How to Promote a Website Yourself
It’s not enough to create a website with quality content – you also need to promote it in search engines.
Even if your pages have valuable and interesting information, how much use will it be if no one reads it?
To promote a website, you should perform particular work, paying attention to every aspect of the procedure.
Earlier it was enough to buy a guest post or just a link, but today’s search engines are much “smarter”.
Promoting a website yourself is difficult because you have to pay attention to many nuances.
But do not let this scare you – the task remains quite solvable!
The question of site promotion has been investigated by Karen J. Frost, the professional writer at Essaywriteronline.co .
How to Promote a Website Yourself
Selection of the semantic core
The semantic core (SС) is a set of words, word forms, and phrases that characterise the site’s sphere of specialisation most accurately.
The adequately selected semantic core is one of the critical factors in the independent promotion of the site.
There are two ways of doing this – automatic and manual.
Automatic variant implies the use of special programs and link aggregators. You register with the service, enter the appropriate field URL of the site, click the button and get the result. The system will analyse the resource and displays the desired list—the advantages of automatic selection – speed and simplicity.
The manual method allows you to do everything as accurately as possible. First, we study the information available to us. Suppose we need to promote the site for the sale of spare parts for cars. Suppose we need to promote the site of a company that sells parts for cars. We find out what kind of spare parts it sells? For what brands? For cars for what year? Customers – individuals or businesses? Any information is important. For example, if the company operates in the B2C market, you need to focus on requests containing the word “wholesale”. It’s essential to add queries related to the region where you’re promoting, such as “buy bike parts in New York.
Internal optimisation
Another criticalpoint is the promotion of the site. High quality of materials on the pages, the correct technical optimisation, is about half the success.
It is necessary that your site corresponded to several characteristics.
1 – Content must be unique.
By doing independent SEO-promotion of the site , prepare content that has a 95-100% uniqueness.
These indicators can deviate only when such a result is not possible, such as listing specifications, quotes, formulas, and similar information.
If the essential information provided on the pages, non-unique, you cannot even promote a website yourself – you will face very great difficulties.
To check the index, you can use different sites and programs: eTxT “ Anti-Plagiarism ”, Advego Plagiatus.
It is better to use several options at once – so you are guaranteed to avoid the risk of missing non-unique fragments.
Delete or correct them, then recheck them.
Did you get a 95-100% result? Then you can move on to the next stage of internal optimisation.
2 – You need to optimise your pages for search queries.
Thinking about how to promote a website yourself, you should focus on attracting the target audience.
Most visitors will come through search engines , which means that you should give search engine optimisation special attention.
If this is not done, the behavioural indicators deteriorate considerably, which will lead to the inability to promote a website properly.
There are a few nuances, which you should pay attention to:
- Pages should have the correct title. It is essential both for users and for search robots. The title should specify a natural occurrence of the key phrase.
- Pages should have headings of level 1-6 – h1-h6, which should also contain keywords. Remember: you can’t put more than one h1 on each page!
- It is impossible to promote the site without keywords directly in the content. You should also place the text emphasis tags, photos, graphics, and other elements that increase the information content.
3 – The site should be convenient for the visitor.
To promote a website yourself , pay attention to its structure and navigation.
If a user has to think to make an effort to get information from the page – it’s a bad page. The visitor will quickly leave it.
Search engines also analyse the convenience of the resource.
How to properly organise the information
First of all, you should order it—the best option – a tree structure, including sections and subsections, categories, and directories.
The user should be able to move from one page to another quickly.
If you think about promoting the online site store or other organisations involved in sales, make available contact information, information about prices, and so on.
There is a “rule of three clicks” : the visitor should be able to find the information he wants, making no more than three clicks with the mouse. Better – less.
The right solution to the structure of the site will help improve the search and the behavioural indicators.
This means that the user is much more likely to use your products or services.
4 – Do not forget about linking.
Promoting a website on your own requires the preparation of numerous links.
One of the main factors of internal optimisation is internal linking , i.e. on the site’s pages should be placed links to other pages of the same resource.
Thanks to this, the promotion is carried out due to the internal potential of the site.
Internal Linking solves several problems at once.
It distributes the “weight” of the pages correctly and helps to promote precisely what you need parts of the resource, directs the user to the right place where he can make an order or get important information.
The work is done manually and may require a serious time commitment, but it is worth it: by placing links in the right places, you will get rid of the impressive financial costs in the future.
5 – Make the site friendly and fast.
One of the main problems with many resources of the Internet is slow loading speed.
If the page loads more than a couple of seconds, there is something wrong with it.
For search robots, a slow site – a negative signal, and the user is unlikely to agree to wait – instead, they will close the tab and go to the competition.
If you are interested in the proper promotion of a site, pay attention to the technical nuances.
What are the causes of too slow loading?
There’s the wrong layout, the abundance of “heavy” images, and the server’s problems.
Promoting a website on its own requires work on the design .
Nice look; choosing the right fonts will help users better perceive the information presented.
Want to experiment with the appearance of the resource?
Be careful: users do not like too unusual innovations.
The correct option is to look at the pages of the most successful competitors and do something similar.
Independent promotion of the site with optimised articles
This method also applies to internal optimisation.
It’s simple: you need a unique, carefully prepared, and optimised material in which the correctly chosen keywords.
Promoting your site in search engines through optimised articles belongs to the most effective but challenging enough methods.
Suppose it is an online store or a similar resource dedicated to sales , most likely.
It will have to separate sections for the articles—post valuable materials to users there, bringing the traffic.
To promote a website by this method, you need to worry about the quality of content: you have to turn to professionals who can write a relevant article on the desired subject in most cases.
The advantage of promoting a website by this method is to improve the behavioural indicators.
If people are interested in reading the material, they are highly likely to be interested in the goods or services provided.
The more people come to the blog or article section, the better results Google Analytics will show.
How to promote a website with optimised articles?
The material should have a sufficient number of keywords.
It is important not to overdo it. If there are too many affected key phrases, search engines may react negatively to over-spammed text.
There are a few rules with which you will promote a website with maximum efficiency.
- Keywords should be approximately 1-3% of the total amount of text on the page. Some of them can be placed in the tags, headings, and similar elements. If there are too many keywords, search engines include spam filters and the effectiveness of optimisation falls.
- Do not necessarily use only natural occurrences of words. For readability is recommended to use word forms and diluted variants – they work just as well.
- You do not need to use long and complex keyword phrases in the titles. First, it worsens the perception and attractiveness of the text for the user. Secondly, there will be no special effect – the keys in the h1 and h2 are essential but not decisive.
The cost of creating quality content can be pretty high, but it is worth it.
External optimisation
When and how to promote your site by external means ? This should be done only after you complete the internal optimisation work.
There is no point in proceeding to the following methods without taking care of the resource’s quality.
Promoting your site with backlinks
Get links to the resource , which you should promote; you can go in several ways.
There are free and paid options.
As a rule, for free have to spend more time and effort, but they can be just as effective if the link will be standing with a trusted source.
In most cases, developing a plan and self-promoting the site makes it better to resort to the paid methods. Do not be afraid – they are not too expensive.
Links can be temporary or permanent .
Regardless of which option you have chosen, there are a few essential points to keep in mind:
- You should place links on sites or Forums with similar themes to the resource being promoted;
- A page with a link should not be a simple set of words – information content and usefulness are essential;
- Links should be homogeneous – do not link from one material to several different resources;
- They should be placed in a part of the page that is visible to potential customers, that is not in the footer, and not in other little-noticeable elements;
- The best option – having one natural occurrence of a key phrase and one modified (e.g., “buy bike parts” and “buy bike parts”). However, there is an opinion that you can put two links to different pages of your site;
- You should vary the anchor list, and not all links should be from promoted phrases: links that represent the URL of the page are essential because this is the most natural type of link that users can share;
- The subject text around the link should be consistent with the text of the link;
- All popular search engines must index-pages;
- They should have visitors;
- Alexa Rank – the lower, the better; indexes of thematic citation index – only high;
- Links to the donor site should also lead (however, it is essential to remember about the ratio of incoming and outgoing links from the resource on which you are going to link to your site: if there are more outgoing links from such a resource than incoming links, there will be little benefit from such a link to your site).
Thinking about how to promote a website, some optimisers do not pay enough attention to the proper selection of anchors , which reduces their effectiveness.
Remember: the text of the links should be different, carefully chosen, and attractive to the visitor!
People should want to click – this will lead to an increase in traffic.
Finally, the main rule, following which you will understand how to promote a website and achieve high efficiency.
It would help if you bought links regularly and gradually, and you should increase their number with each purchase.
Buying a large number at once for the newly established project can lead to search engines’ sanctions. To purchase can be referred to as special exchanges.
Also, it is crucial to make your resource beautiful, clear, and easy for users, then people will share links to your site, and link mass will grow naturally.
How to promote a website with contextual advertising
To promote a website with contextual advertising, you need to understand what it is and what benefits it promises.
Remember the text ads that accompany the issuance of queries in search engines?
This is contextual advertising.
In “Google”, it is displayed above the top results and does not depend on conventional optimisation methods, referred to as Google Ads.
The principle is simple: the user enters a query, and in response, then it shows them pre-paid Google Ads.
With a high probability, the potential client will go to the site in Google Ads.
Almost any query in popular search engines is accompanied by advertising.
Does it have advantages over standard methods ?
Yes, in some cases, it is better to think about how to promote the site, using contextual links independently.
Ideally, you should combine the usual search engine promotion and Google Ads, but sometimes it is not too rational .
When is it better to resort to the services of contextual advertising?
1. If you need a client quickly (right now). When deciding how to promote a website, determine whether you are willing to wait several months for the usual options. If not – feel free to turn to contextual advertising on Google.
2. If you do not want to spend too much money. If you set up the campaign correctly, the targeted traffic will cost a minimum amount. True, this requires specific skills.
Suppose you want precisely the target customers . You can self-promote any site on Google Ads, but the benefits of this will be little if the visitors do not buy anything.
Contextual advertising – a sure way to bring to the resource only those interested in the goods and services.
The conclusion is this: contextual advertising is the best option for cases where you want the target customers quickly and with minimal cost , but in the long term.
It would seem that if this method is so good, then why even think about how to promote the site yourself? But it also has disadvantages.
1. the effect is relatively short-term . As soon as the money is made to the service’s account, visitors’ flow will stop. Search engine promotion provides a more stable result.
2. With a sloppy approach, the cost rises significantly . You will have to pay for each word, and the more popular the request, the higher the price. There may be unfair competition – when competitors simply click on your ads, reducing the budget.
3. Over the years, the effect gradually decreases . Today’s users have less confidence in contextual ads. Also, ad blockers for browsers (like AdBlock) may even hide ads from human eyes.
By promoting a website, it is recommended to combine the contextual methods with conventional ones.
How to promote a website by contextual advertising:
The choice of requests
Before the start of the campaign, you need to prepare a semantic core , and in some cases, it is not the same as that which was created for search promotion.
There are two types of pages of the resource: targeted and landing.
Landing pages are used to redirect the visitor who saw the ad.
If it is literate, the potential customer goes to the landing page and becomes a real customer, possibly after watching an intro video.
The number of landing pages can be different – up to several thousand.
They are sorted by priority of hits. Such pages are used to analyse the effectiveness of the advertising campaign .
For the process to lead to the results you want, make a list of the main points . It includes:
- The scope of the company’s business;
- What products or services are represented in the range;
- What is the target audience;
- What kind of product or service is to be promoted;
- What goals are planned to achieve (to increase sales or attendance , increase brand awareness, the number of registrations, downloads, and so on).
Promotion of the site with Guest Posts
How to promote your site articles on third-party resources ?
To do this, you need to prepare (or order from a specialist) exciting and valuable to the user materials that contain keywords from a predetermined list.
Some of the keywords will be used as a link to your site on Google.
This option is more effective compared to conventional link promotion. However, it requires a more impressive expenditure of time and effort in creating blog posts .
The procedure is as follows.
- Selected keywords, which you will promote resources.
- Writing an article (necessarily unique!) On a particular topic. Its topic will depend on the content of the reference. If the request “where to buy parts for a bicycle Cannondale” is promoted, you can talk about the features of this bike repair, some specific details… You should not insert links into random materials that are not related to your resource’s subject – the effect will be weak.
- Then comes looking for a site where you will post the texts. This may be someone’s blog, another site, an article exchange.
- Once the material is placed, it can “pump”. “Pumping” is creating links that will lead to the page on which your link is placed. The result is a “triple effect,” which significantly increases efficiency.
Attention – important ! Representatives of the most significant search engines claim that Google robots can distinguish the artificially created reference mass from the “natural” one.
This does not mean that the artificial does not work – just that “natural” works better.
That is why it is essential to take care of its quality when promoting an optimised site.
The more beneficial your resource will be to the user, the more often visitors will talk about it on the Internet.
Over time, this will lead to the accumulation of natural reference mass, which will help achieve results.
What are the requirements for articles in which you should place links?
Everything is the same as when writing optimised texts for the site.
Used a few keywords (not too many) in natural and diluted occurrences and word forms.
Should create only valuable and informative materials (you may need to contact a specialist copywriter for this).
The main requirement is uniqueness – from 90% and above. A non-unique article is not only ineffective – it is harmful to your resource.
The link should look attractive to the user.
You should place it closer to the beginning or in the middle of the article – the location in the “basement” will not lead to the desired result.
The cost of this type of promotion of your site depends on many parameters.
With a competent approach, you can get results for a minimum amount, but you will have to write an excellent article.
The amount invested will more than pay off in the future.
How to quickly promote the site with Social Media Marketing
Promotion in social networks ( Social Media Optimisation ) – a relatively new promotion method, the effectiveness of which increases every year.
As is easy to understand, you will need to attract traffic to Facebook and similar social media platforms.
Painstaking work in this direction will provide you with many benefits:
- Improve the position of the resource being promoted in search engines;
- Attract a large number of targeted visitors interested in your products and services;
- Brand awareness is growing, which, in the long term, has a positive impact on sales.
Why Social Media Optimisation – is it convenient and profitable?
First, the audience of popular social networks is counted in millions of users, among whom thousands of your potential clients are sure to be found.
Secondly , thanks to the social networks’ structure, you can use “viral” methods of distributing content.
First, one user receives the information, and they inform their friends about it.
The result is extensive coverage in a short period.
Thirdly , you don’t need to think up the feedback ways – everything is already in the network itself.
You can integrate your site into it without any problems: For example, there are many WordPress CMS tools that you can use to combine the leading resource with its “representation” in the social network.
Where should you use Social Media Optimisation ?
In the States, Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook show the best results.
Each network has its characteristics, advantages, and disadvantages.
To work with all the options, you can make a list of things you should do:
- Place buttons on your site by clicking on which the user can go to your group in the social network;
- Competently design the community to keep it popular and active;
- To acquire “likes” and “reposts”, – there are many ways to do this;
- Engage in contextual advertising on social networks, like Facebook, Linkedin and Instagram.
- On YouTube, you additionally need to deal with video promotion and video marketing .
Groups on Facebook.
Properly creating and maintaining a Facebook community is a real art.
You need to pay attention to design, promotion, and communication with users… You can turn to specialists, or you can do it yourself.
Remember that a recognisable design is one of the main elements of success.
Remember: users like to communicate and comment on Facebook.
Unlikely to achieve success by closing the comments on your posts because feedback is one of the critical success factors.
It is better to worry about moderation or resort to automatic options.
Promotion by press releases
Not the easiest or most popular, but a convenient option.
A press release is a message containing information about an event or organisation intended to be posted to the press.
It is essentially a news article that links to a specific resource.
A press release differs from an article mainly in the fact that it has a serious reason. It can be anything:
- The opening of an online store
- The start of a major campaign
- The provision of bonuses and discounts
The material has placed a link to the site.
There is also an important feature – the link must be in the form of a URL address rather than a key phrase .
The link in the press release, placed on the authoritative mass media site, is an excellent “pumping” of the resource, increasing search engines’ confidence.
Features of creating and placing press releases
All you need to do is write a press release, insert a link to the site in its text, and then place the material on the right site.
Both free and paid sites accept this type of news article.
The base should be popular and constantly updated.
The best option is to order the service from an appropriate organisation.
What results will be achieved?
You will receive links from a reputable and popular resource.
Other sites often copy news from media resources, so your link may become even more popular than planned.
This leads to better search engine results, more visitors, and a significant increase in brand awareness . Besides, Thematic citation index and PR increase.
Promotion in online directories
It is possible to register a site in the online directories with your business email address.
There are paid and free options .
The best results can be achieved by contacting well-known search engines’ services, but getting into them is not easy.
The site should meet many requirements relating to the design, the availability of valuable and unique content, the level of attendance, and other nuances.
In our country’s top-rated directory of “Google”, add a resource to which you can either for money or for free.
Previously, adding a site to the directory was a mandatory step in the promotion, but some programs automate the process, which reduced the benefits.
Nevertheless, with proper application, you can achieve excellent results.
Remember that adding a resource to a large number of systems in a short period can lead to the imposition of filters of search engines.
It is not recommended to use services for automation – it is better to act manually, addressing only moderated directories that have good indicators of the thematic citation index.
Conclusion
Promoting a website yourself is quite possible, but you will have to pay attention to optimisation aspects.
Be prepared for the fact that the results will not appear immediately – the resource is developing gradually. In any case, remember that a good site is made for people, not for search robots.
Author Bio : Karen J. Frost, managing a restaurant before the pandemic and essay writer now. She believes that all the changes in our life happen for the better. She is always happy to share her insights with a broad audience, so don’t miss the chance to expand your horizons.
