Free Website Promotion

© Illa Maden   December 2006

Free website promotion will cost you, in terms of your time

Free website promotion is still available, but you have to actively look for it, and then evaluate to see if it is worth the time you would have to invest.

I am going to be honest and tell you yes, there are ways to promote your website and get traffic.  Free in terms of $'s, but promoting won't be free in terms of your time and it won't come quickly in droves as some would have you believe.

To get free traffic you will have to knuckle down and spend some time promoting your website, and then you will have to be patient to reap the rewards. It just isn't going to happen overnight.

So let's get to it. The first free website promotion project I would suggest, is directories. Many directories are free, and submitting to directories is something you should do even if you have a fair sized budget for promoting your website. If you are on a tight budget just submit where it is free, and later you can go back and promote your website on some of the paid directories. Many directories don't require a link back. Find a link to a large list of directories and other time saving information.

Free website promotion with articles

Another free website promotion method is articles. You can write and submit articles about the theme of your business and submit to article directories. This is a very beneficial method of promoting your website, because it is free if you do all the writing and submitting, and it will bring you one way links. So you get some traffic from the articles themselves and you get the benefit of the links to help promote your website to the search engines.

Reciprocal linking and free promotion

Getting reciprocal links is another method of promotion. You will not get tons of traffic, but you will get some and you will also be adding to your links. Care needs to be taken in how you approach exchanging links. This promotion method has lost some of it's punch, and now comes with some cautions. Bad linking can cost you.

Link only to sites that are good content sites that relate to your website. Don't promote your link on junk sites that are generated and full of nothing but news feeds and scraped content. Read more about link popularity.

Promote free with viral products

If you are fairly comfortable writing, and know your subject well, you could probably produce a helpful booklet and offer it as a free download. Promote your website by including a link in it and also your newsletter link if you have one. Promote it as a give away with the condition that it may be reproduced and passed around as long as the copy and links are not altered in any way.

Other free website promotion thoughts

And of course, you should use email signatures, business cards, and posts to forums that allow it as additional ways to promote your website for free.. You can also write testimonials for products you have purchased online or sign guest books. Testimonials are free website  promotion at it's best, but you need to be careful, and above all sincere.

Occasionally one of the smaller PPC engines offers an opportunity for free website promotion. As a pitch to gain advertisers they will offer a bribe of several dollars worth of PPC advertising. 

There are a lot of free website promotions that are played up on the internet. You have to look at them honestly and see if they are worth the effort and time. Traffic exchanges and FFA's have seen their time. Though they are free, promoting your website on traffic exchanges consumes a lot of time and produces little. FFA's are good for the owners, but won't be effective in promoting your website.

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