I came across a very nice article posted on http://forums.digitalpoint.com by one user “ganeshkgiri” on 10th July 2009 and till this date it received 85 positive reviews/comments. This forum is dedicated to webmasters all around the worls and it provides a platform where all like minded users come to discuss and help each other. I thought to share this article but all credit to the original writer. It goes like this:
If you’re launching a new site, or new content then offcourse you need to promote your web site to get good business but you dont have money to advertise then here is a way to promote your site to get free traffic
01. write an introduction and submit it to share sites like Digg, Reddit and Now Public.
02. Create a Yahoo Group in the niche your site sits.
03. Create a MySpace account and use it to publisise your site.
04. Bookmark your site on Del.icio.us and if you’re really keen, add a Del.icio.us button to your homepage.
05. Create a Technorati account and “claim” your blog.
06. Submit your site to free, search engine friendly directories.
07. Conduct a survey. This is an excellent way to generate offline publicity.
08. Place a free ad for your company on Gumtree.
09.Syndicate your site’s content by using an RSS feeds.
10.Submit your RSS feeds to agregator sites like FeedBurner, Squidoo, Feedboy, Jordomedia, FeedBomb, FeedCat, rssmad, feeddirectory and feedfury.
11.Write an article related to your site and submit it to article sites.
12.Sign up to StumbleUpon and get your friends to Stumble your site.
13.Create a custom 404 page so that even if someone encounters an error on your site, they are re-directed somewhere nice.
14. Set up a 301 redirect to take traffic from your non-www address to your www address.
15.Add a link to your site in the signature of any forums you post on.
16.Tell your friends about your site. It’s free advertising unit.
17.Speel cheek your stie. Nothing appears more amateur than a site with typos or spelling mistakes.
18.Test your site and make sure it appears correctly in all major browsers.
19.Buy enough hosting. No one likes a slow site.
20.Don’t worry about PageRank – worrying about PageRank is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum.
21.Offer something for free. Free is good. People tell their friends about free stuff.
22.Tell your neighbours, you never know what contacts they might have.
23 Offer your users as many ways as possible to contact you. MSN, Skype, Yahoo etc all complement email, phone and a real address.
24. Advertise your site on Craigslist. It’s free, relevant and localised.
25.Do NOT use frames.
26 Submit your site to DMOZ.org. It may take time, but it’s worth it.
27 Create an XML sitemap of your site and submit it to Google.
28 Get a custom t-shirt made with your website url on it, and wear it often.
29 comment on flicker photo
30 Sign up with an affiliate programme to sell your product, or if you’re a publisher, make some cash!
30 On your Contact Page ask people if they mind receiving your newsletter.
31 Send out a newsletter!
32 Go to a free seminar for Website owners. You might learn something.
33 Find quality and relevant blogs and leave a comment (with a link back to your site of course).
34 Don’t pay people to submit your site to search engines. It’s a waste of money.
35 YouTube and Google Video are excellent portals on which to launch a viral campaign.
36 Giving away an eBook is an excellent way to generate word-of-mouth about your site.
37 Sponsor a WordPress theme or a phpListDirectory template.
37 If you sell products that are advertised on television by the manufacturer, add “As Seen on TV” to your site!
38 Avoid proprietry technologies like Java and Active X.
39 Put downloadable content on your site, but make sure it’s not manufacturer specific – so mp3 rather than wma.
40 Learn about CSS. It’s the new HTML.
41 Contribute to related subject areas on Wikipedia.
Ask bloggers and other Web site owners to review your site and/or products.
42 Have user friendly page names – most tools comes with some way to avoid
43 If you must have a Flash homepage, make sure you have a “Skip Intro” link.
44 Tell your local rag about your site. These newspapers are desparate for stories and you may well even get a pic of your site published.
45 Become a leading authority on your chosen subject.
Hope all these guidelines help improve website marketing (for free).
