6 Things You Can Do Today to Drive More Traffic to Your Website for Free

Website (and business) marketing is not a one off exercise.
Whether you have a brand new website or one that you've had
for a while, you need to continue promoting it in order to
bring you more visitors.

You need to constantly work on it, fine-tune it, discard
methods that are not working and implement new ones.

The following 6 methods are simple to implement and can be
done for free by you today.

1. Email Marketing

Your first step should be to send an email to your existing
clients announcing the existence of your website. You
should also ask your customers to forward your email onto
their friends, family and colleagues.

If you are starting a new business and don't have any
customers yet, send an email to people you know who may be
interested in your offer.

Remember to email your clients every time you make changes,
add new offers or features to your website to remind them
to come back.

The next step could be to send your announcement to an
opt-in email list. Opt-in email lists contain people or
businesses who have requested to receive information about
certain topic(s). There are many companies who can provide
you with these lists.

Under no circumstance should you EVER send unsolicited
email (spam) to people you either don't know or who have
not requested to receive your information.

2. Search Engines & Directories

Submit your website to as many search engines and
directories as you can. (A search engine is a searchable
database of websites collected by a computer program
(called a crawler, robot or spider). When you enter a
keyword, the search engine looks for keywords in its
database, and any relevant records are displayed.)

Currently there are thousands of search engines and
directories on the internet. Some of the main ones include
Google, Yahoo, MSN. When submitting your website to the
search engines, you can either do it manually by going to
the search engine website and adding your URL (website
address) or you can employ the services of a Search Engine
Submission company, who will do it for you.

Search engines try to rank sites that contain good content
higher, so you need keywords and phrases on your pages that
best describe your service and products. For example, if you
are a florist, use words such as "florist, online
florist, virtual florist, wedding florist, florist in
Sydney, florist on line, flowers, floral, bouquets, floral
arrangements etc." as many times as possible to ensure high
search engine ranking. To find out what keywords your
customers may be searching use Google's Keyword Tool or
Wordtracker.

Once you decide on your keywords, use them in:

(a) Your website's domain name

(b) The title of your page - This is displayed in the top
bar of your browser window

(c) The heading of your home page

(d) The first paragraph of your home page

(e) Meta tags - Keywords, description

(f) Titles of your graphics

While it is important to use keywords as much as possible,
it is also important you use them only if they are relevant
and do not sound awkward. If you spam your keywords, you
may be penalized or even banned by some search engines.

If this all seems too overwhelming, you can employ the
services of a Search Engine optimization company, who will
make your website's content more search engine friendly to
make it rank higher.

3. Link Exchanges

Find websites whose business complements yours and add
their website to your links/resource page. Then contact
the company and ask for a reciprocal link. For example if
you are a wedding dress designer, you could contact
businesses that sell wedding cakes, jewellery, flowers and
also venues, celebrants etc. By doing this your website
will become a valuable resource for your visitors, since it
will provide information they need. They may return to
your site over and over to find more information.

On the other hand, you will have visitors coming to your
website when they follow a link from your link partners.

Results in search engines are determined by the material
you have presented on your site and by other off-page
factors such as how many other sites link to your site.
The more links you have pointing to your site from relevant
websites, the higher your site will rank.

If you need help with this task, you can employ the
services of a Link Exchange Company. They are generally
inexpensive and can save you hours of time.

4. Email Signature

Every email you send should have an email "signature."
This is text that is automatically attached to the bottom
of your email message. This text can be used to publicize
your business. You can include your name, business name,
email address, street or postal address, website details,
phone number, fax number, company slogan, description of
your company and its products/services. You can set up
different signatures for different purposes.

To set up your signature using Outlook Express:

Step 1: Select Tools > Options from the menu bar.

Step 2: Click "Signatures" .

Step 3: Make sure that you select "Add signatures to all
outgoing messages" - within the "Signature settings"
section. It is up to you whether you would like your
signature to appear in "replies" and "forwards"

Step 4: Click "New" (you can change the name from
"Signature #1" by clicking "Rename") - within "Signature"
section:

Step 5: Type in the text that you would like to appear at
the end of your email messages - in "Edit signature"
section:

Step 6: If you're happy with this, click "Apply" and "OK".

5. Office Stationery & Merchandising Materials

It is extremely important that your website is included on
ALL your office stationery so that customers can see it
over and over again. That way they are more likely to
remember it. If you've just had your letterheads printed,
you can always add your website address on your
wordprocessor, when printing your correspondence. For
brochures, business cards etc, consider having small labels
printed up. Your office stationery should include not only
your website address, but also your email. Consider adding
your details to:

- Letterheads
- Business Cards
- Flyers
- Brochures
- Labels
- Packaging
- Merchandise bags
- Catalogs
- Invoices
- Fax headers
- Display units

6. Set up a Blog

A blog is basically a journal that is available on the web.
Blogs are typically updated daily or weekly and can easily
be managed by you. They provide a way for you to
communicate with your customers directly, give you an
increased presence on major search engines, allow you to
stay ahead of your competition and so much more.

You can easily publish the following information in your
blog: Articles, Media releases, Industry news, Surveys - so
you can get feedback from your customers, Testimonials,
Product reviews, Interviews, Case studies, Links to
complementary businesses, Frequently asked questions and
problem resolutions, Inspirational quotes, Research
findings, etc.

Blogs give you an increased presence on major search
engines, like Yahoo! and Google. If you use
Blogger(Google's Blogging Tool), every message you post
creates a new page on Google so in a very short time you
could have a lot of pages pointing to your website,
bringing you lots of new visitors.

Don't be scared to try some of these marketing methods -
you have nothing to lose!