30 Free Ways To Market Your Small Business Site
Are you looking for ways to market your small business website with a limited budget?
Whether it’s with established sites such as Google and Facebook, or newer outlets like
Pinterest, there are plenty of options available to promote your site.
There are at least 30 ways to market your website with a time investment and no credit
card required. Some of these are oldies but goodies, while others are newer and exciting
avenues you may not have tried out yet.
Here are 30 things you can do today to get started marketing your website for free.
1. Press releases still work. Granted a submission to PRWeb or a Vocus account
make the pickup and link benefit much easier, but those cost dollars – so for this
article lets reiterate the best free press release sources:
24-7PressRelease.com
PRLog.org
IdeaMarketers.com
2. Send the press release to your local media outlets, or any niche media outlets
that may be interested in what you do.
3. Claim, verify, and update your Google Local Business listing. This is extremely
important. Google Local Listings have been absorbed into Google+, so be sure to
check out this great resource over at Blumenthals.com to keep up to date on how
to manage your Google Local Listing.
4. Find a niche social media site that pertains to your exact business and
participate. Be helpful, provide relevant and useful information, and your word of
mouth advertising will grow from that engagement.
Examples:
Travel or hospitality business – Tripadvisor.com forums
Photography store – Photo.net or RockTheShotForum.com
Wedding Planning or Favor site –
Brides.com or Onewed.com forums
Search your niche or service plus forums to find ideas. If there
isn’t a forum out there, consider starting one.
5. Build a Google+ page for your business and follow businesses that are related to
your product or service niche. Share informative and relative content and link to
your profile from your website. You should also consider allowing users to +1 your
content on a page by page basis.
6. Setting up joint benefit with local businesses or others in your niche can help you
reach eyes you never did before. Be sure to answer the question "Will my user
find this information beneficial as they shop and purchase?" every time you link to
a resource, or request a link or listing on another site.
7. Comment and offer original, well thought out, sensible information, opinion and
help on blogs that are relevant to your website's topic and be sure to leave your
URL. Even if a nofollow tag is attached, you could gain a bit of traffic and some
credibility as an authority on the subject matter. This is not blog comment
spamming, this is engaging in a conversation relevant to your website's topic.
8. Set up and verify a Webmaster Central Account at Google.
9. Set up a Bing Webmaster Tools account and verify it.
10. Update or create your XML sitemap and upload it to Google Webmaster Tools
and Bing Webmaster Tools.
11. Write a "how-to" article that addresses your niche for Wikihow.com or
Answers.com. This is kind of fun and a good resource for getting mentions and
links. Looking at your product or service in a step-by-step manner is often
enlightening in several ways. It can help you better explain your products and
services on your own website. I will say I don’t know why some of these sites still
rank well, many of them are junk. I do like most of the answers on the two sites
mention