Bloggers and online business persons are eager to promote / advertise their websites, seeking for more traffic, but some of them forgot that they can actually do it free yet effectively. The famous Steve Pavlina grew his website up to 50,000 visitors per month only using one of these methods. Would you like to know more?
When promoting sites comes to people’s mind, most of them will refer it to advertisements. While actually, there are many free yet effective methods to promote our site besides using paid advertisements. The low cost ($0) of these methods should be very attractive for those who are just starting their blog / website. Here are four simple but effective free methods:
Carnivals
Blog carnivals are a great way to gain your website more audience, recognition, and traffic. Steve Pavlina stated that blog carnivals were his kick-start in growing his website up to 50,000 visitors per month.
For more details on blog carnivals, please read my article 5 Reasons Why You Should Use Blog Carnival To Gain Traffic.
Submitting your best articles to carnivals will certainly gain you more spotlight and traffic, if your posts are accepted. However, different host has different rules and quality standards, which is why you need to read each description well.
This method is my favorite, I always submit my articles to related carnivals daily. I am glad that almost all hosts approved my submissions, resulting in my articles appearing in many carnivals. However doing this is not easy for me, since my internet connection is a bit slow and unstable (256 kbps only). In addition, blogcarnival.com is usually heavy to load, but I guess it is worth it.
However, you can also host your own carnival to increase your traffic. This is a very good method, since by doing so, you also deliver genuine value to others. Writers whose posts you include in the carnival will gain more audience and recognition, while visitors and readers will get more solid knowledge from the articles. The favor will certainly go back to you, your website will be respected and recognized more. I have proven this myself, the day I held a carnival was the day I got most page views on my articles in the particular week. I guess those people whose articles I included in the carnival was so eager to read my articles.
Great Contents
Your contents are your ads, since they represent you and your brand in people’s points of view. Once visitors read your posts and love it, they will likely to the remember you and your brand. Sometimes, they will recommend your quality service / products to their friends without asked, either using direct speech, SMS, emails, up to social medias like stumbleupon, digg, delicious, etc.
Great contents are impressive exponential promotions, which mean that if some people are impressed with your masterpiece of work, they will recommend it to their friends. In addition, if those friends are impressed too, they will recommend it to their friends, and so on. The more help you give to others, the more help you will receive.
If your website delivers genuine value for your visitors through its content, meaning that it is very useful for someone somewhere, soon or later your traffic will rise higher and higher. The problem is, creating and delivering genuine value is not easy, we need experience and skills. However, if you fulfill the 2 Requirements of Definite Success, you’ll definitely be able to pull it off, either slowly but surely or fast but steadily.
However don’t be afraid of making bad / weak valued posts, because it is exactly the reason why a professional bloggers like Steve Pavlina could present his genuine valued articles, as stated in his article How to Create Real Value. This article is also very helpful if you wonder whether your posts are delivering genuine value or not. Check it out.
Comments
Quality commenting on others' websites will increase your popularity, and later on, traffic. People will recognize your name or brand more, as they see your comments more.
People want more comments on their articles, but sometimes they forgot to comment on others’ articles. If you want your website to be appreciated, go read others’ work and appreciate them. Do not expect to be appreciated if you do not to appreciate others.
However, be careful here, spamming irrelevant comments is definitely not a wise action. Unfortunately, the first comment I receive in my post “Why You Should Never get A Part-Time Job” is a spam comment. Let's use it as example:
Fortunately, I can use it as a real example to explain what a spam comment is. You can see that the comment has nothing to do with my post; it just tries to promote a website. Most people will simply delete this kind of comments, and making people annoyed is certainly not a good technique to market your site.
In commenting, you want to be unique and intelligent. Uniqueness means you have your own pattern and style in expressing your responses, which is distinctive to others, enabling you to stand out of the crowd and shine brighter. Intelligent means you have read the posts, understand it, and having your own stance in the particular topic, either agree or disagree.
You also want to be polite and humble in language, since as a mature person, either agree or disagree, you want to express it in the right way. And later on, receiving the right responses.
Chriss Garret wrote 10 Reasons Commenting Is Good For Bloggers, which states these strong points:
Please visit the original article for further details.
Search Engines
To be honest, this method is not my favorite, but everyday I always see people coming to my site from search engines. My promotion strategy does not put search engines in the first place, but the fact is the fact, people keep coming from there. So at least do some basic optimizations to your site to make it search engine friendly.
You want search engines index your contents fast, so people can find your content fast. So, what you need to do is enhancing your meta tags to make your site even more search engine friendly. I don't want to talk big, but my site has very complete meta tags, and you are welcomed to compare and adopt them as you please.
I guess you will be lying if you say you don't want to know how to do free SEO yet gaining great results. I only did those simple optimizations yet Google always index my newest page no more than 10 minutes after I publish it, that's good enough for me.
Anyway, it's not advised to struggle to get your site in top search results (first page), since it is incredibly difficult and you will be wasting your time and energy. It is wiser to produce more quality contents, and more traffic shall be yours.
OK to sum things up, carnivals, contents, comments, and search engines are the simplest and the most effective free methods of promoting your website. If you haven't done all of them, do it as soon as you can. However, there are also some other free methods that may work, but I don't include them above since they are considered not too effective.
Promoting your best articles via emails may works, but the problem is, most professional bloggers dislike receiving it. Unless you are a good friend, your offer might be considered as spam. Chriss also wrote a good post titled Where To Find Fresh Blogs and How To Get Your Blog Discovered, where he stated 10 things to do or not to do in email promotions, which is:
Please visit the original article for more details.
Belonging to social medias may also works in promoting your website, the problem is, if you spend too much time there, when would you produce your own quality contents? If your contents are nothing special, no matter whether you belong to 40 or 100 major social medias, people aren't going to remember you anyway. Your contents are your fame, my friend.
It's better to concentrate on producing great contents, and social medias will take care of themselves. Steve Pavlina Stated this too, and it works! I have proven it myself, I never submitted my article Why You Should Never Join MLM to any social media. But someone read it, loved it, and submitted it to stumbleupon, then in one night, boom! The article got a 500% boost of traffic.
Linking out to others' blogs may works too in getting the favor back. The problem is, if the blogs you are linking to are established ones and visited by more than 1,000 people per day, how would you think the owners would know that you send them some traffic? Do you think they spend most of their time watching the sources of their traffic one by one? Don't expect too much from this method, dude.
Anyway, what is you favorite promotion method and why? And if you know another methods of free promotion, please share it here.
When promoting sites comes to people’s mind, most of them will refer it to advertisements. While actually, there are many free yet effective methods to promote our site besides using paid advertisements. The low cost ($0) of these methods should be very attractive for those who are just starting their blog / website. Here are four simple but effective free methods:
Carnivals
Blog carnivals are a great way to gain your website more audience, recognition, and traffic. Steve Pavlina stated that blog carnivals were his kick-start in growing his website up to 50,000 visitors per month.
For more details on blog carnivals, please read my article 5 Reasons Why You Should Use Blog Carnival To Gain Traffic.
Submitting your best articles to carnivals will certainly gain you more spotlight and traffic, if your posts are accepted. However, different host has different rules and quality standards, which is why you need to read each description well.
This method is my favorite, I always submit my articles to related carnivals daily. I am glad that almost all hosts approved my submissions, resulting in my articles appearing in many carnivals. However doing this is not easy for me, since my internet connection is a bit slow and unstable (256 kbps only). In addition, blogcarnival.com is usually heavy to load, but I guess it is worth it.
However, you can also host your own carnival to increase your traffic. This is a very good method, since by doing so, you also deliver genuine value to others. Writers whose posts you include in the carnival will gain more audience and recognition, while visitors and readers will get more solid knowledge from the articles. The favor will certainly go back to you, your website will be respected and recognized more. I have proven this myself, the day I held a carnival was the day I got most page views on my articles in the particular week. I guess those people whose articles I included in the carnival was so eager to read my articles.
Great Contents
Your contents are your ads, since they represent you and your brand in people’s points of view. Once visitors read your posts and love it, they will likely to the remember you and your brand. Sometimes, they will recommend your quality service / products to their friends without asked, either using direct speech, SMS, emails, up to social medias like stumbleupon, digg, delicious, etc.
Great contents are impressive exponential promotions, which mean that if some people are impressed with your masterpiece of work, they will recommend it to their friends. In addition, if those friends are impressed too, they will recommend it to their friends, and so on. The more help you give to others, the more help you will receive.
If your website delivers genuine value for your visitors through its content, meaning that it is very useful for someone somewhere, soon or later your traffic will rise higher and higher. The problem is, creating and delivering genuine value is not easy, we need experience and skills. However, if you fulfill the 2 Requirements of Definite Success, you’ll definitely be able to pull it off, either slowly but surely or fast but steadily.
However don’t be afraid of making bad / weak valued posts, because it is exactly the reason why a professional bloggers like Steve Pavlina could present his genuine valued articles, as stated in his article How to Create Real Value. This article is also very helpful if you wonder whether your posts are delivering genuine value or not. Check it out.
Comments
Quality commenting on others' websites will increase your popularity, and later on, traffic. People will recognize your name or brand more, as they see your comments more.
People want more comments on their articles, but sometimes they forgot to comment on others’ articles. If you want your website to be appreciated, go read others’ work and appreciate them. Do not expect to be appreciated if you do not to appreciate others.
However, be careful here, spamming irrelevant comments is definitely not a wise action. Unfortunately, the first comment I receive in my post “Why You Should Never get A Part-Time Job” is a spam comment. Let's use it as example:
“Best website links related to Online Job sites in India!
http://www.back2office.com
In order achieve success in their job search, job seekers must target a wide range of Job sites and use all the available resources. Yes, its time consuming. However, dedicating the time and energy will pay off with more and better job leads, more interviews and more job offers!”
Fortunately, I can use it as a real example to explain what a spam comment is. You can see that the comment has nothing to do with my post; it just tries to promote a website. Most people will simply delete this kind of comments, and making people annoyed is certainly not a good technique to market your site.
In commenting, you want to be unique and intelligent. Uniqueness means you have your own pattern and style in expressing your responses, which is distinctive to others, enabling you to stand out of the crowd and shine brighter. Intelligent means you have read the posts, understand it, and having your own stance in the particular topic, either agree or disagree.
You also want to be polite and humble in language, since as a mature person, either agree or disagree, you want to express it in the right way. And later on, receiving the right responses.
Chriss Garret wrote 10 Reasons Commenting Is Good For Bloggers, which states these strong points:
- It's right thing to do
- Make friends and influence people
- Clicks
- Develop a Bloggers Eye
- Create Commentable Content
- Comments = Ideas
- You never know who is reading
- What you give you get more of
- Keep Match Fit
- Comment on Fresh Blogs For Fresh Perspectives
Please visit the original article for further details.
Search Engines
To be honest, this method is not my favorite, but everyday I always see people coming to my site from search engines. My promotion strategy does not put search engines in the first place, but the fact is the fact, people keep coming from there. So at least do some basic optimizations to your site to make it search engine friendly.
You want search engines index your contents fast, so people can find your content fast. So, what you need to do is enhancing your meta tags to make your site even more search engine friendly. I don't want to talk big, but my site has very complete meta tags, and you are welcomed to compare and adopt them as you please.
I guess you will be lying if you say you don't want to know how to do free SEO yet gaining great results. I only did those simple optimizations yet Google always index my newest page no more than 10 minutes after I publish it, that's good enough for me.
Anyway, it's not advised to struggle to get your site in top search results (first page), since it is incredibly difficult and you will be wasting your time and energy. It is wiser to produce more quality contents, and more traffic shall be yours.
OK to sum things up, carnivals, contents, comments, and search engines are the simplest and the most effective free methods of promoting your website. If you haven't done all of them, do it as soon as you can. However, there are also some other free methods that may work, but I don't include them above since they are considered not too effective.
Promoting your best articles via emails may works, but the problem is, most professional bloggers dislike receiving it. Unless you are a good friend, your offer might be considered as spam. Chriss also wrote a good post titled Where To Find Fresh Blogs and How To Get Your Blog Discovered, where he stated 10 things to do or not to do in email promotions, which is:
- DON’T email bloggers with your blog URL.
- DON’T send link requests.
- DON’T mass-mail - make each email unique and personalised.
- DON’T assume - your email is a question and perhaps the start of a conversation, not a demand
- DON’T have an inflated view of your value - you might think it is the best blog ever, others have the right to disagree
- DON’T flog a dead horse - only email your best stuff and not too often. Move on if you don’t get results
- DO put yourself in the other bloggers shoes - What is in it for them?
- DO send a link to a post, one that is interesting to them and their readers
- DO be polite and humble - you are asking for a favour, they have the right to decline or ignore
- DO make your email appealing. Think about it, craft it
Please visit the original article for more details.
Belonging to social medias may also works in promoting your website, the problem is, if you spend too much time there, when would you produce your own quality contents? If your contents are nothing special, no matter whether you belong to 40 or 100 major social medias, people aren't going to remember you anyway. Your contents are your fame, my friend.
It's better to concentrate on producing great contents, and social medias will take care of themselves. Steve Pavlina Stated this too, and it works! I have proven it myself, I never submitted my article Why You Should Never Join MLM to any social media. But someone read it, loved it, and submitted it to stumbleupon, then in one night, boom! The article got a 500% boost of traffic.
Linking out to others' blogs may works too in getting the favor back. The problem is, if the blogs you are linking to are established ones and visited by more than 1,000 people per day, how would you think the owners would know that you send them some traffic? Do you think they spend most of their time watching the sources of their traffic one by one? Don't expect too much from this method, dude.
Anyway, what is you favorite promotion method and why? And if you know another methods of free promotion, please share it here.
