Tips For Marketing Your Website!

Make sure your web site address appears on every piece of advertising your customer sees!  It simply MUST be on your business cards, and ought to be included on any other piece of advertising!  Keep in mind, by having a web site to pre-sell your customers, you don't need to buy as large an ad as you did previously!  So long as the ad you do buy includes, "Go to www.yourbusiness.com"!

Orient yourself and your employees to mention the site.  Make it a cardinal rule that you FIND a reason to point customers to your site.  Things like, "Oh, you can read about that in detail", or "You can print out your own coupons", or "You can track the progress of that on our web site".  Show one person a nice web site, and they'll tell two friends, and those two will tell two friends, etc.

Give your customers a reason to visit often, and/or stay when they get there!  In geek-speak it's called having a "sticky" web site.  If you're in a daily or weekly type of repeat business such as a restaurant, bar or gym, you can use specials, coupons, etc.  Or make it unique if you're in an "as needed" type of business such as auto body work.  Our "How Do I Make My Web Site Sticky" FAQ contains suggestions for both business in general as well as some business-specific ideas.

Use reciprocal links to related sites where applicable.  For instance if you're in the plumbing trade, you might have a link to an electrician friend's site in exchange for a link on his site to yours.  Or if you just sell cars, perhaps links to a local auto parts store, or even a local boat or motorcycle dealer.  The number of sites that have a link to your site  also helps in your ranking on some of the search engines.  And keep in mind that if you link to other big commercial sites, you might even get paid every time your customers click on the link.  Contact the site owner before you make the link.

And last but not least, be sure to read the FAQ on search engine submissions.  You don't want to make a mistake there!