Toot Your Web Horn - Tips For Promoting Your Home Business Web Site

Traffic on the freeway is bad. Traffic on the Internet is good. With over 80 million web sites on the Net, you need a solid strategy for driving prospects to your web site.

Search Engines

Search engines are the yellow pages for a home business web site. Over 80% of Internet surfers use search engines to find information on the web. To get the most traffic to your site, list with the big search engine players Yahoo, Google, and MSN. Smaller search engines also get results from the big three so you'll be covered in case customers visit less popular engines.

Looking Good

Your web site can be simple or complex but it must be functional and attractive. Make sure your site does what it is supposed to do - provide customers with concise, useful information about your product or service. Be wary of making things too complicated. The site should be easy to navigate or customers will look elsewhere.

Your web site should also look professional, not cheap. If you aren't design savvy, spend money on a good web designer. The investment will pay off by attracting more people to your web page.

On-line Ads

The Internet has many sites where you can list your web site for free. To guarantee the greatest exposure, place your ad on several (20 or more) sites and repeat the process every month.

Banner advertisements can be as effective as TV spots in increasing customer awareness of your business. A banner ad should be direct, i.e. promote a benefit of rather than just the name of the product or service. Try participating in a banner exchange program such as LinkExchange that connects your home business web site to other company sites that have similar customer bases.

Affiliate programs offer an excellent opportunity to promote your web site. Affiliate businesses post links to your web page on their sites. You pay them a commission or set fee based on the amount of traffic sent to your web site. Pay arrangements vary and can be based on the number of people who visit your site or the number of customers who purchase your product.

Bloggin' It

Bloggers are the hot new information medium. Getting them to write about your home business web site is an excellent way to gain exposure to potential customers.

Technorati Blog Directory provides a listing of blogs by industry. Do your research here to determine which blogs might be interested in writing about your business. Send a short, personal email to a few blog writers describing your web site and asking the blogger to write about it. Offer the writer something in return, for example, free product or a link back to his blog on your web site.

In short getting visibility for your website is a key part of your overall online marketing strategy.

About The Author-- Rick Jorgenson has been an online marketer for the past 10 years. He has created successful campaigns for the likes of IBM, Microsoft and DirecTV. http://wealthbuildingtycoon.com

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