1. Start building a strategy for ongoing content development right away! Fresh, niche-targeted content is simply the most effective way to draw in new visitors.  Establish a plan that includes a rigid schedule for creating and publishing new content on a regular basis (before the newness wears off and too much time slips by).

2. Share your news and updates on Twitter and other popular social media sites. Now, it always helps if you already have an active presence on the social sites before heavily promoting your new website, but social media was practically designed for this task!

3. Create a few quality articles for the top article directory sites. A well-written 400 word piece that covers your site’s niche in some relevant way will do the trick-and don’t forget to include a link back to your site in the resource box at the bottom of the article.  This timeless tactic still delivers direct traffic and helps build link popularity with remarkable effectiveness.

4. Include your new website’s URL on every piece of material printed or sent out by your organization. This includes business cards, stationary, advertisements, emails sent, and everything beyond.  Seems like common sense, but many folks out there overlook this simple step.

5. Launch a PPC (pay-per-click advertising) campaign if your budget permits. It’s always a worthy ambition to seek free organic search traffic through solid optimization techniques, but even that goal will take time.  If possible, set aside the funds necessary to launch your new site with a bang by purchasing highly-targeted traffic through PPC ads-it’s a great way to build some popularity in the beginning stages, and also to tweak conversions and traffic funnels.

6. Get listed with local search. Each of the major search engines includes their own version of a local directory or portal.  The best part is that it’s really easy to get listed with these local services-it’s just a matter of filling out a quick online form with your site’s details for each respective search engine.  This is especially relevant these days, due to the fact that many on-the-go internet users will see these local results before they’re shown traditional search results.

7. Become an active part of the blog community for your area of expertise. Actively participating on the blogs that surround your site’s niche is a great way to promote your new website-after all, almost all blogs will allow you to include your URL in some way or another with your comments.  Word of advice here though…in order to make this work, you absolutely must offer value and active participation with your comments.  Simply creating a comment just to toss out a link is considered to be blog spam.

8. Look for links in all the right places. Having incoming links to your site from other popular sites that are related to yours in some practical way is essential to building link popularity…and ultimately enhancing your website’s presence in the search engines.  Reciprocal link exchanges are kind of a thing of the past-and definitely stay away from link farms.  What does work though is to ask for links from any trade groups or community organizations that you participate with.  Also, spend an afternoon or two searching the web for web directories that match your niche and apply for links with these sites (note:  there are very few reasons to pay for a link when doing this).

9. Issue a press release. You’ve probably done this time and time again within your organization for the traditional media-and that’s great, they should know about your new website too.  However, we’re especially talking about creating an online press release.  With minimal effort, this site promotion strategy can deliver huge exposure through trade and industry news websites-and sometimes even the major news sites.

10. Start a newsletter. This might sound old-fashioned to many of you (and there are probably a few web geeks out there who are grumbling right about now), but the bottom line is that newsletters still work really well as long as you follow a few simple rules.  These rules include making sure your subscribers actually want to receive your email by asking to receive, keeping to a regular and predictable mailing schedule, and most importantly-providing something of value and interest to the subscribers each time you send the newsletter.  Do this correctly and you’ll receive all kinds of targeted traffic to your new website!

Tags: promote website, website launch

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 3rd, 2009 at 6:58 am and is filed under Web Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.