Free advertising

[meandthekids]

Hi all. I'm new here and was hoping someone could help me. I have a site almost finished, it's for single moms with kids, and I was hoping that someone could point me to a few sources for free advertising.
Thank you.

[rlrouse]

Welcome to WebProWorld.

For free advertising, you can't beat Google. Optimize your pages for a good ranking (SEO), get some good links to your site from other sites, and you'll be well on your way.

Submit your site to the Open Directory (http://www.dmoz.org) and any other quality directories that you can find that serve your niche.

Add lots of quality content articles to yor site to build lots of "roads" to your site from the search engines.

Add some unique, high quality content articles to other sites (with your link in the resource box) to build high-quality inbound links. Write a few good articles on topics that you know about and contact the webmasters of related sites that could use that content. They'll publish your article on their sites along with your bio and link.

Here are a few things not to do:

1 - Banner or Click exchanges

2 - FFA's / Link Farms

3 - Click here to submit your website to 10 million search engines.

These are just a few of the things that (at best) won't help with getting targeted traffic to your site.

Good luck!

[meandthekids]

Appreciate the valuable information. So much to learn.

[softwaresubmit]

Post your site URL so we could take a look at it.

[anuj_pandit1]

These way UUU can promote your website free of Cost
Search engine submission
International search engines.
National search engines.
Sector wise search engines.
Directory submission
International Directories
Regional Directories
Local Directories
Sector Directories
Industrial Promotion - It will depend on the product.
Submission in keyword related magazines.
Article submission according to the product or service.
Use of press releasing software to promote your product or service globally.
Use the Algorithm of ROI.
Use of FFA.
Exchange your website link in same sector
Exchange your banner in same sector.
Submission in city web cannels.
Promote your website using clock way pages.
Use the user tracking technology so we can track the user from proper sector.
E-mail marketing according to the sector database.
Viral marketing.
Analyze the website of the top leaders of your sector to know what strategies they are following and from which sector they are getting maximum visitors.
Logo marketing to promote your company image in peoples mind.
B2B and B2C.
Special event marketing.
Newsletter marketing.
Register your website at some payment portals to track visitors.
Contests will be organized time to time.
Free consultancy about the product.
Social marketing for your product.
Affiliate marketing.
Free media marketing.


Regards
Alok Kumar Upadhyay

[sherwin101]

yup... totally down with what rlrouse's suggestions- specially the things to avoid. there are tons of "free" stuff on the net but you must be ultra-selective with these. you sign up for a free offer and the next thing you know you're up to your ears in spam. this, of course, isn't always the case; there are legit "free" deals. what's important is that you choose carefully.

link exchanges may be a good way to boost Google rankings but, again, be careful with who you exchange links with. a lot of times the banners/links you get look like cr*p and cheapen your website. you may have gotten your link posted somewhere but you get customer doubt on your site... this clearly can't be good.

and last, you really should make even a small investment in 'dressing up' your website-- so users know it's worth their while when they eventually get there. mind posting your web address so we can have a look-see?

good luck!

[JMac]

Hi there MeandtheKids,

We no longer do "free link exchanges" at Mostly Mommies - it was headed down the wrong path - the more links to us from "the wrong side of town" the worse it got. www.mostlymommies.com
We DO post articles in our newsletter and throughout the site and we include the link to the article author's site.
If you have an article already, drop me a line. If you don't, check out www.mostlymommies.com and see if there isn't something that springs to mind. Obviously, for added relevance, your article should be about single parenting - maybe write a game review for our Games page (soon to be split into 3 pages!) of a game that somehow ties into single mothers. Or, write an article about safety... whatever you feel you are an *expert* at. Maybe a review of a recent kids' movie that centers around a single mother. (Didn't Lilo and Stitch? I didn't see it but that's the impression I got.)

Either way, drop me a line - I'm happy to help you with getting your site off the ground. Check out an article about Mostly Mommies and building community online at http://www.e-bc.ca/caseStudies.asp We are the second article down. This is another great way to promote your site - find a similar organization (to e-bc.ca ) and tell them what you're doing. Chances are they want content and you can certainly use the local link.

Good luck,

JMac

[arvana]

Here's an excellent place to learn more about site promotion - it's all free, and it has some great tools for submitting your site:

http://www.selfpromotion.com/

The author, Robert, is a nice guy, so if you feel like giving him a small donation to reward his hard work, that might be nice - I did!

Arvana

[voodooboy]

Search engine and directory submissions are great for long term returns on time invested. And I do suggest doing them. I would however suggest viral marketing as a short term boost. If you are not familiar with this concept, Viral Marketing is the process of marketing like a virus.

No, I am not saying to put a virus out on the net. Viral Marketing is where you create something that is attractive to your target market. (i.e. a Flash Animated Game, an Animated (or Static) E-card) You contact all your friends and business associates and ask them if you can send them something fun and pass it along to promote your site. At this point you are not spamming people as you are only sending it to your friends, family, etc. They in turn send it to people they know. If you create (or have created) a fun animated card or game it will pull people to your site. It will have them sending it on to their friends and so on. And all you did was send something fun to a friend.

Now here is the catch. At the bottom of the game screen or e-card you place a text note saying something like: This e-card provided by (your URL here). And make it a link. People will go to your site to see what else you have. It does take some planning, but if done right, you stay legal, and get a lot of traffic.

Another thought here; If you create an animated e-card or game, the email you send (html or text based) could contain just a link to the viewable materials. When they click on the link to view or play, it directs to a page on your site. This directs traffic to your site thus increasing your hits. At the bottom of the page they visit, you could have an opt-in field for your newsletter offering more of the same in the near future. This will bring in more traffic, and start your opt-in list.

Viral Marketing can do wonders for traffic and name recognition. And with the Holiday season coming on, now is a good time to plan for those e-cards.

Best of luck.

[johnm]

I'll have to ditto what anuj_pandit1 said. Submiting services are relatively cheap. I'm thinking about Topsites or INeedHits, something like that. I have even (once)done the arduous task of hitting every site I could to register. Caveat: some of these you can't hand register anymore- Here's a short list: Lycos, Google, Subjex, ScrubTheWeb, Alexa,LookSeek,ExactSeek,Infospace,Searchit,Jayde, AolSearch,Netscape,DMOZ,AHHA,Findinfo,Truesearch,A llTheWeb,Websquash,EntireWeb,MyGlobalWebsite,Where togo,Rex,Gigablast,Altavista,SearchHippo,123world, AllSmallBiz,BestSpider,BisWeb,Free4submit,FindAnyt hing,HotBot,OneSeek,Spiderbot,BigYellow(Superpages )Verizon,MSNYellowPages,Search.com,Excite,Webcrawl er,NBC,Dogpile,MetaCrawler,Go2Net,FindWhat,SleepyS hopper.