A lot of clients expect that once their website is done and online, they can just sit back and wait for the clients to filter through their virtual door. This isn’t always the case, especially since most businesses are competing with other businesses who have been utilizing the internet and their websites for years before you. It also takes time before you can expect decent search results, and even then you need to ensure you are working the full potential of your website or you are not fully utilizing the benefits of having a website.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is something that takes time and money. There isn’t one easy thing any company can do to make your website appear in the top 10 search results on major search engines, but there are a few things that you can do on your own time to help get your website noticed, ranked and to drive more traffic to your online business without needing to involve or pay your website development company.

Inktvis Creative always develops and designs their clients websites with SEO in mind, ensuring that the website has effective and eye catching designs, proper and easy navigation for people visiting your website and proper coding is used in creating your online business, but that isn’t always enough. So what can you do for your website?

Here are 7 effective ways to market your website online.

1. Using Twitter, Facebook and other Social Media websites.

Create a Facebook Fan page and invite all your friends. When you add a new product, service or have something worthy of letting people know, discuss this or put a new topic on your business Facebook page. Create a Twitter account with your business name, follow and friend like minded companies. Reach out, learn and retweet interesting things in your industry. This helps to get your business out there. Be active.

2. Video

Creating video these days is relatively inexpensive. You can pick up a nice video camera, great for online use for as little as a couple of hundred dollars. With free video hosting sites such as YouTube, you don’t need to worry about paying for bandwidth. Create a YouTube account with your business name and upload video featuring your products or talk about your products on camera and how they can benefit your target audience.

Don’t forget to follow other YouTube users. Following creates followers. And if you comment on video, you also create a link to your channel, increasing your chance of getting followed and noticed.

3. Blogs and Forums

Similar to social networks, blogs and forums are a great place to take part in creating a dialogue. You want to be resourceful, really help people, and provide valuable information in order to gain the maximum benefits of these mediums. Don’t forget to create a signature with your user account and have a link to your website in the signature. Search Engines like Google index forum pages and having your website link in your signature only adds to more online pages getting indexed.

4. Press Releases

A great way to gain new customers is by creating press releases about your services, products, or business. Try and stay away from highly commercial

press releases that simply show your company in a positive light. Instead, focus on a unique angle that will draw visitors’ attention to something you are doing or an interesting aspect of your business.

5. Email Newsletters

Create an email list, capture peoples emails from your website who might be interested in receiving an email newsletter from you with latest news, products or just explain what has happened in your company for the last month. This is a great way to get your business out there and with websites like Constant Contact, this is an easy and inexpensive way to create an email newsletter.

6. Contests and Giveaways

To be successful with contests and giveaways, you need to give people things that are valuable and relate to your business or industry. The great thing about contests is that you can give your own products away and your only out-of-pocket expense will be your hard costs for the product(s)

Promote these contests on Facebook, Twitter, Newsletters or your Blogs.

7. Create a Blog

One of the most beneficial and inexpensive ways to promote your site online is by creating a blog that compliments your business’ services and products. Not only does it give a chance for you to talk about new happenings in your industry, but it allows you to start connecting with people on your site – where you can promote your own business as much as you want.

You can either build your blog right into your website, which can be a little more time consuming and costly, or you can start your own blog and link that to your business website, for Free. You can use WordPress (my favourite and there are thousands of templates), Blogger or TypePad for examples. Vox is another great community blog. The best thing about blogs is it’s like a mini-website that you can easily add photos, video and text whenever you want.

The one thing that is common to all of these 7 ideas is time and effort. If you don’t, and you just sit back hoping the investment into your website is just going to work, you’ll come up short, unless you have thousands of dollars and use traditional print methods. All of these things take time and effort, but it can be fun and it’s rewarding seeing your time pay off.

There are other things you can do as well and if you have any questions or comments, please feel free and send us an email. We would love to assist you and try to help you out in any way that we can.