40 Quality Website Promotion Tips

Boost your rankings

Here are some of the newer website promotion tips that I have come across recently. Some you may have heard of but there are plenty of good ones here. There is no rehashing of old ideas here so you won’t find advice such as “submit to article directories.”

They are roughly grouped into categories.

Smart Blogging

1. Tag your blog content. This is particularly effective in getting your fresh content on the Technorati tag pages, which are frequently spidered by the search engines. With Wordpress, you can just use the built in tag system.
2. Post comments on other blogs. A lot of blogs list the top commenters on their sidebar. This potentially means a link on every page of the blog. Take a look at the image on the right which shows how Google Webmaster Tools reports these links.


Links on many pages from a single blog comment

3. Start your own blog on eBay – Any links you add are followed by the search engines. See my attempt at the New Webmasters eBay blog. People seem to spam these blogs quite a lot so somebody must be reading them.
4. Blog on Yahoo! 360. Links are followed by search engines. See my New Webmasters Yahoo! 360 Blog

Offer Something in Return

5. Run competitions and offer prizes. There are plenty of sites you can list your contest on:
   • Contest Blogger
   • My Blog Contest
   • Contest Beat

Become Part of a Community

6. Create a Squidoo page on your authority topic. Link to other resources as well as your own site. These links don’t pass ranking authority but the interest it generates may lead to other natural links.
7. Post on forums. Use a signature on your posts too. Make sure they are within the guidance set out by the forum and that they only contain a couple of links. Although they may not be authorative in the search engines you can generate a lot of visitors by regularly posting and ensuring people see you link. It is also best to focus on a few forums that you post on regularly where you can get a reputation and people will become interested in what you have to say. It is especially useful if the subject of the forums matches the subject of your website.
8. Don’t be afraid to have controversial opinions. If you disagree with people let them know (in a nice way). You may even stir up trouble and this will cause people to link to you. Use this with caution.

Link Out Appropriately

9. Link to other sites from your blog. It usually creates a trackback on the linked-to blog. Although these are usually no-follow, the interest they can generate is worth it.
10. Embed videos from YouTube. If you are one of the top five referrers they will link you. It is a no follow link but still useful as people may follow it to see how the content is being used.
11. Link between your own websites. This is especially useful if you have a “hub” website. Link from this hub to all the other sites in your network. Don’t do straight forward reciprocal linking, espcially if the sites share an IP address.
12. Reciprocal link exchanges. These are fine so long as you don’t overdo them. They must be highly focused on the same subject as your website. Put them within the content so they look as natural as possible and make sure the link to your site is treated the same. Avoid putting links on a seperate “links” page.

Stay Ahead of the Competition

13. Jump onto new topics early. The first people to post reviews and tutorials for Adobe AIR were given free books and lots of exposure on the Adobe website
14. Interview a prominent blogger or webmaster. Get them to link the interview from their website
15. Analyse who links to your competitors. See if there is a way you can share some of those links. Use the search term “linkdomain:competitor.com” in Yahoo!
16. Don’t forget offline promotion. Try business cards, flyers and even pencils with your URL on them. Maybe even put your URL on a sticker and put it on your car or front door of your house.
17. Make it easy for people to link back to you. If you sell a product, add a note on the transaction receipt that asks people to link back to you if they are happy. Cheeky? Yes, but can be highly effective.

Sponsorship and Affiliation

18. Review a service provider or product. Ask them to link to the review on their testimonials page
19. Ask your business partners to link to your site
20. Find out who has linked to your site in the past and then contact them directly in the future with upcoming stories or exclusives
21. Sponsor a local or national event to get a link from the website or printed on flyers
22. Make a donation to open source project with a supporters page
23. Make a donation of US$1000 or more to the W3C and get your link on their supporters page for a year. The page is not followed by search engines and is basically just a spam farm, but it might be worth it for the visitors.


W3C Supporters page spam

24. If you produce a website or do some design work for somebody ask for a link back in exchange for a discount.
25. If you sell a product launch an affiliate program. As well as people linking to your website with their affiliate link, this may increase your overall exposure as people will be promoting your product for you

Submit to the Right Sites

26. Exchange reviews on Review Back
27. Submit to Killer Startups
28. Submit to I Am Bored
29. If your site offers a significant feature submit it to an appropriate niche site. For example if it is W3C standards compliant submit it to W3C Sites. If it has a beautiful CSS design submit it to CSS Vault

Create Loveable Content

30. Create likeable content for the social media people. Titles such as “Top 10 ways to …..”, “10 myths about ……” do well. These types of article are heavily linked to and do well on Digg. You can also submit your lists to List Universe
31. Create a “guru list.” List the top experts on a particular subject. You can even rank them if you wish. People love to be flattered and many will want to link from their website if you are saying nice things about them
32. Create exhaustive lists on a specific topic. Articles such as “101 Grungy Photoshop Templates” and “50 Essential iPhone Apps” are good examples.
33. Make sure grammar is checked and spelling is correct. Otherwise it looks sloppy
34. Build Tutorials and submit to the appropriate directory sites. This is particularly effective with Photoshop tutorials or web development articles.
35. Create themes or plugins. Create addons for content management systems such as Wordpress or Joomla and submit them to the appropriate sites. There is a good article on Link Rain about how to promote your Wordpress theme. Remember to include your link at the bottom with some good keywords.
36. Widgetbait. Create widgets such as surveys, IQ tests or games. People can add them to their site and link back to you. You can also do this for Facebook or Myspace. Some good examples are the Flixster movie quizzes on Facebook or the McLovin ID maker. Googles latest linking advice is that the keywords must be relevant and you can’t link to third party sites.
37. Create a collection of tools on a niche subject. SEOChat is a good example.
38. Create Wallpaper or screensavers. Embed with your company logo or URL on it and submit to the appropriate directories
39. Conduct surveys with easily to digest headline results. Headlines such as “80% of drivers hate personalised number plates,” or “cheddar voted Britain’s favourite cheese” are very linkable.

Use Social Media Effectively

40. Don’t bother with social media unless you are going to participate. Add friends and vote on their submissions and they are likely to return the favour. Stories don’t get to the front page of Digg just because they are good quality. There are a number of power users that heavily influence the popular stories.

Related Articles

• Shortcuts to Quality Backlinks
• Understand Your Statistics: Why Bounce Rate Matters
• Conducting Effective Keyword Research With Google’s Tools
• How Your Website Could Be Breaking The Law

Tags: content, links, traffic