most users.

There are, of course, other tactics. Avoid tactics that promise you a ton of traffic. Avoid marketing methods that are in any way unethical, or that assume that you can trick people into buying or paying for something - it will hurt you more in the long run than it will help you. Give your audience good information, good value, and be willing to work hard to let people know you are there. It takes more money to have to keep getting new customers than it does to keep getting repeat sales from satisfied customers.

Generally you will not find a single thing that will market your site. You do each thing that you can do, that is affordable and practical for you and your website, and each one brings in a few more people. A webring may bring in 10-200 people per week. PayPal Shops may bring in 5-100 people per week. Banner exchanges and cross links may bring 10-300 people per week, depending on how much you do. Search engine registration can bring in 20 to 500 people per week (more if you get really popular). And each of these things grows with time. So your long term results are much better than your short term results.

Quality of visitors varies too. If you get hits from people who are just browsing, they are quite different from people who feel they know you ahead of time, or customers who are ready to buy. Visitor to customer (making a purchase) is called the "Conversion Rate". You want good quality hits so that your conversion rate is high. Lots of traffic is not nearly so important as lots of SALES. This is one reason that affiliate programs no longer pay for clickthroughs in general, they mostly pay only for purchases.

Marketing a website is work. After your website is finished and you start to register it with search engines (usually the first step), you will have to do one more thing each day for quite a while to get your site noticed. Make a list and keep progressing to the next step. It is slow and discouraging at first, but really does pay off in the long term. Keep working at it. And give it a year of effort before you throw in the towel - usually you will get hints that it is working long before then, but it genuinely takes that long to really see the potential for growth.

Adventure Tech-Web offers complete web design services, including marketing assistance. If you need banner ads created for your affiliate program, or for link exchanges, please ask us for a quote.