Marketing Your Site Online and Off

(1) Find online community forums where you feel comfortable, introduce yourself, then get to know people there. Don’t just jump in and advertise your product or service. You need to build trust. People shop with and work with people they know, trust and like. Offer advice, opinions, and be as helpful as possible. But, most importantly, be yourself. Use your web site address in your signature line of online forums you visit and post to.

(2) Figure out what key words and key phrases you want your site to pop up in the search engines for. What phrases do you think prospective customers might use when searching for products or services such as yours? Brainstorm a bit. Use those key words in the html title of every page on your site.

(3) Try to get as many high ranking (in the search engines) web sites to link to you as possible. It is also very important to have the web sites that link to you be of a similar or complementary business or topic as yours.

(4) Be sure the pages of your site have lots and lots of great key word rich text content on them. The majority of search engines no longer weight meta tag key words heavily in rating sites, since too many were putting key words in them that were unrelated to the content on their site. Now, the search engines look much more closely at the words contained in the title tag and the text content on the pages.

(5) When you use images, use key words in the "alt" (description) tags. Not only do good, descriptive alt tags help users with visual deficits get the same experience on your site as those without visual disabilities, but they are also picked up by search engines.

A few offline tips for getting your site seen:

(1) Get business cards printed and never, ever leave the house without them, then hand them out freely.

(2) Word of mouth is the most valuable offline marketing that you have! Treat your customers like gold, surpass their expectations, and ask them if they will refer you to others.

(3) Be sure your web site address is on every single promotional material that you have. This includes fax cover sheets, the header or footer of Word documents and PDFs you create and distribute, receipts, billing statements, print ads, etc.

(4) Attend networking events and be ready to sound excited about the products or services that you offer. When you tell people what you do, be proud, and explain to them not only what kind of work you do, but how it has benefited the customers you work with.

(5) Get a decal for your car that advertises your web site address. Then, be sure you don’t drive like a maniac!

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Julie Kimber
Web Developer
http://www.blackpawdesigns.com
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