There are many digital marketing methods that business owners and digital marketers can use to promote their brands, products and services through their websites. Some of these are paid advertising and promotion channels that are guaranteed to get you highly targeted results in the shortest span of time. There are however, free online marketing tools that people can use to promote and drive traffic to their websites.
For online entrepreneurs who have minimal resources at their disposal, using free website promotion methods is better idea. These tools may take a little while before tangible results are realized, it can slowly but surely help digital marketers promote their websites for free. Digital marketers have the option to use some or all of these free digital marketing methods. However, they should understand that it requires dedication and some hard work for all these free online marketing promotion channels to finally pay off. Doing business on the Internet requires a continuous cycle of activities that will let you get a good foothold on the marketplace with a very strong online presence that delivers results.
Let Digital Marketing Philippines take you on a wonderful joyride with this top 13 FREE website promotion ideas that you can use to drive a highly targeted stream of potential customers to your website – driving your profits up without the exorbitant costs!
1. Go Viral with High Quality Content Targeted Customers will Love
Before everything else, first and foremost is you need to fill up your website with good, relevant, high-quality and highly-targeted content. Content is king, and will cling on to this throne for years to come. High-quality content that can go viral is a surefire way of driving targeted visitors to a website – visitors that can eventually become paying customers.
Content is at the heart and core of your website and is the hub where all your digital marketing efforts should revolve in. Content can be anything that you can place in your website: from great how-to articles to very informative step-by-step video tutorials. You can create these types of content yourself, or have a staff or freelancers create these content for you. You can even have guest writers or bloggers create something for you for posting in your website. The possibilities are practically endless and are guaranteed to generate highly targeted traffic – if your content is well-written, innovative, interesting, relevant and of course – original.
2. Use the Power of Social Media for Promotion
Digital Marketing Philippines’ articles on Social Media Marketing are some of the most exciting content this site is sharing and offering our readers. It’s free to join and create profiles about your brand, products or services on the various social networking sites available. Statistics on how effective social media marketing is abound throughout the Internet, with reliable information coming from reputable organizations like Nielsen and PQ Media backing these claims.
Nielsen is telling us that online users allocate up to 21.3% of their time online checking their status, sharing photos, and liking posts on social media sites. PQ Media translates this into hours, highlighting that up to 33 hours a month the Internet users in the United States spend online, 8 hours of which are spent doing various activities on social media sites. Tapping and getting access to just a fraction of these figures can bring valuable promotion mileage for your websites.
Through social media, you can build a separate profile page for your website, brand or product where you can engage directly with your existing and potential customers. You can also build discussion groups and communities in these social sites and build a network of like-minded people – all potential audiences and customers for your brand.
3. Make Your Content Viral with Social Media Share
Social media is not only a highly effective tool for connecting and interacting with highly targeted audiences in a more personal and social level, it also made it quite easy for high-quality content you share to get even more reach with the use of social sharing buttons. You should include plug-ins for social media sharing with each of your content, practically allowing your visitors to spread the word about your website quickly and easily with just a single click of these buttons.
With search engine algorithms changing and leaning towards social relevance, ongoing social media sharing activities in your websites will definitely be a plus factor that can help your sites get better ranking. The more social media sharing activities going on, the better your social scores can be.
4. Make Your Content Go Even More Viral with Social Media Bookmarking
Social media shares can let your content go viral, but with social media bookmarking, your targeted audiences can include your website among their favorites. What this will do for your site is to get your readers well be updated with your latest posts and uploads, reach even more targeted audiences within your readers’ own networks, and give your websites tons of high quality backlinks coming from high-traffic social bookmarking sites like Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Digg and Reddit to name a few and fasting growing specific bookmarking sites like Sharebloc, Snapzu BizSugar, Triberr and Inbound.org. You can’t go wrong posting your contents here, just don’t forget the golden rule. Don’t self-promote your contents only. Curate the best links of our other sites also and post it there.
5. Improve Your Online Presence by Local Business Directories
Online local directories is one of the best ways a local business owner can promote his or her business. Sites like Google+ local, Bing local, Yahoo local, Yelp, Manta and others allowed you to list your local business and gain targeted exposure to your targeted audience in your area. Maximize all the features that these local directories are offering you and always strive to persuade your customers to leave honest reviews about your business there! More positive reviews you get in your listing the better exposure for your business.
6. Get Better Website Exposure through Niche Forum Marketing
Forum marketing these days is not very popular subject these days since most of the people right now are going into social media groups instead of a niche related forum. But since our goal here is to give you the most complete list of free website promotion ideas, we also wanted to give the most comprehensive options and forum marketing is one of that. Basically, what you can do is perform a search like this your market + forum and check the top 10 in the search engine results. Then choose the top 3-4 forums by checking which forums are having the most conversation and the # of active members.
The idea of forum marketing is for you to share your expertize and brand yourself as an expert in your field. So don’t just go to these forums and blatantly promote your business but share your expertize and engage to the members. Who knows who you might find on these forums? In the past, I have known some great people that I found in forums and until today they are still a great resource person for me in the digital marketing niche.
7. Get Quality Backlinks by Being a Guest Author or Guest Blogger
To get more exposure and high-quality backlinks from other sites that are relevant or related to your website’s own niche, you can write and publish articles for these sites as a guest author or blogger. There are blogging community websites where you can join as a guest writer, allowing you to create your own author’s bio where you can embed backlinks to your websites. You can also work with individual blogs or websites or be a guest author on local newspapers or magazine blogs – and boost your online credibility as well as get really valuable backlinks.
8. Receive Great Promotion by Getting Guest Authors to Write for You
Writing in blogging communities and other blogs or websites builds your network, getting you acquainted or even friends with other website owners that are related or relevant to your niche. You can ask these writers to write for you by inviting them as guest bloggers in exchange for better exposure and organic links. These writers will naturally promote these articles posted on your website on their own accord, giving you free promotion from what search engines may classify as authorities in your niche
9. Gain Good Reputation by Writing in Content Sites
You can develop your reputation as an authoritative source of information or expertise in your niche by writing and publishing niche articles on content sites like Squidoo, Hubpages and Business2Commuity. Although there’s some arguments on whether the backlinks from these sites are still relevant in the current search engine algorithm changes, the reputation you can gain as an authoritative writer in your niche would still make all your efforts pay off.
10. Answer Questions and Build Your Brand
Social media sites focused on posting questions like Yahoo Answers and Quora where people can answer and ranked based on how relevant their answers are in relation to the question is also a good free website promotion idea. You can build your brand by being authoritative source of information who uses his expertise by trying to unselfishly answer relevant questions posted. You can build your brand, gain better reputation, and build relationships with potential customers.
11. Build Relationships by Responding to Comments and Answering Inquiries
Online users can really get pissed off when they post inquiries and comments about certain items or topics about a brand, product or service – and receive neither answers nor acknowledgements in return. Commenting and answering inquiries can build your online relationships with these targeted audiences, which is a good way to build your brand and develop product loyalty. You can also turn these inquiries or comments in a Q&A type of article and post it in your site – a move your targeted audiences will surely appreciate.
12. Use Video to Promote Your Websites
YouTube and other video sharing sites have become an incredible phenomena that launched the careers of very popular modern artists as well as generate valuable traffic to websites through videos and infomercials. Most of these videos talk about topics relevant or linking to a brand, product or service directly or indirectly. You can leverage on the power of these video sharing sites by creating your own creative, thought-provoking and highly interesting videos and slideshows that can go viral through social media – and drive tons of traffic to your website
13. Build Your Own Following with Social Media Groups Marketing
Social media groups in the top social media sites like Facebook, Google+ and Linked-in can also be used for free website promotion. The first thing that you are going to do is to search for the most relevant and related groups for your business. Then join the busiest group (in terms of engagement and comments activities). I think it better to join at least 5-10 niche related groups on these 3 social media sites. Again don’t forget the golden rule here, you are joining these groups to show your expertise and brand yourself and your business as a great resource for your niche. So engage to the members post, share their posts to your accounts, provide your ideas and opinions on their posts or questions, don’t balatantly self-promote and lastly don’t forget to post your relevant content from time to time.
This list of FREE website promotion ideas is of course not complete as there are tons of innovative but effective ways of promoting your websites and getting the attention of targeted audiences. Try to study which of these method will work well with your digital marketing campaign, and if you find one to your liking and convenience, try to develop a marketing plan that you can execute to perfection – and obtain targeted results that will keep you more steps closer towards achieving your goals.
Jomer B. Gregorio is a well-rounded expert when it comes digital marketing. Jomer is also known as a semantic SEO evangelist and practitioner. Check out our Digital Marketing Services today and let us help you in achieving positive and profitable results for your business.