How to Promote Your Website for Free
Your website is the ‘shop window’ of your business. Or perhaps your ‘front page’.
Either way, whether a brand, e-commerce store, small business, or blog, the more you promote your website, the more people will see it – and the closer you’ll get to reaching your goals.
Paid advertising campaigns are popular because they work fast to bring eyeballs and clicks. PPC marketing costs you money, of course. Fortunately, there are also ways you can boost your visibility without cutting into your budget. It requires some know-how and effort and may take longer to see results than paid promotion, but it is worth it.
In fact, using a combination of both paid and organic promotion in the right way will get you better results in the long run, while keeping your marketing spend under control.
Here are 6 strategies we recommend to successfully promote your website – for free:
1. SEO
SEO forms the foundation of your organic strategy, so is critical to building brand awareness and driving traffic to your site. If you can, start planning your SEO even before you begin working on your website content. Use Google’s keyword planner to help you find the best keywords for your niche market.
Remember to focus on long-tailed keywords. These are more specific, so they are less competitive and easier to get results. As a general rule, choose keywords that have low competition and high search frequency, and use them in your website content. The keywords you select must be added to the title, headings, image descriptions, and meta descriptions of your web pages. By using traditional SEO, you can improve your search ranking over time, and gain more visibility among audiences who are searching in your niche.
2. Organic Social
Over 60% of the world’s population is on social media. Any business today simply must have a social media presence in some form, and by leveraging organic social media strategies, you can get good exposure without spending a cent.
Boost your organic social activity by posting frequently about topics that interest your followers and potential customers. This will help you build up your following and increase interactions, which leads to more organic exposure and growth. Stand out with short video posts, creative images and memes, polls, competitions, or any other interactive and interesting type of post. Always respond or react to users who comment or post about you; this will help build more personal connections with your customer base, which is the best way to enhance your brand and get conversions and sales. Post frequently on the channels where your audiences are likely to hang out, and whenever you have something interesting to contribute or say. You’ll be surprised how much traffic you can get for free if organic social is done right.
3. Branding
Branding is a broad subject, but it’s worth your time and energy because it is one of the keys to building a strong presence on the market. Of course, there are many channels that you can pay to boost your brand, like display or native networks, but you should leverage your existing brand image and assets to promote your website for free. For example, even just including your logo and website address on your email signature can help build brand recognition. Use the signature elsewhere, like web forums, social media banners, and on your YouTube videos. The more brand awareness you create, the more your click-through rate will rise.
4. Original, Compelling Content
Content is the most important pillar of an organic strategy for website promotion. It is absolutely critical that your content be original, relevant, interesting, and informative, and that it provides value for the reader in some way.
There’s no point in simply churning out content to fill a blog. Visitors to your website must encounter fresh, high-quality content, so they will spend time reading and browsing. This indicates to web crawlers that your site is engaging to people, which is essential to boost your visibility in search engines, and even on Google Discover. Creating a steady stream of great content is not easy. You really need to understand your audience, and to have a grasp of their pain points and interests in order to plan out your content calendar. Plus there’s the job of sitting down and actually writing it! Here are some tips for content writing inspiration.
5. Business Profile on Google
If you are trying to promote your website for a local audience, set up a Business Profile on Google. Register your information for free, and make your business more accessible to potential customers who are looking for products and services in your niche, in your area. When a user searches your business on Google, they’ll see your up-to-date info, including address, open hours, contact options, as well as photos, location, customer reviews, and of course, your website link. Having a Business Profile on Google is important to boost your search rankings and visibility, especially for local businesses.
6. Co-Marketing Campaigns
Co-marketing is a strategy in which two different businesses or brands create and launch a marketing campaign together. The genius of this method is that each brand can tap into the other’s target audience, and increase their exposure among customers they might not otherwise have reached.
Co-marketing campaigns are mutually beneficial, so each business contributes to the development and execution of the campaign.
What you need to succeed in co-marketing is not so much budget, but great relationships with other businesses, and the creativity and inspiration to come up with a fantastic campaign that will grab attention from both audiences.
There Are No Instant Fixes
Organic promotion of your website is a long-term strategy, so be patient! It can take a few weeks or months before you see a significant impact. For quicker results, try different PPC channels, such as native advertising by Outbrain. In the meantime, with these no-cost strategies for promoting your website, we hope you’ll start seeing an uptick in your business.
