Promotions and marketing have a direct effect on a website’s success in reaching potential users. There are several methods of promoting a website, each with its own inherent strengths and weaknesses. No individual method is regarded as the “best” method. Instead, it’s smart to promote your website through a variety of avenues in order to get the best results. This is because the strengths of one method of promotion may make up for the weaknesses associated with another method.
For example, email marketing campaigns are one of the few promotion methods that reach a customer directly, but they generally have a more limited scope than other methods. By investing in both email marketing and social media efforts you can take advantage of email marketing’s direct approach and social media’s wide appeal. Here are a few different promotion techniques as well as the strengths and weaknesses associated with each of them.
Solidify Your Website SEO
Search engine optimization, or SEO, is an organic way to promote your website and improve its ranking in search engines. This works by understanding how search engines rank websites and editing the content on your website to rank higher than your competitors. The higher up your website is in a list of search results, the more likely it is to receive traffic. SEO’s primary benefit is that it can be done organically, meaning that you can promote your website simply by creating content rather than paying for advertisements.
It can sound complicated, but a great deal of SEO can be done without a large budget or much professional help. Here are a few quick tips to begin optimizing your website and ranking higher in Google search results.
- Organize Your Heading Tags Properly
Heading tags allow Google’s bots to understand the hierarchical structure of your website. If your tags are not organized properly, then Google may misunderstand the structure of your website causing it to rank lower than it would otherwise.
- Write Content that Benefits Your Users
Content should always be written with the user’s intent in mind. Your website should strive to present users with content that is either helpful, entertaining, or informative. Search engine optimization rewards quality content over the quantity of content.
- Keyword Research and Optimization
Keywords are phrases that someone searching the internet might use to find your website. These keywords should be implemented throughout your website’s content so that it is easily found by both Google and the searcher.
- Predict User Needs
Predicting a user’s needs and implementing methods to meet them is important to the overall user experience on your website. User experience plays an enormous role in search engine optimization. A better user experience can lower bounce rates and improve your website’s reputation and perception. For example, if your website ships products then one way of predicting the users’ needs would be to add a USPS shipping calculator. This way customers can build an expectation of how much a product will truly cost.
- Responsive Design
Google has begun taking a mobile-first approach to website ranking. This means that websites that adapt to the size of the screen they are being viewed on are consistently ranked higher than their static counterparts.
Take Advantage of Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of the few methods of promoting a website that reaches users directly. This is a major advantage that email marketing has over other marketing methods that can be more easily ignored. However, email marketing doesn’t reach nearly as many people as other methods of promotion. This is because email marketing can only reach people who have already visited your website or who have made an account. Email marketing has been shown to improve visitor retention rates because it offers previous visitors new reasons to come back to the website. For instance, if your website sells shoes, then email marketing can be a great tool for encouraging users who already purchased a pair of shoes to come back and view your new stock.
Blogging
Blogging is a tried and true method of organically promoting your website that can also improve your website’s search engine optimization. There are two types of blogging that can promote your website: blogging for yourself and guest blogging. Blogging on your own website can give users new content to engage with which can drive traffic towards your website. This will help your website rank higher in search results so long as the content of your blogs is interesting to your audience and search engine optimized.
Guest blogging is when you write content for other relevant websites that offer a backlink to your website. This can benefit both your website and the website you are writing for. Your website receives at least one link leading to it from another reputable source, which adds to the authority of your website. And the other website receives well-written content that can attract traffic to their blog.
Harness the Power of Social Media
Social media absolutely unavoidable in today’s world. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Reddit have a combined user volume in the billions. Promoting your website on any of these platforms is an easy and free way to begin building an audience. But that isn’t social media’s only advantage. Social media is one of the few methods of marketing your website that allows for two-way communication. Businesses can speak with consumers and consumers can respond publicly to the business. This is a level of engagement that practically no other form of marketing allows for. By engaging with potential users through social media your business can build a relationship with them and encourage others to join your community.
Submit Your Site to Online Directories
Online directories are websites dedicated to creating a platform where content can be shared for a specific niche. There are online directories and aggregators of news, fashion, sports, and much, much more. By submitting content from your website to these online directories you increase your chances of being found by a member of a community related to the industry your website operates in. Additionally, online directories are easy to post on and can provide your website with a backlink, which will drive more traffic to it. These backlinks will also give your website more authority and help it rank higher on search engine result pages.
Focus on Customer Service
Providing memorable customer service is another method of organically promoting your website. Unfortunately, it is inevitable that customers will run into some sort of issue with your product or service. Instead of viewing this as a shortcoming, view it as an opportunity to improve your business and receive some feedback.
