Every week I receive a number of articles published in various newsletters and groups. These articles outline dozens of avenues to market my site, to increase my site traffic and newsletter subscribers, to turn my site visitors into sales, to increase my site’s search engine position, to earn extra income from my site and the list goes on. Though I am very grateful for all the tips I have received; I am surprised that none of the articles are from webmasters like myself. People who run sites which have no direct relation to web site promotion or marketing but who can tell me what strategy works for them and what don’t in marketing their sites especially on a tight budget. Here, I want to briefly explain what has worked for me and the results I am getting.
Pay-per-click-search-engines
You would probably have heard about PPC SE. With these search engines, I bid for a certain keywords related to my sites. The more I bid, the higher is my site ranking and for as little as $0.10 per click, I can get a top placement for my link. One that I am using and totally recommend is Overture. It is the biggest and the most popular around. What I like about PPC SE is that I only pay for visitors who are interested what my site has to offer and thus, my Return of Investment (ROI) is potentially high too. I can also set a fixed monthly budget for my PPC campaign. If I exceed my set budget before the end of the month, my link position will drop and reappear again the following month. For the month of January, Overture was responsible for 30% of my unique site visitors. Other PPC Search Engines available are:
FindWhat
Kanoodle
7 Search
Google Adwords
Search Engine Submission
With Google approaching a whooping 150 million search queries per day and it is also driving the primary search results on Yahoo! and AOL, my main aim has been to get an excellent ranking for my targeted keywords of “Borneo” and “Borneo Travel” with Google. After applying some excellent tips from many experts on how to optimize my site, my ranking has significantly risen up. For Borneo Travel and Borneo keywords, my site is ranked at number 2 and 29 respectively in Google. Today both Google and Yahoo! are responsible for nearly 50% of my site visitors. I do get another 5%-8% of my traffic from other search engines, using their free listings. I also like to get my hands dirty by making sure that I manually submit my site to all the major search engines.
Link Popularity
Optimizing my web site for higher search engine ranking is not enough and it must come hand in hand with building quality links to my site. Google put a lot of emphasis on inbound links to a particular site. It does take a lot of hard work and diligence to build quality links. I have emailed literally hundreds of travel-related sites that I have found to benefit my site visitors and asking for reciprocal links. Most webmasters are willing to exchange links if they feel that my site provides excellent content that will benefit their visitors. The reward of exchanging link is incredible. Within a month of building my link directory, my ranking position shoots up in Google to number 2 for keyword ‘Borneo Travel’ from obscurity. I constantly use Market Leap Link Popularity Checker to determine my link popularity.
Writing Articles
Writing articles is also one of the best ways to drive traffic. Never being good at writing, I have spent many hours trying to make sure that what I write is worth my readers’ time. But the benefits of writing articles far outweigh the time spent and the hard work. These articles provide good contents to my own newsletter and web site, which is always a good thing because search engine like Google likes content-rich sites. I also write to other travel-related sites and offer them my articles as long as the link to my site is left intact. Obviously, traffic to my site increases every time a newsletter publishing my article is released. Articles can be submitted to the following sites:
http://www.IdeaMarketers.com
http://www.EzineArticles.com
article_announce-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
aageneral-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
Newsletter
The idea of starting my newsletter is initially to lure customers back to my site and to keep in touch with visitors who visit my site. But now I realize the enormous potential of having my own newsletter in bringing new visitors to the site. I have arranged to swap ads and articles with other newsletter publishers. I have seen the surge in traffic to my site when these newsletters are sent out to their subscribers with my killer ad in there. My subscriber list too increases with this increase in traffic. In addition, publishing my own newsletter motivates me to write my own articles which in itself can bring vast benefits as mentioned earlier. There are hundreds of sites that provide free newsletter templates. One that I have used is Newsletter Promote. Ezine-Swap.com is a good resource to find other publishers to swap ads.
Newsletter Directory
Another source that has brought me a steady stream of subscribers to my newsletter is Newsletter Directory or Ezine Directory. My travel newsletter is registered in a number of these directories together with other relevant information such as subscription and article submission mail addresses. I have submitted my newsletter with the following directories:
http://www.Ezine-Universe.com
http://www.EzineLocater.com
http://www.EzineHub.com
http://www.Jogena.com
http://www.Zinos.com
http://www.Newsletter-Directory.com
Discussion Groups and Forums
I try to make an effort to contribute in a few travel discussion groups especially those that closely related to my site topic. Google and Yahoo! groups are two that I frequent the most. When I start a new thread or post a reply, I make sure that I include my URL in every signature. Though this does not contribute much to my site traffic yet (less than 2%), it is free advertising and I am sure given time, this can be another great source of traffic to my site.
There are many other campaigns that I will embark in the near future to promote and consequently, increase the visitors to my site. These include starting my own affiliate program and participating in joint ventures with other sites. But for now, these seven ways have been very successful for me in promoting my web site especially on a very tight marketing budget and I hope they are helpful to you too.
Walter Rajah is owner of Exploration Borneo Tours. Visit his site for more information on Borneo, The Exotic Island Paradise at http://www.explorationborneo.com. Check out all the travel tours and packages to Borneo and subscribe to the EBT Travel Newsletter for the latest events and deals!
