If you're planning to create your own website for online publishing, or have already created and hosted one, but don't understand how to make it popular without spending a fortune, then let me tell you a simple truth: legal methods for website promotion are divided into paid and conditionally free.
Paid advertising is clear: these include search, contextual, and banner advertising. We won't discuss banner advertising, as it's purely image-based and is used to promote websites with a substantial budget. As for contextual advertising , the leading providers are Yandex.Direct, Begun, and Google Adwords. If you want to place ads with links to your website in these systems, you first need to define a list of queries for which your links will appear in search results.
Obviously, this is in your best interest: if you're selling stools, for example, you want your ad to be seen by users searching online specifically for stools, not for meeting a girl or buying a ticket to the conservatory. Next, you need to ensure your ad is as relevant as possible to the potential customer's search query. For example, if a visitor wants to buy cheap stools from a warehouse in Taganrog, they'll use that exact search term, and won't need all the exclusive stools, stools in Moscow, or other similar offers.
Conclusion: When compiling a semantic core (a list of queries by which website promotion will be assessed), list not just keywords, but the most specific link anchor texts possible, preferably specifying the region. Moreover, if you sell stools, place ads not on search results pages where your competitors sell them (“selling stools”), but on pages that display a list of links related to purchase (e.g., “buy stools”).
If you don't take this into account, there's a high chance your advertising budget will be wasted. Statistics will show that your ad links were clicked on aplenty, but who clicked them and for what purpose remains unknown. In any case, it won't bring you any clients. Although it will contribute to website promotion to some extent.
Another popular paid promotion method is purchasing links on specialized exchanges , such as Sape or Mainlink. After registering as an SEO specialist and making an initial deposit (don't forget to open an account with e-payment systems like Yandex.Money and Webmoney), you select suitable platforms that suit your needs for placing links to your site and purchase the links themselves. How to do this effectively is the subject of a separate article. There's long been debate among SEO specialists about how long purchased links will positively impact a site's citation index and ranking, but for now, this method is quite legitimate and widespread.
Conclusion: If you carefully compose link anchors for each selected query and gradually (not overnight) place them on websites with good TIC and PR indicators, then in about a couple of months your website's TIC (thematic citation index) will also increase, which is an important ranking factor. This way, your website will naturally rise in search engine results.
As for free methods, they're naturally the most appealing to website owners. I call them relatively free because anything good and effective in promotion requires either time or money. If you want to promote your website yourself and don't want to spend a lot, then be prepared to invest your time. But if time is also valuable to you, and if you doubt your abilities, then it's logical to hire someone who will undertake a comprehensive promotional program for a set fee.
I won't go into detail in this article about how the most effective promotional tool is content itself—it should be informative, original, optimized for keywords, and so on. This seems obvious to any reasonable person. But what steps should you take once your wonderful website is created and its content is beyond reproach?
1. The website must be registered. First of all, in the major search engines: Yandex, Rambler, Google, Yahoo, and others. It's a good idea to add the new site to directories, but only to “white” ones, meaning those that don't require a backlink. This method has long been considered ineffective, but initially, it's important to get as many links to the site as possible online.
To add a website, you can type something like “list of whitelist directories” into a search engine and roll up your sleeves to “sort out” each directory yourself. Alternatively, you can use a website promotion program, such as SeoMonitor, Page Promoter, AllSubmitter, and others. These programs are also shareware, as their creators also want to earn money for their work and your service. I recommend thinking through and creating a description for your site for directories before adding it. This will save you time.
2. You need to systematically increase the number of external links to your website. To do this, they need to be posted for free, and not just anywhere, but on resources where they will be indexed. The most popular method is to submit articles to specialized directories. To do this, simply write, rewrite, and publish articles in these directories with a direct link to your website. Article promotion is considered quite effective, and the only drawback is that you still have to write the articles yourself, not steal them from the internet.
3. It's a good idea to update your website regularly. Then you'll have every right to create an RSS feed and add it to multiple internet portals. While this will require some knowledge, it's modern, completely legitimate, and effective.
4. Try participating in question-and-answer services : otvet.mail.ru, otvety.google.ru/otvety. If you're an expert in your chosen field, provide a comprehensive answer with a link to the source—your website.
Conclusion: these aren't all the steps you need to take to promote your website, but they are the most essential. If you invest the time, are resourceful, and are responsive to the competitive environment, even with a minimal promotion budget, you can rank your website highly, especially for low-frequency keywords.
And then you will need to make systematic efforts to maintain high positions, but that’s a completely different story…
