Quick & Free Tips for Promoting on the Internet

There are many ways to promote your web site. Some are expensive and some
are time consuming. Here are a few ideas on ways to promote your site that
are both quick and free. Watch for future articles that will include further
effective promotion ideas.

Always Put Your Web Site in Your email Signature: Create a professional
email signature that includes your URL and either your motto, a quote or a
tiny tidbit of information about your business. Make sure to make it
interesting; you want them to click on your link. Include it in all your
email messages; you'd be surprised who might click on your link and be
interested in what you have to offer. Also, include your URL on your
business cards, stationery and any other printed information you have.

Link & Banner Exchanges: A link or banner exchange is a great way to
increase the links to your page (a sure way to climb the search engines’
rankings). However, because you are exchanging a banner, you may lose some
of your visitors to other sites.

TIP: Have the link open a new window separate from your site.
That way if your visitor
gets sidetracked, she won’t lose you.

Nevertheless, it is a free and viable option for increasing your traffic
and your ranking. But...

Whom Do You Exchange With?:

1. Other Home Based Business People: Find the web sites of other home
Based Business people and ask them to exchange a banner with you.

Choose someone who ranks high on a search engine. Perhaps,
they will scoff at the idea of exchanging a banner with your site which
ranks 9999 out of 10000, but it sure doesn’t hurt to ask. Besides, you
won’t be 9999 for long!

2. For Party Plans Limited to a Particular Country: Exchange a link or
banner with a
fellow consultant from another country if you are limited to sales in
your own country. This
is a link that you could easily place front and centre on your home
page. You can
put the corresponding country's flag as a link and say "Canadian
Visitors Enter Here" (for
example). It will be clear if people should follow the link to the
other page. If people click on this
link, you aren't losing customers. They are obviously from another
country and cannot order from
you. Providing such a link is useful information to your visitor and
she will be directed to the
appropriate country's site.

3. WAHM Web Pages: many Work at Home Mom themed web pages offer free
banner exchanges. Take advantage of these, but place it on your “Links”
page. It should not be front and centre because:

· You may lose your visitor

· You will not be front and centre on their web page

Check out these free banner exchanges:

Of course: InternetBasedMoms.com
http://www.internetbasedmoms.com/banner_exchange.htm (your banner will
always be shown on the Links page)

WAHM Exchange.com http://wahmexchange.com/ (your banner will receive one
exposure for every two exposures of the WAHM Exchange on your site)

Moms Network.com
http://www.momsnetwork.com/busdirc-d/bannerexchange.shtml(your banner will
receive one exposure for every two exposures of the WAHM Exchange on your
site)

The Mom Pack http://mompack.com/ringsetc.shtml (see this site to find other
free banner exchange resources)

WAHM Tips http://www.wahmtips.com/rotation.htm (free link exchange)

Moola Mom http://moolamom.com/bnnrlinks.htm

4. Sites that Compliment Your Web Page Content - Exchange
links with sites that
compliments yours. For example, if you sell children's
products - exchange with a parenting site. If
you sell kitchen supplies - exchange with a recipe site. You
may have to approach these sites
and ask them if they are interested in a link exchange.

Choosing Meta Tags - Choosing good keywords for your site is a time
consuming, but an imperative and worthwhile venture (see article in Building
a Web Site). If you don't know what meta tags are, don't fret, we will learn
about them in detail soon.

One quick thing you can do with your meta tags is make sure that the titles
of your pages are descriptive and contain keywords for your site. You can
see the title on the very top of your browser of a page you are viewing.
It's also the name that comes up when you try to add a page to your
favorites. Web crawling (see below) search engines search sites, in great
part, based on these titles.

For example, if you sell children's clothes online, you want to make sure
that the title clearly illustrates what your site offers. A title like
"Mandy's Stitches" may be your brand, but it is not very descriptive to what
you are selling. A title like "Quality Children's Clothes at Inexpensive
Prices" will serve you much better.

Keep in mind: What is your product and who is it for?

Note: This does not mean that you cannot use "Mandy's Stitches", or
something like that in the
headings that your visitors will see on the page. We are strictly
talking about meta tags here.

Also, if you are selling a recognizable brand, use that name in your title.
Remember, to be search engine friendly, a title can be up to 60 characters
long - so maximize your keywords in your title!

Using Your Keywords in Your Site Text - of course, use your keywords in your
meta tags, but also include them in the text you use on your web pages. If
one of your keywords is home based business, be sure to use those word in
your site.

Free Search Engine & Directory Submissions – A number of search engines
allow you to submit your site to for free. However, it often takes weeks or
months before they will consider your submission and most often you will not
know when they do consider it. Also, even if they do consider it, you may
not be entered. That said, search engines are an extremely powerful tool for
advertising your site and you will want to submit to them.

Note: Search engines are usually of two types: 1. web crawlers that find
your page based on keywords and ranking and 2. web directories where you
have to be listed to be found. Some engines are a combination of both (ex.
Yahoo).

Beware: free submissions are becoming rare. Get your site in while you can.

Here is a short list of search engines and directories to which you can
submit for free:

Google http:/www.google.ca (you should submit your site with a description,
but Google is a web crawler, not a directory - it will eventually find your
site)

Open Directory Project http://www.dmoz.com

AOL http://aolsearch.aol.com/

Alcanseek http://www.alcanseek.com/ (Alaska & Canada only)

All the Web http://www.alltheweb.com/

AltaVista http://www.altavista.com/ (Alta Vista is a web crawler but also
contains a web directory you should submit your site to)

Biz Web http://www.bizweb.com/ (directory of business web sites - not a
search engine)

Yahoo! http://www.yahoo.com It's very difficult to get into their directory
even if you pay, but they do have a free submission option. However, the
free submission option is not available if you want to list in the Business
to Business or Shopping & Services. So much for that idea. L

Web Rings – The idea of a web ring is that everyone in the ring (related by
some topic - ex. product, WAHMs, UK sites, etc.) places a link at the bottom
of their page that links the site visitor to the next site in the ring. The
visitor can click from site to site related to that particular topic.

A Web Ring may bring visitors to your site, but again you may lose some.
Regardless, they are a good way to increase hits to your site and increase
your search engine ranking. You need to decide which is most important.

You can find a directory of web rings at: http://dir.webring.com/rw (you
can also make your own here quite easily)

WAHM.com offers a web ring at http://www.wahm.com/wahmring.html

iVillage has a directory of web rings or you can make your own

MomsNetwork.com also offers a web ring

Top Site List – top site lists are those buttons you may have seen on web
pages that say something like "Vote for My Site". You can place a "Vote for
My Site" button on your site and you will be listed in a directory.
Generally, the ranking on the directory is based on the number of links you
bring into the directory and how many links you receive out of the
directory. So if you give and receive a lot of links, you will rise to the
top of the list.

Again take note, that top site lists may bring visitors to your site, but
you may lose some. Be sure to have the top site banner button on your site
open in a new window.

WAHM.com has a top site list you can join (note: At the time of publishing
this article, WAHM.com had 1838 sites on its top site list. Consider it
might be difficult to get hits of such a long list if you are at the bottom)

MoneyMakingMommy has a relatively new top site list you can join. Hurry, it
’s a good idea to get in while there’s time.

Check out MomsNetwork.com's top site list

Take a look at the Jarvis Network, they have a listing of top site lists you
can join. You can find them at http://www.topsitelists.com

Good luck promoting your site quickly & for free. Look for future articles
on other highly effective ways to promote your site.