Creating a well designed website with lots of useful features and information is only the first part of running a successful website. To really succeed you need to get your sites name out there, people can't experience what you've built if they don't know it exists. This is a step often ignored or poorly implemented by website owners, costing them a valuable number of visitors that could have been using their site instead of the competitions. There are a number of tools and strategies you can use to boost your websites presence on the internet, some involve spending money but a lot of others are simple techniques that will bring surprising results with minimal effort.



Submitting your website URL to search engines

This one is a no-brainer, depending on the type of website you have created, a large percentage of your visitors will find your website through search engines, that is assuming you are actually listed on them. Firstly do a quick search for your URL on Google, AOL, Live, Yahoo or one of the other main search engines, if your site comes up in the results then great but if it doesn't then submit your website information to search engines like Google as soon as possible.

Writing articles & press releases

A little known and rarely used way of getting your website out there is through writing articles and press releases on topics related to your website. For example if your website sells pet food then you might want to write an article related to caring for animals or pet nutrition. From here you can submit your work to article websites around the internet, other people use these article sites to find useful material for their own websites, when they take your article they also take your author info and website link along with it. After just a few weeks you may find your article at over 50 websites, all linking back to your website.

Be involved in chat rooms & forums, using a signature as the link to your site

Another method which can really help your websites popularity is to be active in chat rooms and forums related to your site. It can be a bit time consuming but if you do it properly you can build a base of customers that trust you and what your site offers. A lot of people use this technique poorly, basically spamming forums and generally annoying people, this is not the way to get visitors to you website. What you should do is contribute to the forum in positive ways, you should be an expert in this field anyway so try helping people out, answering their questions and being friendly. If they see that you offer genuine help then they might find out more about the website you run by following the link in your signature.

Use website directories to gather backlinks and increase your websites pagerank

Throughout the Internet there are thousands of websites dedicated solely to creating a directory of websites. Some larger ones such as DMOZ list websites to do with nearly all topics while other smaller ones aim for niches such as travel, shopping or specific countries and areas. Most offer the option of submitting your site URL for free or paying a small amount to have your site featured above others in your subject category, boosting your exposure. Both techniques work well and deciding between the two really depends on your advertising budget. Getting links back to your website is telling the major search engines such as Google that not only does your site exist but that it is important and deserves to be ranked high in search results related to your subject of choice. Google sees links back to your site as basically a vote in favor of your website, the more links you have the more important Google deems it to be.

Internet marketing in a nutshell

The aim is to get your websites name out there, let both potential customers and search engines know who you are by building backlinks from various sources. It can be time consuming but in the long run you will see huge benefits. Other strategies you can try include building awareness of your website through social book marking sites like Reddit, Furl & del.ic.ious, advertising your website through the pay per click system of Google Adwords and even simple things such as leaving links to your website on emails you send. Hopefully these tips give you the edge you need in creating a well known and popular website that achieves all your goals and more.