I've been working on my website, Handy PHP, pretty hard for the last few months and it has really paid off. According to Yahoo, there are about 1,500 links to my website. This number has been steadily increasing over the past few months and wasn't really that hard to accomplish. The best part is that I have done all of this without spamming!

I thought that I'd offer some ideas for promoting your website without the need to spam.

To begin with, every time I talk about my website, I include the name and link. This is true in forums, comments, reviews, etc... This only works if the post, comment, or review isn't about your website! You need to have something relevent to say and then figure out a way to refer to your website in the text. If your primary reason to offer a block of text to another website is to promote your website, don't! This is spamming and will be seen and probably removed as such. It is also important to follow the posting rules of any website that you migh t be able to promote youe website on. Some have a strong "no link" policy and you should never violate such a rules.

Another way to generate a number of links back to your website is to use the signature feature on most forums. Most forums allow links, non-referal, in your signature where you can let everyone know about your website. An image link works best! Many people want to use a flashy, personalized signature image then not link it. Kind of a waste in my opinion. That area could be utilized to inform the public about your website. Dynamiclly generated signature images that include some type of website statistics can really help boost your traffic. Probably the quickest way to make a website popular is to make people think it is popular! If you have a forum and you tell everyone that you have 1,500 members, people will want to find out why you have so many members... The very best part about forum signatures is that the more active you are, the more frequently you signature is shown.

Submit your link to as many search engines as possible! Most people think this is a waste of time and that the spiders will find you by themselves. They probably will find you in a few weeks or even months but if you tell them where to start looking, you'll see better results. You need to add a robot.txt file to your root directory. This tells the robots (spiders) how to crawl your website. You can also use a meta command for the robots but it isn't as effective. Welcoming the robots will insure that your site is index properly. Additionally, create a sitemap for Google. Google has all the instructions you need to crate a sitemap. This will help make sure that yall of your pages are indexed even if you forgot to link some on all of your pages.

Content is probably the most important way to promote your website! If you don't have any decent content on your website then you can't get visitors. I don't care how well you distribute your link! You need to offer something that people want to read, download, or use. For example, I offer free PHP assistance, functions, and downloads. I got something people want to see, I just have to let them know where they can see it! Also, offering free stuff to your visitors provides even more chances to promote your website. Self propagating web promotion is your ultimate goal and can only be achieved with good content.

Forced links are a great way to get your link out there. This requires your visitors to use something you offer. For example, I have written a number of scripts that I offer for free that perform a number of tasks on Joomla! based websites. These scripts have a short line of code that displays a link to my website on the user's website. The user is free to remove the link if they edit the code and I have no problem with that. In fact, if they asked, I'd give detailed instructions for removing the link. But most people are lazy and would rather not go to the trouble to try to remove the link. So everytime someone uses one of my sripts, their visitors have the opportunity to view my link. The more they promote their website, the more chances there are that someone will click on my link!

Of course targeted direct advertising is and has always been effective. Buy some ad space on a website that you think could send you some traffic. A lot of smaller websites are willing to sell adspace cheaply if they are guaranteed income from it. Buy 1000 impressions and see if they are worth the money. If they are, then buy more impressions. Since most website owners are getting some kind of commission based advertising income that they can't predict, they are willing to accept a lower than average per impression payment if they get it in advanced or atleast know exactly how much they'll get from the ads. Look around, you would be amazed at the deals you can make with other webmasters!

Finally, if you have a membership system for your website, you need to send out a monthly newletter! If you only send an email once a month, people don't get too upset and a few will even read it! The real purpose of the email is to remind people that your website is still around. Hopefully they will stop by and check for updates. Keeping your members informed about the website will make them feel more involved and as a result some will actually get more involved. A newsletter should recap the activities of the website since the previous newsletter. Be sure to include enough information to spark your readers interest but not so much that they feel like they don't need to visit the website for more information.

By balancing the methods used to promote your website and tracking the results of your efforts, you should start noticing an increase in your websites traffic. The process never ends but if you get started in the right direction, it is much easier to maintain your promotional efforts. The only other suggestion I have for you is that you should print some business cards and hand them to friends and family. They will probably stop and look but might remember your website when omeone asks for a website related to yours. Kind of a simple system but it works.

If you need more information, please refer to these links:
Robots.txt
Google Webmaster Tools

Hope this helps.

vujsa

Very good tutorial. I need to get my website bigger (it is now on day 5 of a trial beta) and my members keep telling me I should send random emails or post in forums. I never really liked that idea since it makes your site look bad. If it is alright I will summerize what you told me and tell them how they can help me out. I like the idea about making buissness cards. I wish I hadn't ordered 500 a year and a half ago (I am only 14 and don't really hand them out as much as I thought I would).
Thanks again and good job,
Sparkx

Hey Sparkx, sorry about yesterday with the chat. Had to step out and do something....

My website/forum started out small. It wasn't until a few months when I started to see members joining. Word of mouth spreads quicker than I thought. I basically did ALL those things that vujsa pointed out...well, it paid off over time

vujsa made great points there, especially the one with links in your signature. If it's not violating the forums policy, slap that forum link in there. If the forum is a big one, like Astahost, I'm sure it will get some exposure by other members (or even guests who are browsing the forum casually).

BTW, nice site there vujsa

This is a nice tutorial, and it really gets across some nice aspects of getting visitors to your site. I'll definitely keep this in mind when i go to start promoting my website.

One thing i would caution about a monthly newsletter, is make sure it is something people can easily opt-out of...better yet, make it so that they must opt-in...Because I hate it when i join a website (usually forums)....and they seem to think that I want newsletters from them, even though I don't....yet the only way to not get them is to change my e-mail address on the site, or delete my account from the website all together. So I think people should really keep that in mind when sending e-mails to all their members.

I liked this tutorial alot. Some things I never thought of doing. Of course, I am kinda new to all this stuff. But with these ideas, I might be able to get my site out there right from the start. I also agree with Brian about being able to opt out of a newsletter email. Even though one might opt in, if they change their mind, there should be a way to get out of it. Thanks for these pointers though. I will definitly keep them in mind.

Yes, I agree with allowing your users to opt-out of the newsletter. Of course, I think with the amount of spam and junk mail most people get these days, they won't worry too much about a newsletter. But to be safe, allow them to remove themselves so they won't get irritated and never visit again.

As for the business cards, now that it is pretty easy to print how ever many you want on your own computer and printer, you don't have to go out and buy a bunch unless you need to. Most laundry mats have a bulletin board that you can pin your business card or flyer on. I suggest hitting as many local laundry mats as you can about once a month and check your business cards and add more if needed. You will be amazed at all of the places that have such bulletin boards once you start looking around. You'll also be amazed athe the amount of people that will see and even better use your business cards. Many local computer shops have such boards and many computer gurus tend to visit them so if your website is related to computers, this would be a good environment to target. Besides, business cards are pretty cheap, you might as well give it a try.

I have found that with my forced link scripts, I am now getting about 200 new links to my site each day! That means by the end of the week, I'll have another 1400 links to my website. Imagine if each of those links is clicked once a day on average, I'd have 1400 more visitors each day! But more than likely, based on my average, I'd get about 10% of that which is an increase of 140 visitors per day per week!The number could increase much more quickly if my visiotrs also voluntarily link to my website. This has really started to translate in to more traffic and as a result more ad revenue.

Xisto, the corporation that owns AstaHost, also offers very reasonalble banner advertising on it's websites that you may want to look into.
http://www.xisto.com/advertise.htm

WeaponX, hey thanks for the compliment. I've been working on it and still need a bunch of content but it is doing well. I've been thinking about recruiting authors but still need to set a few things up before then.

There are many ways to promote your website that are either free or cheap but you have to try different methods to see which works best for your website. Also, something that works now may not work later if your members or content is changed. LArger site benefit from different promotional techniques than smaller website.

Keep at it and let us know what has worked for you.

vujsa

Good tutorial keep the good work up and this will help some people i am abosolutly sure!!

Nice tips! I use most of those already, most of the traffic I used to get for my old website were from putting the link in my signatures in different forums, it's good cause if you have over 1000 posts, that's already 1000 places your link is shown, so the more topics you post in the more people will see your link.

Hey, nice read man. I will be producing a nice website, hopefully soon! And, I think these are great tips for me (and others). Thanks a lot for sharing them. I want my website to be popular, of course, because it has been a lot of work for me to do.

I have now finished my website, but I am just working on more stuff to put on it and posting here until I have 30 credits. Good guide.