Creating and Growing Your Online Presence, Part 3

Creating and Growing Your Online Presence

Part 3: Continuing to Grow Your Online Presence

Your efforts to grow your online presence certainly won't end once your site goes live. In fact, increasing an active site's visibility can be a full-time job! This section discusses some strategies you can use to help bring visitors to your site: publicizing your website address, reciprocal links, contests, registering with search engines, and various types of paid listings.

Publicizing your website address

One of the easiest things you can do, yet one of the most commonly overlooked, is to include your website address in your e-mail signature. Most e-mail programs allow you to include a few lines of text, called a signature (or "sig"), at the close of each e-mail. You do not need to write a book - keep it short and professional. Basic contact info and perhaps a slogan is entirely sufficient. In fact, your website address should be included on all of your printed material - business cards, brochures, letterhead, invoices, etc.

On a similar note, you might consider creating a mailing list or newsletter. Your mailing list or newsletter could be print or electronic (or both), and could feature updates, links to new products or items of interest, and general news about your company or site. Many web hosting companies provide free newsletter creation tools, and there are a range of products available to help you create and maintain a mailing list. Remember not to spam your potential audience. Only send something to those who have requested it or who you feel may be genuinely interested in it, and honor any requests to unsubscribe. Electronic newsletters and online content also help spread news of your site by giving visitors the chance to "send this story to a friend."

Reciprocal links

Reciprocal links are a major way to bring more visitors to your site. The theory is that you will link to a given site in return for that site's linking to yours. Links themselves are simple to set up on a page, but for various brand and legal concerns, most sites (especially corporate ones) are careful about who they link to. Furthermore, links from highly-trafficked sites are usually expensive and difficult to obtain. Which is not to say a small site can never expect a reciprocal link from a large corporate or commerical site. But there must be some good reason or advantage to the large site for linking to yours. Large sites often link to small ones for PR advantages, for example, so consider highlighting any community service you may be involved in, minority ownership or official "disadvantaged business" status, membership in alumni associations, etc when approaching large sites regarding reciprocal links.
Other ways to attract inbound links include featuring any press releases or news stories highlighting you or your company. Were you involved in a new technology developments, for example? Received any recent awards or attended any trade events? Let large sites know, and they very well may list you in a "News and Events" section, or even feature your company in an article.
Another type of reciprocal link involves related websites or businesses. Randy's Ravioli Ranch, for example, might seek to exchange links with a high-end kitchenware site. Or a talented graphic designer might exchange links with a talented backend programmer. Ideas for reciprocal links can be found through search engines, trade magazines, business cards you have collected, and even goodies you may have picked up at tradeshows. Pretty much any situation involving related interests or applications is a valid potential source for reciprocal links.

Contests

You can increase traffic to your site by sponsoring a contest or giveaway. In exchange for completing a survey, for example, or providing some basic demographic data, visitors can register to win a small prize such as a book or some software. This strategy has two advantages. The prize or giveaway will help drive traffic to your site, and the survey can provide valuable feedback about the site or your business.
Another approach would be to provide information about your site or services to online discussions such as web forums, usenet groups and mailing lists. Considerable caution must be exercised to avoid coming across as a spammer or corporate shill, however. Many online communities value their private, non-commercial nature and will often go to surprising lengths to protect it. However, if your site information is related to the topic being discussed, and if you clearly identify yourself or your affiliation, it is not inappropriate to at least mention your site or what you offer. There would be nothing wrong, for example, with mentioning the helpful articles at "Randy's Ravioli Ranch dot com" in an online discussion about Italian cooking.

Registering with search engines

Another simple but effective means of increasing your site's visibility is to register it with search engines, indexes and directory sites. As mentioned previously, search engine robots will eventually visit your site. But it is much faster and more effective to tell the engines about your site first by registering with them. Registering is usually free and frequently consists of completing a brief form describing your site, or filling in a list of keywords. As there are thousands of search engines, directories, and index sites, manual registration with each one is simply not feasible. Instead, manually register with a few of the major ones such as Google and Yahoo. Or, if you have access to your server logs, check and see which search engines people use most to find your site, and register with those.
If you do want a wider or more comprehensive submission, consider using automated software submission software. This type of program allows you to construct a submission template that includes your site's Meta tag data, various other keywords, and even webmaster and contact information. The template is then submitted to a vast range of engines and directories. Higher quality programs, such as Hello Engines or Ranking Toolbox, even provide descriptions of these directories and allow you to select which ones you wish to send a submission. The chief benefit of automated submission is that it makes it much easier to reach a large number of sites. It also gives you the chance to tailor your submission to your liking.
Note that there are a number of websites offering paid "services" that claim they will list your site with "thousands" of indexes (for a small fee of course). It is probably best to avoid these. They probably will list your site with thousands of indexes, as they advertise, but the trouble is, you do not know which ones. You could find yourself in company with all sorts of seedy directories, links to porn sites, scam operators, get rich quick schemes, and so forth. It is nearly always more effective in the long run to manually regsiter your site with a few major directories, and then use automated software for the rest, if you desire.

Paid listings

Finally, this article would be incomplete if it did not at least mention paid listings. The next time you search for a term on Google, look for a bargain on eBay, or look up an address on MapQuest, be sure to notice the various "sponsored links" or "related services" that appear along with your search results. These are almost certainly paid listings. In other words, the owners of those sites paid the host company to provide a link to their site. There is certainly nothing wrong with this, but fees for listing on major sites can be substantial - it is up to you if the potential for greater traffic is worth it or not.

This has been a great deal of information - thank you for sticking with it this far! With proper planning and design for your site, as well as ongoing efforts for after your site has gone live, you now have a range of hopefully helpful ideas and good advice as to how to grow your online presence. As mentioned at the beginning of this article, though, you need some way to measure the effectiveness of your efforts. In other words, are you actually growing your online presence? Are these strategies working for you? How can you tell?

So for the last part of this article, let's take a brief look at some of the ways you can track the effectiveness of your online marketing and publicity efforts.

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