15 Steps to promote your new Website

The information below is the result of two years of practical experience

Content

1. Cross promotion
2. Social Networks
3. Social Bookmarking/News
4. Advertising
5. Commenting
6. Review websites
7. Video
8. Mobile App
9. Forums
10. SEO
11. Article Directories
12. Web Directories
13. PR
14. Social plugins
15. To do and NOT to do

Cross promotion
The most easy and accessible channel to promote your website is your other websites, place a banner or a link to your new website ( be sure the placement and colors used are unique and will be able to catch your visitor attention )


Social Networks
Post your website on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and any other social network in your reach

• Post on the first working day in MID working hours, some researches mark this time the best time to spread your stuff

http://karim-ouda.blogspot.com/2011/11/research-facebook-usage-in-egypt.html

http://karim-ouda.blogspot.com/2011/11/research-twitter-usage-pattern-in-egypt.html

http://mashable.com/2012/05/09/best-time-to-post-on-facebook

• Post on relevant FB pages and groups
• @mention your friends to make sure they know about it and ask them for sharing

Social Bookmarking/News
Sites such a StumbleUpon, YCombinator, Reddit, Slashdot are great sources of high quality traffic for a new website ONLY if it is really VALUABLE enough for the users, also these sites are a measure of acceptance for your website 

• Post your link in the 4 channels
• All of these website are very sensitive to spamming like activities and requires continuous activity and contribution to be marked as a normal high quality user
• Read the rules before posting, don't post many links in a short period of time, don't share many links from the same source
• Don't post only, contribute to the community 
• Don't use URL shortners

Advertising
If you have enough budget and want a brust of traffic to get user feedback, go ahead and do some advertising, but you need to choose the best channel for your website

Definitions

CPC: Cost Per Click - what you pay when someone clicks on your Ad
CPM: Cost Per Mile - what your pay when your Ad is shown 1000 times for users
CTR: Click Through Rate - The percentage of people clicking on your Ad from the total user who viewed it

Facebook Advertising

Best channel in my point of view for the following reasons

• You reach any market segment on earth
• Relatively cheap ( can start from 0.01$ per click, average 0.30$/click )
• Social effect, you can reach other users from user shares 
• Easy/Fast approval ( 1 day max to get approved )

URL: https://www.facebook.com/ads/create

Don't forget to make a variety of Ads where images, wording, demographics differ because you never know which will work better

AdWords Advertising

Through AdWords your Ad could reach users on almost every website on the web, use it only when you have enough budget


CTR: 0.18-0.68% (my experience)

CPC: 0.36-0.66$ (my experience)

Activation Fee: 5$

Minimum: 10$

URL: http://adwords.google.com

NOTE: there is feature called placement, where you can choose which site to place your Ad on

LinkedIn Advertising

Very expensive ( 2.73$ CPC ) use it when you can ONLY reach you target audience on linkedIn

URL: https://www.linkedin.com/ads/start
  
StumbleUpon Advertising

I consider it a good start since it is cheap, you pay only when the user view your website (uses the stumble button) and it shows you whether people likes your website or not ( if they pressed like after viewing it )

Disadvantages: StumbleUpon users would press the "Stumble" button to check a new website, then you have 5-10 seconds to convince the user to continue surfing your website else they will press the stumble button again

0.10$ CPC

URL: https://www.stumbleupon.com/pd/index

Commenting
Search the web for the topic of your new website and comment in any website/blog - ONLY if you think it will add additional information or answers a question 



Review websites
Review websites are a MAJOR source of high quality traffic and publicity, try hard to reach out and submit your websites to as many website-review-websites as possible, invest much time in that you will never regret

In the blog post below i have compiled a list of 40 website reviewers for your convenience

http://karim-ouda.blogspot.com/2012/05/ultimate-list-of-websites-you-need-to.html



Video
Create a video to show what your site is about and why users should visit it

NOTE: for me that wasn't effective as expected


Mobile App
Create a mobile App ( Android or iOS ) for your website, even if it is ONLY a wrapper, this will drive traffic from a HUGE channel ( Mobile users )

NOTE: Mobile users worldwide are more than web users


Forums
Share your website link in relevant forums - ONLY if you think it will add value

Forum are gr8 source of continuous traffic, just make sure you do the following before posting

• Choose the right forum
• Contribute first ( some forums don't let you post links unless you have created at least 5-15 posts and some days have passed from your registration date )
• Read forum rules (important)
• Post in the right place (ex: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/forumdisplay.php?f=23 )

SEO
SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the most important step to get visitors from search engines, below are some of the things you need to do

Important keywords: the keywords that are expected to appear in search engine results

• URLs should contain the important keyword
• The important keywords should be in the page title and header (h1)
• The page should contains much content (including Important keywords)
• There should be many inbound links to your website from  similar -high quality-  websites
• Speed up your page

NOTE: some websites/blogs linkes to your website with a "no follow" link, such inbound links are useless, they dont affect search engine's ranking

NOTE: Google changes page ranks every 3-4 months  

Some useful links
https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights
http://tools.pingdom.com
www.businessinsider.com/1a0-basic-seo-tips-everyone-should-know-2010-1?op=1



Article Directories
Write articles in article directory about your website, this will create inbound links and will get some more users, you can also use services which make this on your behalf

Links

http://www.submitedge.com/article-submission-service.html
http://hubpages.com
http://www.squidoo.com



Web Directories
Web directories are good sources of inbound links, make sure you submit your website there

Web Directories

http://www.dmoz.org (Takes much time to be included - 4 months)
http://www.directoryvault.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_web_directories



PR
PR (Public Relations )  websites helps in distributing your stuff to other news websites in their networks and provides inbound links

List of 20+ PR Websites

http://mashable.com/2007/10/20/press-releases


Social Plugins 
Use Facebook, Twitter, Google+ social buttons ( Like, Tweet and +1) it helps/reminds user to share your site to their friends



To do and NOT to do

• Invest much time in marketing
• Dont copy content from other websites
• Dont spam
• Track your Analytics tool every day to know which technique is proving more users
• Like, +1, Stumble and page mentioning your website on the web

Conclusion

From all points above, i found the following is more effective - ordered by importance

• Review websites
• SEO
• Forums
• Commenting
• Social bookmarking websites
• Dont participate in link exchange and reciprocal links schemes (http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&query=link+exchange&answer=66356)

Golden Rule: you should invest as much time in marketing as in development

 
Useful websites

http://www.alexa.com
https://bitly.com

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