So you are planning to start a website? That is good news.
But what will the site be about? I question people why they want to start a website. There are billions of site on the net. Why add another to the mess?
There are many reasons people want to start a website. To sell a product or service, to provide news, to write reviews of products, to disseminate information, to give entertainment, to start a community etc.
All sites need marketing. Without spreading the word about your site it is a dead duck. Offline it is all about location, online there is no such thing and you need to make people aware that your site exists!
Most sites are made to make money. There are hobby, non-profit and Govt. sites also but their number is low.
Out of these product/service sites are easier to build but also the hardest ones to market. There should be a budget for paid advertisement to market such sites.
Let us categorize sites on the internet
Product / Service to sell
Information sites
Entertainment sites
News sites
Non-profit/hobby sites
Govt. sites
Paid Advertising (High Impact)
- Paid adversiting in social media networks specially in facebook and yahoo.com
Google adsense in another option but this may turn out to be a bit pricey. - Use facebook groups. Approach managers of facebook groups and ask to place your ads. Choose only related boards. For example, if you have a Garments product then contact people managing Fashion and beauty forums/ groups in facebook.
- Place ads in Instagram. Cost will be less than Google ads and placing ads offline.
- Post in olx and local classified sites.
- Post product on your WhatsApp groups.
- Print some product brochures with website link. Distribute the printouts through newspaper delivery people.
- Seek local popular forums. Contact the webmaster and ask to place ads.
- Local business listings. This is very important. Seek out all the local business yellow pages and directories. List your business there. Optimize for search engines. Google shows a brief listing of local businesses on top of its search results sometimes, specially for service related searches, like top spa services in Pune, best cleaning service in Mumbai etc. Getting to this list can be very very profitable for your business as it will get lots of profit this way. And best part is that it is all free!
Organic Traffic
Organic traffic mostly comes from Google. It is more than 40% of all traffic on a site and can be significantly more than 40%. Hence it is a good strategy to make your site search engine and human friendly and then get ranked in the 1st page. It is a long drawn strategy and can be very and resource consuming.
But I would not recommend this strategy for businesses that want to get found quickly by people. New, small and medium sized businesses hardly has the time or budget to implement a long drawn strategy and needs quick results. I am myself a digital marketer and know this pitfall quite well.
Go for paid advertising for fast results.
Organic Traffic (High Impact & time consuming)
Influencers.
Some social media influencers have millions of traffic. You can tap that source by offering the influencer free sample of your product/service. Of course your product/service must be something that caters to the influencers target audience.
Organic Traffic ( Low Impact & time consuming )
Network socially. Create accounts in Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Linkedin. Koo is another Indian App to consider. If you are too busy to create and maintain accounts ask someone from your household to do it. Usually someone from your family will pick up the task. If you have money to spend then hire someone to do the job for you.
Social media accounts can be used to sell anything these days. Since most people there will be your friends and family anything you post there will be accepted without much hesitation.
Create a related blog. Related industry news, trends and rewiews of products/services. Describe salient features of the product/service. It is hard word and not for everyone. But if you can make the blog popular you will be rewarded with a steady stream of visitors at no cost!
Do something viral. Give an interesting tweak to your product/service and post the change in your social media accounts. Something unique and amusing tends to spread as people love to share oddities.
Question Answer sites. You must have knowledge about the related topic. Answer a question and offer your product/service as cmplementary. Mind you, if your link is not related it can be regarded as spam and taken away.
Information that is very useful to someone
Information has become a commodity in the age of information overload. So if your site is based on information, then make sure that you provide information not easily found elsewhere. People can search for mundane information with the click of a mouse. Create exclusive content that can be found only after extensive research.
Typically information sites are free, but premium sites can also be created. In this case the information itself is the product. So get traffic using information for product/service sites.
Programming guides, Stiching tutorials, Recipe how-tos, Technical notes all can be good information sites, provides you have created the information from your own experience. Your own experience will be angle that can be given to the information to make it unique.
Information sites, if the content if good can become very attractive for people looking to start something. Share the links in your social media accounts. Word of mouth will spread the link of your site and increase traffic.
If your site is a guidebook then write a few free guides and distribute in other sites that accepts guides. YouTube is a popular destination for people seeking guides. Use that to your advantage. Create a few how-to short videos and post on YouTube. Take care to make the videos professionally.
Tool that is helpful to perform a task
The basic idea is to create a tool that people can use. People are looking for ways to help them perform tasks. If your tool can help them then the tool will be immensely popular and traffic is guaranteed.
Email signature, template generators, gif creators, online image converters are some of the examples. Google itself is a very useful tool that you can use to find information on anything.
Typically tool sites do not need much promotion. When people find something useful the word of mouth phenomenon helps the marketing automatically. Still, you can share the link in Facebook, Instagram and online forums.
Entertainment site where people get enjoyment
Entertainment sites are the biggest time wasters online but they attract a huge number of followers. If you own an entertainment site then you are in luck as your marketing is already done!
The trick is in using hugely popular topics with the latest news and views. Share the link in your Social Media accounts and watch the link being shared quickly.
Other methods ( Organic – High maintenance and time consuming, lowest impact )
Forum posting
Guest posting
Blog commenting – posting relevant comments in blog posts.
Complete time wasters
Link buying
Article submission
Reciprocal linking
Directory submission
PDF submission
Video submission