Part 15 - Free website promotion methods

While most of your traffic will come from search engines and directories (mostly Google and Yahoo), there are many other excellent ways to get even more traffic to your website. And most of them are free!

The single best source of free website promotion is one that you already have in place by now: Links to your site, reciprocal and otherwise. While links from high quality websites (as defined earlier) are essential to attaining a good Page Rank, any link to your site has the potential to bring in more traffic.

The key is not to link back to a lower quality website. You're probably asking yourself "How in the world am I supposed to get webmasters to link to me if I don't offer to link back to them?". The answer is simple: Just ask them for a link.

Many webmasters will be more than happy to link to you just because they like your site or because your site has information and resources that are of value to their own site's visitors. Ask away, all she can say is no. But you'll be surprised how often she'll say yes!

In order to raise your level of success with one-way linking requests, you can sweeten the pot by offering something other than a link back to the webmaster in return. You might offer her a free email account or other free service that your site happens to offer.

If you sell e-books that you have written you can offer one to the webmaster for free in exchange for a link to your site. The opportunities are endless. Just use your imagination.

Another excellent source of free traffic is your own website. Place a "Tell A Friend" script on your site and let your visitors and customers advertise for you. There are many sites on the web where you can go to download powerful scripts for free. A list of links to some of those sites is provided at the end of this document.

Also don't forget to use a signature file with your email program. You can send out a free advertisement to everyone that you send an email to. Just be sure that the email has another primary purpose besides just advertising your site.

SPAMming is very much frowned upon and can get a person into a whole heap of trouble! But if used properly, a signature file can bring in lots of free traffic. Here is my signature file as an example:

Email body... blah blah blah

blah blah blah   blah blah blah

-----------------------------------------------

RLROUSE Directory & Informational Resources - Directory of the web's best hand-picked websites. Interesting articles on many topics. Many great webmaster resources as well!

http://omorit.blogspot.com/

-----------------------------------------------

Every email that I send out has my "ad" in it. You can do the same.

Another source of free traffic is free classified ad sites. The effectiveness of classified ads varies from site to site, but hey, it's free! Just do a Google search on "free classified ads".

Last but not least, you can offer a free newsletter to visitors who come to your site. And of course your newsletters will include an advertisement or two! Just be sure to collect the email addresses with an opt-in newsletter sign-up form.

Collecting email addresses any other way will lead to charges of Spamming. The first and last lines of each newsletter should include unsubscribe instructions. For more information on starting and managing a newsletter check out Omor IT.

Part 14 - Getting into Yahoo - for free!

While Yahoo has lost their dominance to Google, they are still one of the most heavily used search vehicles on the web. Getting your site to show up in the Yahoo search results is imperative for a successful business website. 

Yahoo used to pull their search results from Google, so getting a top listing in Google automatically meant also being listed well in Yahoo. But no more...

Yahoo recently rolled out their own search engine database fed by a combination of a Google-style "free crawl" and a revamped paid-inclusion program.

The most efficient (and free) method of getting into the "new" Yahoo is the same as it is with Google - get some high-quality inbound links and Yahoo's spider will find you on its own!

Part 13 - Getting "found" by the search engines

These days, getting your website "found" and indexed by the search engines is something of a no-brainer. In times past, webmasters spent hours (and dollars) submitting their sites to every search engine they could find, with mixed results at best. But now all we have to do to get a site indexed in Google, Bing and the other top search engines is get a decent inbound link or two from a site that is already indexed. And as always, the more links the better.

If possible, try to get at least one link to your site from the home page of a site that is crawled by the search engine spiders daily. If you can manage to do that, your site will probably be crawled and indexed itself within a day or two. But even if you can't get a link that "good", links anywhere on a few already indexed sites will do the trick (although it will likely take a few extra days).

Part 12 - How to quickly find quality link partners

Finding 100 or more quality link partners requires a bit of work and organization, but the task is not all that difficult. Just follow these steps:

1 - Create a page for your website and name it Friends or something to that effect. If you already have a links page, purge it of all links that lead to a page that has a PR of 0 or is a "bad neighborhood".

Place a link to your links page somewhere on your homepage. I recommend placing the link near the bottom of the page so that your website's visitors won't see it until after they have finished reading your home page. After all, why invite people to leave your site prematurely?

2 - Surf over to Google and do a search on your theme (home decor, woodworking, etc). The search results page is your mine for digging up quality reciprocal linking partners. Visit the first site on the list.

3 - Does the site have a PR of 5 or higher? (Sites near the top of the search results page almost certainly will.) If not, visit the next site on the list and repeat this step.

4- After you have found the next site with an acceptable PR, check to see if their home page has a link to a links page or a stated link exchange policy.  If not, visit the next site on the list and repeat the process beginning with step 3.

5 - Check to see if the site uses any of the "bad techniques" listed in the "How Not To Get Banned From Google" section above. If so, move on to the next site on the list.

6 - After you have found a site that you wish to exchange links with, place a link to their home page on your links page. Do this before you attempt to contact the other webmaster.

7 - Email the webmaster (look for a Contact Us link or an email address on their site). Create a form letter asking for the link exchange, but personalize the letter for each webmaster that you are sending the letter to.

If the webmaster's name is listed on the site, address him by name. If not, just use "Dear Webmaster,". compliment him on the quality of the site.

Mention a distinctive feature or two about the site so that he can tell that you actually made a serious visit. Explain that you feel that a link exchange would benefit both of you and explain why.

You might need to do a little "educating" here as many webmasters have no idea about the usefulness of link exchanges. Send your link information along with your email. You should include the following link info:

  Site name: OMOR INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY BD

  Description: Web development and Internet Company

  URL:  http://omorit.blogspot.com/

  Contact email address:  omorjgcc@yahoo.com

Be sure to include a couple of your main keywords in the link text (the "clickable" part of the link). This will help increase your PR!

8 - Send the email and wait for a reply from the webmaster. Of course, while you're waiting you should be contacting other webmasters in the same way. If he responds with a "no thanks", or hasn't responded at all after a week or so, remove his link from your links page and move on.

If he agrees to the exchange, he'll respond with a  link to the page on his site that contains your link. Send him a pleasant email thanking him for the exchange.

9 - Repeat this process until you have successfully completed at least 100 link exchanges with quality sites that share your theme. If you have over 100 links, split them up onto two or more links pages. You can even split the links up into categories if you wish.

Part 11 - Links and their effects on PR

As stated earlier, virtually any website at all can link to your page(s) without adversely affecting your PR. This is because generally you have no control over who links to your site. But the PR of the page(s) that link to your page(s) has a great deal of influence on your page's PR.

For example, if a webmaster decides to link to your page from a page on her site with a PR of 6, this will help your page's PR be higher than if she links to your page from a PR 4 page.

In other words, it isn't just how many links you have to your page, but also the "importance" of those pages that helps boost your PR. A dozen links from PR 6 sites is often better (at least for the sake of PR) than 100 links from PR4 sites. 

How do you determine a page's PR (even your own)? If you use Internet Explorer, you can download the Google Toolbar for free.

After you have downloaded and installed the Google toolbar, restart your browser. You should now see the toolbar near the top of the screen. Click the word Google on the left edge of the toolbar. Click Toolbar Options on the dropdown menu. Place a checkmark in the box beside PageRank Display. Now click the OK button at the bottom of the page. 

Your toolbar is now configured to display the PR value of the current page. On the right-hand side of the toolbar you will see the word PageRank.

Below the word PageRank is a bar that is either gray (no PR for the current page), all white (the current page has a PR of 0), or part white and part green. The more green in the bar the higher the PR.

If you place your mouse pointer over the bar under the word PageRank you will see the numerical value of the current page's PR.

And now, back to reciprocal linking. Your goal is to exchange links with as many quality websites as you can as quickly as you can. For our purposes, I'll define quality websites like this:

• They have a PR of at least 5.
• They aren't using hidden text, hidden links, doorway pages, etc. (No linking to a bad neighborhood, remember?)
• The "theme" of their sites compliments yours and vice versa.

The theme of your link partners' websites is very important. PR is Google's estimate of the importance of your site. So your site will be deemed more important if a lot of quality websites in your same general field link to your site.

For instance, if your website sells custom made curtains, your theme would be "home decor". You should make an effort to exchange links with other "home decor" related sites, such as interior designers, landscapers, and sites that sell furniture.

Do not exchange links with a direct competitor however or you will lose sales to your competition. For example, if you sell wind chimes don't exchange links with another site that also sells wind chimes. Instead, exchange with a site that sells lawn furniture or other products that compliment yours without directly competing with you.

Set a goal of exchanging links with a minimum of 100 other websites that meet the above criteria and you'll be well on your way to a great Google listing.

Part 10 - Adding new pages to your site

Google loves to spider new pages and she loves lots of high quality content. Try to add at least one new page to your site each day. If you simply can't add a new page each day, add one whenever you can. But don't put up junk. Make sure the pages are useful to your visitors and "friendly" to the search engines.

An analysis of the top ranked pages on Google suggests that Google prefers short, concise pages as opposed to long, rambling ones. This is good news for you as a webmaster! It's pretty easy to create a short page on a particular topic (if possible built around one of the keywords that you wish to target).

If you already have a long page (or several) on your site, consider breaking the longer pages up into several shorter pages. Your visitors will find your site easier to understand and navigate. And of course having lots of shorter, concise pages will help your search engine rankings.

Part 9 - Header Tags and ALT Tags

Near the top of your page, you should use your primary keywords in an <H1> header tag. Google gives extra weight to text located within header tags when computing PR. Also use a couple of <H2> tags on your page because they count as well (although not as much as the <H1>.

Here is an example of an <H1> tag:

          <H1>Distinctive birdhouses and birdfeeders</H1>

An <H2> tag would look like this:

           <H2>We offer the finest in handcrafted birdhouses
                   and birdfeeders</H2>

Photos do not help your ranking. But you can use <ALT> tags to describe your photos. If you can use a keyword or two in your <ALT> tag that is even better. but be careful here that your <ALT> tag accurately describes the photo or or the search engines may consider it to be SPAM - which of course is not good. Here is an example of an <ALT> tag:

<img src="birdhousepictures/bird.gif" ALT="Photo of a small bird.">

<ALT> tags are intended to give a description of a photo in cases where the web browser either cannot display photos or the photo display option has been turned off. If you use these tags properly, your site's visitors will be able to see the description of an un-displayed photo (a good thing). But even more importantly your <ALT> tags will help your search engine ranking.