Apart from optimising your site’s pages and content to maximise it’s appeal to search engines, there are a number of ‘off-site’ ways of promoting your site.

  • Article Directories

    Article directories are a good way of attracting visitors to your site.  Here is how they work:

    • Sign up to one or more Article Directories.  Membership is usually free  or of very low cost.  You will need to add the following data items before you can use the account:
      • Your name.
      • A bit about you (e.g. why you are qualified to speak with authority on the subject).
    • Write a good quality article of about 600-800 words of original content describing some topic pertaining to the subject matter of your website.
    • Post the article to the Article directory.
    • Members who see, and like, your article are free to include it on their blogs / websites.  The rule is that they must include it ‘as is’ without changing it in any way.  They must also include your contact details.

    If a lot of people include your article then not only are your details being displayed on other sites but the increase in incoming links to your site will enhance your standing with Google.

    Because duplicate content is justifiably looked on with disdain by Google, you should write specifically for article directories – don’t just extract content from your own site as this will mean that your site is tarred with duplicate content (even though you wrote it!).

    If you join mulitple article directories then you should consider writing a slightly different version of your article to submit to each.  This will dilute the duplicate content effect for any subscribers (after all, you want your article to be found on other people’s sites so your link is displayed to them).

  • Emails

    Make sure you use an email address with the same domain name as your site (e.g. yourname@yoursite.com).   Also, put a link to your site on every email you send out (you can do this automatically by adding a signature to Outlook or Thunderbird or whatever mail client you use).

  • Stationery

    Put your website address on your stationery.

  • Discussion forums

    There are discussion forums on any subject you care to mention.  Go to Google and enter [subject] discussion forums.   Consider joining one of more of the forums and do join in with the discussions

    A word of warning – don’t think you can use a discussion forum to flagrantly advertise your website products or services; doing so it sure to unlease the fury of other forum members.

    Try and establish yourself as a respected authority on your particular subject and add educated and interesting contributions to any of the discussions taking place that interest you.  When you sign up to the forum you will usually be able to enter your website address which will be displayed along with your screen name.  If other members come to respect your views then they may decide to visit your site.

    You can add links to articles or pages on your own site but only if the subject matter is directly related to the topic under discussion.

  • Buying mailing lists

    Don’t do it!

    Many people will consider sending unsolicited email as spam.  Anyone on the SBS server will have their website removed and their account terminated if it can  be shown the owner has been sending out bulk spam emails.

  • Automatic search engine submissions

    This was the way to do things in the 1990’s but it really isn’t worth bothering nowadays.  Structure and optimise your site correctly and create XML and HTML site maps and the search engines will spider your site and catalogue it correctly.