There is no word in the English language that grabs interest as much as the word FREE. Oh there are others that titillate, but Free stuff just causes us do the silliest things. We bring home free gimmicky stuff all the time that we know honestly we’ll never touch, but do it regardless, and then try to pawn it off for $0.05 at a garage sale in the summer.
They say the greatest things in life are free: love, friends, know-how, but seldom in life does free stuff provide any true value, as in goods and services. Well, in the online sphere, that is not always true, specifically in web page promotion. It’s because what is free to you is offering value to the person giving it away.So listen up entrepreneurs on a shoestring, because here are Five (5) FREE Ways to Market Your Website:
1. Online Directories
Search for free company rosters and see what crops up. Tons and I mean tons, of sites that enable you to list your firm or website for zero cost. Why? Because their economic models are usually based upon the up-sell, read that, the prime listing. Oh you get the basics for free, but what you actually want is the one that allows you to post images, video clips, and the longer, expanded version recap. The terrific part is, nearly all of the free versions will post your site link, and this helps people find you and your internet back-link technique.
Here are some of the more popular directories:
And let’s not lose sight of the search engine battles that result in millions of complimentary, unclaimed listings for businesses like:
Does it take time to fill out their listing questionnaires? You betcha! It’s free of cost, but not effortless.
2. No-Cost Press Release Services
Have a new product or service you wish to get picked up on? Write a news release and get it submitted via a PR service that, similar to the directories, offers free standard press release submission services. These typically won’t reach the main media outlets, most employ sites like PR Newswire or Business Wire, but the middle tier media outlet market can be reached by PR services with free options, like…
3. Social Media
If you are seeking to get reach online and you don’t have a Facebook profile, LinkedIn account, Google+ profile and Twitter username, tsk tsk tsk! All of these have completely free listings on sites with incredibly high Google page rankings. They’re the most significant social media websites on the globe. If you own a company you can also get a business page on these websites that connects to your individual listing. Even when you don’t have time to “work” these pages to their fullest, there is link juice available from even the saddest fan profiles.
A superior method is to get in the social media game and select one or two of these to put together sites and start a discussion with others who are currently confident using this vehicle.
And there are tons of supplementary social sites for headlines, bookmarking and so forth that allow you to reference your site if not get a listing. A strong listing of more of them than you can possibly deal with can be located on Shareaholic.
4. Comments
You and I both know there is far too much free data on the net, yet we still have a couple of preferred blogs or news sites we frequent to get what we want of self-help or what’s occurring in the spheres that we are interested in.
So do others who might want to visit your blog. On almost all blogs, you are able to write comments. The blog proprietors like this because it alerts the search engine universe and new surfers that people are interested in their content, and nothing detrimental can result from that. When you leave a comment, you’ll usually have the option to affix your website link to your answer. Often you can link to other items to as an option, like your Facebook or Twitter profiles.
Do it. If you set aside 30 minutes each week, you can browse recent articles from your favorite sites and leave meaningful (key word) remarks on them. Over time, the value of your understandings coupled with the link back to your site will create traffic and SEO strength.
5. Your Email Footer
This is the simplest free method I know of to get people to a website, and the one that is incredibly most often overlooked. Every email you send out should have a standard footer that describes you. It usually has a name, title or something interesting about you, and some way to connect with you. It should also have your site linked or any other page you may want to lead people to, like a LinkedIn profile page. You can use a text anchor link, like Visit us for your San Diego SEO, or write out the link beginning with http so it reads http://www.yourlink.com and will show up in text-based email browsers as well and a live hyperlink in most email programs. Emails get forwarded, copied, and otherwise shared. You never know who is reading and clicking.
Free stuff is generally worth what you pay for it: nothing, but utilizing these 5 techniques, Free Website Marketing is alive and well. Use the mechanisms available, add a smidgen of energy and effort, and get your blog out here.
About the Author: Karl Walinskas is the CEO of Smart Company Growth, a business development firm that helps small to mid-size professional service firms build competitive advantage in an online world of sameness. His Smart Blog covers leadership, business communication, sales & service, online marketing and virtual business, and was recently named by Buyerzone as one of the Top 20 Business Blogs of 2011. He is the author of Getting Connected Through Exceptional Leadership, has been a featured expert for Inc.com with articles published in Selling Power, America Online,and Site Pro News to name a few, and blogs frequently for Rank My Website, a top San Diego SEO Services firm.
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