Website promotion has become one of the most important marketing strategies and is a critical consideration for business growth. Promoting a web site means popularizing it among as many people as possible which will in turn increase the numbers visiting the website. With increasing website traffic, there will be a corresponding growth in business. It thus becomes evident that web site promotion is some thing to be pursued with zeal.

Numerous techniques are available for web promotion today. Is there a different way to look at it? There is a check list of web promotion DOs that can be a basic starting point to determine how far your website is ready for being “clearly visible” to potential customers. The techniques are being routinely adopted by many web sites but understanding why certain things have to be done will give you an edge – to tweak your web site and make it more search engine friendly. With this check list, we will be looking not just at overall strategies but go behind the scenes and see what should be done.

First step would be to ensure that your website is search engine optimized. All the popular search engines use algorithms that search the index of your web page content that has been prepared by search engine spiders. Your web site has to have a few features to ensure that you get caught first by these algorithms. Making sure that the web site title, hyperlinks and headers are keyword(s) rich, your pages have META tags, keywords are positioned near the top of every page are some of the ways to optimize a web page. The latest technique being advocated is to write one keyword rich web page per related keyword.

Getting good linking techniques in place is another way to show up high on a search results page. Your site is given a higher ranking by search engines proportional to the number of links that come into your site. Getting your website onto popular directories is important too. Reciprocal linking involves hooking up with other businesses that are allied to yours and displaying their link on your site and vice versa.

Making your site link show up on relevant discussion forums can get the right visitors to your site. Having a professional blog in your site with useful/ relevant posts can make it more interesting and attract more visitors; participate in online communities like Facebook and Twitter to create visibility for your site. E-mail updates and newsletters that talk about your offers and deals are great ways to keep in touch with potential and existing customers because they are personal and one-on-one techniques.

Till now we have seen how to promote your web site using online methods. But, web site promotion certainly need not be restricted to online strategies. There are many real-time solutions to promote your web site including popularizing them through audio/ visual and print media, holding and sponsoring events, creating awareness by holding small meetings at crowded public places like malls, word-of-mouth advertising and so on.