15 Ways To Market Your Website

Believe it or not, there are many creative methods that you can employ to market your website and generate traffic. While some methods do require an investment, most effective methods do not. See our list below:

1. Article Marketing. Sign up for an account with EzineArticles or some other article database, write articles, and include a tagline about your website in the about the author section.
2. Write Classified Ads. Consider submitting ads about your service in a classifieds website such as Craigslist.
3. Blog Regularly. Be sure to notify (or ping) aggregators and search engines when you post new content.
4. Email At Your Domain. To get your domain name out there, create an email account at your domain. And if you still want to use gmail (or other free email services), consider forwarding your email.

5. Forum Posting. Include a signature for each of your forum posts containing your domain name along with a tagline.
6. Use Social Bookmarking Sites. This is probably one of the easiest ways to generate traffic. Simply create an account with Digg or StumbleUpon and begin submitting your own articles.
7. Business Cards. All of your marketing does not need to be done online. To supplement your web-based efforts, you should also consider placing your website’s address on your business cards.
8. Optimize For Search Engines. Organic search will bring you highly targetted traffic. If you do not have the skills to optimize your website, consider hiring an SEO expert; it will be worth the effort.
9. Submit Your Site To Directories. There are numerous free (and paid) directories to which you can submit your website for inclusion.
10. Pay-Per-Click. Unfortunately, this method is not free, however it does generate a lot of traffic quickly. Google’s AdWords will give you the most traffic, but you can also consider similar programs at other large search engines such as Yahoo or Ask.
11. Comment On Popular Blogs. Most blogs allow you to enter a url when you comment. Take advantage of this by writing a useful content and posting your domain.
12. Mailing List. By collecting visitor email addresses, you can easily send articles and advertisements directly to their inboxes, and encourage them to return to your website.
13.Submit Sitemaps. To ensure that search engines know about all of your website’s pages, create a sitemap in XML format and submit it to all of the large search engines. Some popular search engines that accept sitemaps include Google, Yahoo, MSN Live, and Ask.
14. Press Release. Similar to article marketing, creating and distributing a press release can result in a wide variety of inbound links. When drafting your press release, be sure to create an informative article about your business, what it offers, and why people should visit your website or use your services.
15. Social Networking Sites. There are a wide variety of social networking websites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace. If you have an account, be sure to include your url in your portfolio, along with a brief blurb, if applicable. You can also opt to create an account or page to advertise your business. When doing so, do make sure that you are abiding by the terms of use.