Most Home Business Owners realize that once
they have created their website, the real work then begins.
It is one thing to build a website ot hire a designer to do
it for you, it is quite another thing to bring traffic to it
on a consistent basis.
This can be a tricky task. This is not to say that building,
tweaking, tracking visitors and otherwise testing your website
is not very important, because it is. In fact it is essential,
because the amount of quality content that your website contains
will be a significant factor in how many sites link to your
site and how much traffic you recieve (also known as the
stickiness factor of your site).
But ultimately, the job of consistently promoting your home
business website will almost certainly be the more challenging
side of the coin for you, so this is where you will need
to concentrate much of your efforts.
Of course the easiest way to achieve your traffic goals
is to hire an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Firm to do
the bulk if the work for you. But you will still have to
monitor their progress intensely to make sure you are getting
your money's worth. And speaking of that, SEO Firms are usually
relatively expensive for the home business owner and small
business entrepreneur because they are primarily geared toward
the the large and midsize firms which are generally better
funded.
Most home business owners I know cannot afford to pay $1500
a month for a typical service. Therefore most of you (and
myself as well) will have to accept the fact that the marketing
burden will fall on our shoulders. The good news is that
you can probably generate adequate traffic to your website
on your own with little investment. But it will cost you
some time and effort.
I recommend that you submit your site to directories first
since they will take the most time to approve you. While
you are waiting for their approval begin lurking and then
posting to relative forums with your signature line (which
contains your website url, of course). Only post if appropriate
but if the forums are relevant to your business then there
should be plenty to talk about. The forums will give your
site instant links, which will not only provide traffic but
also help your site get indexed in the major search engines
faster. If you post to at least several forums you will not
have to even submit your website to the search engines.
In short, posting to forums will provide the initial thrust
that will help you with the visibility of your site. The
next thing you will probably want to do is get blogging.
You can get a free blog with no ads at places such as blogurple
dot com.
Set your website as the permalink and every time you post
to your blog you will be creating a new backlink to your
site, even if it is just a short post. This will work even
better toward your website's relevency if you post about
subject matter related to the general theme of your site.
Now you will want to repeat the process as time allows. Just
was, rinse and repeat.
Every time you do, you will increase your home business
website's pagerank and link popularity that much more.
