Promoting & Advertising Your Website
A couple ways to market your site quickly

So we've covered the inital points of getting your website ready for Search Engine placement. But it's going to take a long time to rank, so what can we do to get visitors to our site now?

Make a press release using one of the online PR sites.
A press release is a good way to get your site out there. I've used a few services, my favorite is PR Web. It offers lots of great articles on how to write a winning Press Release and the service works!

The #1 Way to get traffic to your site instantly (drumroll, please....)
Pay for your ads to appear on the Search Engines.

Hands down, the best way to get into search engines instantly is to use Google Adwords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and/or MSN.

Google Adwords are the Sponsored Results you see when you're in Google and a row of ads appear on the right side next to the natural results. Same for Yahoo Search Marketing, which you've seen on Yahoo or MSN. Those are paid advertisements, called PPC (pay per click). Both companies also show these ads on their partner sites (AOL, Netscape, etc) so you can get a lot of exposure this way.

How's it work? You bid on the keywords of your choice, make yourself an ad and each time someone clicks on your ad, you pay. Costs can range from 3 cents a click to a few dollars per click, it depends on the popularity of your keywords.

Some things to keep in mind with PPC advertising:

1. Write great copy. The better, more focused the ad, the more visitors are likely to click.

2. Keep an eye out on your campaigns until you know how it's going. Don't start a new ad campaign at midnight then go to bed, or you might wake up to a huge number of untargeted clicks that cost you a bundle. Check your logs often so you know your advertising money is being spent wisely and adjust your keywords as necessary.

3. Use negative keywords generously. Both Google and Yahoo allow you to use negative keywords, so use 'em! If your site is about Ferret Kennels and your ad is appearing in searches for Dog Kennels, make sure you put "dog" in as a negative keyword. Again, keep an eye on your logs so you know exactly what people are searching for when they click your ads.

Now we know the first thing about search engines, what's next?
We're going to learn how to Make Money From Your Web Site!