It’s never been more important to make sure your website is properly promoted and marketed. Pretty much every market you could think of is crowded and saturated, so new ideas and new websites need to do something truly special to stand out. Having a good product just isn’t enough any more; you need to do something clever to promote your website and make sure people know who you are. Luckily, we can help you do just that. Here are 8 smart ways you can promote your website in 2019.
Look for a web directory
We’re not just talking about any web directory here. Instead, you should be looking for a high-quality human edited web directory. If you know genuine human beings are involved in cataloguing and categorising websites, then you know there’s a quality assurance that just isn’t there when the task falls to AIs. Human edited web directories read like curated lists of the finest websites around, so having yours listed on one is pretty much an automatic mark of quality. Good directories will let you list not only pages but sub-pages too, so you can get more click-throughs using those. If your website or blog is truly among the finest of its kind, you owe it to yourself to make sure it’s listed somewhere people will actually trust.
Guest blogging
Guest blogging can be one of the most effective and profitable ways to promote your site. It’s easy to start guest blogging, and if you’re already a blogger then it probably won’t take skills you don’t already have, either. Here’s how you do it. First, you’ll need to be a trusted voice in your field. If you don’t have any authority over your subject matter, there won’t be any reason for people to turn to you as a source of information. Once you’re established, you’ll be a desirable guest blogger. Search for authoritative sources in your field and reach out to them. Ask if they need or would like guest bloggers. Pitch some ideas so you’re not just reaching out into the void. If done right, guest blogging can be a real money-spinner for your site.
Build a social media profile
Right now, Facebook might be in a spot of trouble with younger folks. Even though that’s the case, it’s still an incredibly dominant force in the world of social media. It’s still more than worth building a social media profile for your site and brand, because that’s one of the most organic and natural ways to reach out to potential visitors. Building a social media profile means you can share snippets of your content with your followers and bid them to go to your website if they want to see the rest. Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are all naturally great places to go to build a profile for yourself, but you should also consider more unconventional places like Reddit or even Quora.
Keep your content strong
It might sound like an obvious point, but there’s no better way to publicise yourself than with high-quality content. It’s true that a good product isn’t enough, but it certainly helps. There are plenty of ways to go about constructing engaging and compelling content, but the chief guidelines here are actually quite simple. First, make sure you grab your audience’s attention right from the get-go. A punchy and snappy opening line will tell your readers you mean business. Make sure to format and grammar-check your content, because that can be even the most dedicated writer’s downfall. Your product is what you’re selling, so you need to make sure it’s the best it can possibly be.
Engage with your readers
If you get comments or other kinds of engagement, it definitely pays to engage back. Replying to your readers shows you’re interested in what they’re saying and that you want their feedback and opinions on your content. If you’re engaged and switched-on, then your readers will spread word-of-mouth that your site is worth investing time and energy in, and your readership will exponentially grow. This might be a slow “background” way to build a profile and promote your site, but it definitely works; everything you can do that paints you in a positive light can only be advantageous to your position and traffic.
Work on your SEO
Search engine optimisation revolves around making your site visible to search engines like Google. The goal here is to get your site somewhere near the top of the first two pages, and the way to do that is to optimise your content. To do this, you can increase backlinks (that’s links to your site from other pages), you can edit your content to make it flow better, and you can increase your keyword frequency to make sure Google knows what your site is all about. Make sure you don’t keyword stuff or use private link networks, though, because that’s black hat SEO and Google looks very poorly on that sort of thing. Be organic, but be optimal.
Create content on YouTube
Plenty of websites use YouTube to bolster their clicks and increase their visibility. It doesn’t really matter what kind of content your site is focused around; if you’re on YouTube, you’re massively increasing the number of people who can find out about you. Obviously, you need to make your content engaging and worthwhile for this platform; don’t simply transpose your website’s content in video form. Instead, think about ways to make your YouTube content pop off the page and catch people’s eye as they browse.
Reach out to influencers
If you don’t feel like you’re personally capable of creating for YouTube or Instagram, or you don’t know anyone within your company who is, then a great way to promote your site is via influencer marketing. If you’re not aware of this, influencer marketing is basically a system by which you send your product to influencers and they feature it within their content. If you’re a website, consider reaching out to bloggers and asking if they’d like to guest. If they have a significant following, you could reap the benefits of that and they could discover something new they didn’t know existed. Reaching out to influencers is always worthwhile if you want to promote your site.
