Website Promotion

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neophyte
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Location: Minnesota

Website Promotion

Post by neophyte »

This seems to be an odd topic for a coders forum. But I figure we all have some experience with promotion. I know there are a ton of websites offering tips on this topic. A lot of them also seem to have something to sell. I'm wondering what have you done to promote your website(s)? What works best? What do you stay away from? How bout those Google ads? Do you know of any good, not-out-dated, books on the topic -(Not the usual 100 ways to promote your homepage type books).






*Edit reason: fixed a type-o sorry.
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Burrito
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Post by Burrito »

obviously the best promotion tool is SEO. The better you can rank on the engines the more people are goign to find you and it is very targeted marketing as they are looking for exactly what they find.

Banner ads and the like are only good if you're on a site that is VERY relevant to what you're selling or if you're selling somethign that appeals to a very broad audience...I'd recommend you not waste the time nor money with those.

back to SEO. we have posted several topics on this forum with tips and "tricks" to getting your site ranked high but the best practice is to just create good copy that is relevant to what you're selling and not overload it with keywords (spamming). Be consistent on all of your pages and spatter your pages with keywords (even put them in some html tags, alt attributes, link titles, etc). As mentioned above, I think SEO is the most important form of site promotion because it is extremely targeted. People are actively searching for whatever it your site has to offer so it should appeal to them.

ok off my soapbox now....
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Toneboy
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Post by Toneboy »

AdWords are pretty handy, especially if you get sign up for one of those £50 vouchers they offer periodically.
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neophyte
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Post by neophyte »

How do you find out when they are running the $50 vouchers? :oops:
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Ambush Commander
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Post by Ambush Commander »

Organize your layout so that it contextually makes sense. for example...

Code: Select all

<body>
<h2>My Webpage</h2>
<table><tr><td>
<b>Menu</b><br />
<br />
- Bang<br />
- Boom<br />
- Piffle<br />
</td><td>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;This is my website. I hope you like it. thanks for visiting, please sign my guestbook!</td></tr></table></body>
This code is horrendous for so many reasons.
  • Use of level two heading when a level one heading would be most appropriate
    Use of linebreaks when a list would be more appropriate
    Use of nonbreaking spaces to simulate tabs
    Not using P tags for paragraphs
    Using tables for layout
    No content! :D
When it comes to getting promotion, you have to remember that some websites just aren't geared towards powerusers and vice versa. Personal sites are a very good example.
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