Linked IN is a very interesting online community where you can connect to other business people based on common associations, industry, education, etc. It’s hard to describe but free to setup, so check it out.
Take a look at my profile on Linked In and become a connection of mine.
Discussion forms are another great tool. You simply set up a signature, like you did with your email, and then search for forums in your industry. When you find one, you look for questions that people are asking where you know the answer.
Important, don’t post ads for your business. You need to add real value to the discussion. This should be easy if your passionate about your business.
Last time we talked about posting articles. That’s not the only thing you can do with the article directories. You can also find articles to use on your site. One of the main thing search engines look for is quality content that’s related to your website. An article section can really boost the amount of content on your site.
Again, the URL for the directory is:
http://www.arcanaweb.com/resources/article-directories.html
Also, you can just search in Google for “Ezine Content”
You can write articles about your industry and post them to article websites. You include a resource box with your website URL in it. The article websites distribute your article through the web with the agreement that anyone who uses your article has to keep it intact including your resource box.
Here’s a link for a site that has listed a lot of the article directories. If one of the niche directories is a good fit for your business, I would start in that section.
http://www.arcanaweb.com/resources/article-directories.html
YellowPages.com – You can get a free listing. You will get a call from a sales person when you sign up for this.
In this day and age, email is becoming the preferred form of communication. At the bottom of each email should be a link to your website. You would be surprised by the shear number of emails you send out on a week.
Not only is this a great way to promote your site, it also is a point of customer service. Many times when people get an email from you, they’ll want to get more information and that’s where your website comes in.
Put your website on everything. It should be on anything you print. All of you advertising should contain your url. You can get specialty items made with your url.
Your website is a powerful tool that can amplify everything else you do. You just need to make a conscious effort to include your url whenever possible.
Note: When you print your url use capitalization to make it easier to distinguish the individual words. For example justinswebdesign.com isn’t as easy to remember as JustinsWebDesign.com.
In order to get the best results from the search engines you need to have you as many links as possible pointing to your site. These links need to be from sites that are related to your business and include your keywords in the link text.
How do you get them? You find sites that are in your industry and ask them to exchange links. The best way to find them is to search Google for your keywords. The top sites under those searches will be the ones that Google feels are most relevant.
You’ve probably heard people talking about Craigslist. It’s an online classified system. Most people use it to buy/sell used merchandise.
You can use it to promote your website. It doesn’t cost anything to post an ad, and takes about 5 minutes. When you have a link in your post it will help you with your search engine placement.
Post today, you have nothing to lose but a couple minutes of time.
I would suggest posting every day for a while to test it out. Additionally, creating an account for posting makes life easier.
About us is a unique site that makes it easy to get another link to your website. You just look up a domain name in there, and if it’s not already listed in the directory it will add it. From there you can add details after creating an account.