Because Web Site Promotion has gown in it’s importance to small businesses I thought I would write an article about Small Business Web Site Promotion and the different forms it can take. There are multiple forms of website promotion available including both paid and non-paid Web Site Promotion.

As with most Analyst or Specialist in this industry, I’m a “Jack of all Trades” and a Master of One. I happen to specialize in Organic Optimization (which I think can be the most rewarding). Some of my colleagues at Beacon Technologies are Masters of PPC and others so we all work as a team closing the gaps on any weaknesses.

First I will discuss the paid web site promotion. This takes many forms in itself.

Paid Web Site Promotion:

1. Yahoo Business Directory: Good for credibility, cost about $300 and will help improve your Page Rank. You may see some traffic but it is better in terms of passing credibility.
2. YellowPages.com: Good for getting leads. This directory isn’t setup to pass Page Rank that well so it won’t help give you any credibility. People do use this to find a business when they are ready to purchase so it can be a good source of qualified leads. It can be relatively pricey especially on a national level. There are many other similar directories including Superpages.com and theyellowpages.com but they all provide the same functionality and are about the same pricing.
3. Google PPC: Straight forward Pay Per Click Advertising. You pay every time a visitor clicks on your paid advertisement in Google. There is also the content network in which your ad can be seen on websites that are running Google’s Adsense Program. Here you also pay when a visitor clicks on your ad or an adsense fraud bot clicks it, either way, you pay. Yahoo and MSN’s PPC programs work very similar. This is easy to get started, hard and time consuming to master but can prove to be very rewarding if done with precision.
4. Affiliate Marketing: If a visitor is on a website that is participating in affiliate marketing and follows the link and ultimately ends up converting or purchasing from the site that was advertising, then the site where the user came from that displayed the ad gets a cut of the revenue or a fixed price. This can be beneficial because you only ending up paying if a visitor turns out to be a paying customer. It’s a win win situation for an advertiser but can be difficult to setup and get started with.
5. Purchased Text Links: Looking to build Page Rank? Some sites will sell you a text link which can help give your site credibility. That credibility can then be used to rank naturally for more competitive keywords. This can be effective but if you get caught, Search Engines don’t look too kindly upon this type of activity and it could get you banned.
6. Buying Traffic: When domain names expire, some companies will buy them up by the masses. When traffic goes to these old domains it can be redirected to your site if you are willing to pay for it. I don’t know how effective the conversions would be on this type of traffic because people don’t like to be redirected but it is a straightforward way to buy traffic if nothing else works for you.

There are many more ways to buy web site promotion but these are the top ones that came to my mind. Now to the free web site promotion tips.

Free Web Site Promotion:

1. Organic Optimization: Getting your website to rank high in the natural results from Google, Yahoo, and MSN for keywords that your target market regularly uses to find your type of business. This can be one of the most difficult yet rewarding web site promotion techniques. Depending on how competitive your industry is, and how active your market is online, this will probably be your highest return on investment. Techniques range vastly in how you can achieve this from white hat to black hat.
2. Social Media Optimization: Using networks like Linkedin and Myspace to drive traffic through links. This can be beneficial depending on the industry you are in. The music and arts industries thrive on this type of website promotion whereas others such as business to consumer or b2b markets aren’t so effective.
3. Blogging: Setting up a blog to draw an audience through great content can give you an active audience that is free to market to in the future. This can difficult to achieve and can be very time consuming. Most Business’s never see the positive impact because they give up on it before it can be lucrative. It can also help control online communication.
4. Viral Marketing: Creating something so cool, funny, stupid, or interesting it spreads like wild fire. Doing this successfully can have a very positive impact by creating a lot links, driving traffic, building credibility, and creating brand awareness. This is very difficult to and seems to happen almost randomly but can have a very positive impact. Most SEO Analyst and online marketers strive to create something that will create a successful viral marketing campaign.
5. Online Press Releases: There are multiple free online press release distribution websites. Anytime that your site or company has something to proclaim, releasing an online press release can help build links, and promote brand awareness. Sometimes, it can lead to a successful Viral Marketing Effort.

This really only touches the tip of the iceberg but should give you an idea of what is out there and my opinion of these available options. As the internet shifts, online marketing and web site promotion techniques will also have to shift to adjust to the everchanging atmosphere we operate in. Articles like this are a great way to find out what is out there and what other online marketers are doing for Web Site Promotion.

Brad Henry
SEOslap.com

Globalwarming Awareness2007 is the search term for the SEO World Championship Contest. This is the first SEO contest I am going to participate in. It is going to be interesting to see what happens over the next couple of months and how this impacts Globalwarming Awareness2007. This particular site isn’t capable of winning the contest because it’s an older site but there it doesn’t mean I can’t try to get this site to rank anyways. Maybe I can push some competitors down a little in the SERPs.

Do I think Globalwarming is necessarily bad? Well, we have been having nice 70 degree whether in January in North Carolina so it hasn’t bothered me too much yet. Once it starts to get over 100 degrees on a regular basis I will have to give it a little more concern but until then the term Globalwarming Awareness2007 does concern me. I plan to expand on this entry shortly but wanted to go ahead and get a page out there. More Coming Soon!

After seeing Shoemoney’s Godfather list I decided we should also honor the new guys in the game or relatively new guys. There are a lot of us out there and although we may not be Godfathers some of us certainly know what we are doing. There are going to be a lot of changes to how people search over the next couple of years and we are going to be on top of it. Because we are relatively new we don’t have the “fame” that some of you guys have so I want to give an opportunity for you guys to list out the best young guns in SEO.

Comments Now Open.

If you work in web development, website design, online marketing or SEO you probably stare at computer screens 10 hours a day are familiar with Computer Vision Syndrome also known CVS, Computer Eye Strain, and Computer Eye Fatigue. This is when your eyes start to turn red and burn from starring at a computer screen for too long a period of time. It normally starts to get me towards the end of the week after I have starred at screens for 4-5 days in a row for 10 hours a day.

Other symptoms of Computer Eye Strain:

What causes this? Well I am not an optometrist but I think it has to do with the glare and the UVA and UVB light emissions that come from your computer screen. I think that the 16 four-foot fluorescent bulbs within 8 feet of my head have something to do with it too.

I have decided that I need to do something about it and did a little research into computer monitor safety and computer eye problems and found that polarized sunglasses should defeat all efforts by the computer screen and fluorescent lights to blind you. I found this on an eye care website.

“Polarized sunglasses contain special color lenses that block 99% of the harmful UVA and UVB light rays and reduce the harmful effects of glare.

Unfortunately, regular sunglasses only decrease the light intensity of everything by the same amount and do nothing to reduce glare.

Polarized sunglasses are the only lenses that reduce glare while at the same time allowing more light through resulting in images that are sharper, crisper and more colorful.”

I decided to buy Polarized Sunglasses and got mine from CVS (the drugstore not the syndrome) for approximately $18.00 When my eyes started to burn and basically tear up I put on the polarized glasses and what a relief. The burning stops as if I got up and walked away from the screen.

I have not been using the polarized glasses long but think that they are very promising. I will be updating this article as time passes and I notice more results. Considering I started with 20 20 vision, I hope I don’t have to end up wearing special computer glasses the rest of my life and that these polarized glasses stop the eye strain when it starts to get bad.

Try it for yourself and if it works leave a comment.
Thanks,
Brad Henry