subject: Marketing Your Business Website Properly [print this page] Almost every web promotion professional will give a slightly different answer to the question how to promote a business website effectively. This is not because they are wrong but simply that their approaches and techniques may vary. Like a new brick and mortar store, a new website can't begin to show a good profit until people know it is there and hence, the necessity for website promotion.
In the beginning, the new site could be considered very much like a remote island which is far from shipping lanes and has no connections to it or from it. Search engines have yet to discover this island and even a visitor searching for that site might have a hard time finding it. A well thought out promotion can change that site into a heavily trafficked center of online commerce.
Most experts agree there are three essential factors to promoting a website and these are incoming links, SEO and website content - all three of these elements work together to promote the site. Promotion for a site is very often a long term strategy carefully developed and implemented to produce optimal results.
The uses of site content and its relationship to how to promote a business website effectively may not be immediately obvious to new website owners. Content ties into the SEO program because spiders and visitors both prefer useful information, text and product descriptions. The site visitor may be there to discover how a product works, find buying tips or even price a product, and the content gives that to them. The spiders need words to evaluate the website and decide if it contains relevant information.
SEO strategies focus on the website appeal to the search engines. Search engine robots do not view a site in the same way that a regular surfer might. Instead they read the hidden elements such as alt tags on pictures, website descriptions and meta tags, and of course informational articles. Based on what they find in the tags and text as well as other factors, they make a decision as to how relevant a website may be.
Back links are also essential to proper site promotion and a site that has relevant incoming links pointed to the site gains status in the eyes of most search engines. Links pointing to a new website could be created by trading links with a non competing but related business site. They could also be gained by submitting relevant informational articles in exchange for a link pointing to the new business website.
Some owners may choose to pursue website marketing on their own and learn as they go. Other business owners who are new to online promotion may hire the services of an SEO professional. The SEO professional can offer direction and advice as answer to questions on how to effectively promote a business website.
