The work doesn’t stop after launching your business website. You have to start promoting it to give it a good chance of fulfilling its purpose. A website is useless without site traffic so your main goal for marketing your site is to attract the right kind of visitors according to your digital marketing objectives.
Your small business websites may not have a huge marketing budget to back it up but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to build your brand online. The good news is the Internet is rife with opportunities even for a free business website to gain online visibility without requiring a lot of money. You just need to be resourceful and creative about it. Here are some of the many ways to promote your company site without costing you a dime.
1. Get On the Local Listings
Small business websites can take advantage of free marketing through local page listings. Google My Business, for instance, is a free platform where you can create a business profile and get your company listed on relevant searches for your product. This platform ensures that your company information is accurate and optimized. You will also want to get on Google Maps so people in your area can easily find your business especially if you have a physical office.
2. Verify Your Website With Google
One way to promote your business website for free is to verify it with Google.
What does it mean?
Simply put, verifying a website means proving ownership of the website. In this case, you prove ownership of your business website on Google.
Why do you have to prove this ownership?
In the case of Google, after you have successfully verified your business website, you will have access to important data and information about your website and its performance in search engines.
After you verify your business website, you can use Google Analytics to measure the performance of your website and create a promotion or marketing strategy or plan.
Not only does it help promote your small business websites, verifying your website can also help you identify problems with your website.
For example, Google will crawl and find any pages from your small business websites that don't appear in search engines. Google will also be able to help you find pages that were not found or better known as Error 404.
Since you can also monitor your website traffic, you can also monitor and find traffic coming from unknown sources that might carry viruses or malware that could harm your website.
So, how do you verify your business website?
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You can use Strikingly's complete guide to help you verify your website. You can also find a guide to integrating Google Analytics with your website at Strikingly.
3. Be SEO Smart
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One of the most effective things you can do to promote your site is to make sure your content is optimized for search engines. The best website builder for small businesses should be able to give you a good head start on this area of digital marketing. Strikingly, for instance, has an integrated SEO tool that allows you to easily edit your page’s metadata (meta descriptions, image alternate tags, etc.) to make your website more search friendly.
Search engine rankings are important to online visibility. The higher you rank in relevant searches, the higher your site’s potential for attracting organic traffic. Increased traffic means increased chances of conversions for your business. So make sure that your small business website builder can support your SEO strategy.
To start SEO optimization for your small business websites at Strikingly, you can easily follow the SEO Checklist that has been provided for you.
For example, you can start by specifying a title for your page. Then, you can add a meta description for the title page and each page you have on your website.
You can also buy a custom domain and link it to your website at Strikingly. You can search for and buy custom domains for your website directly at Strikingly.
4. Get on Social Media
In traditional advertising, you have to run your campaigns on platforms where your target market is known to be at. The same holds true for digital marketing. Most of your audience is probably on some form of social network or another. Make sure you promote your business website on these pages as well. Social media is an effective way of engaging your audience and interacting with them. To make sure your site is always updated with fresh content, you can also add a social stream section to your page so updates on your social pages are automatically displayed on your business website.
5. Start Blogging
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Keeping your website content fresh is one of the most effective ways to get people to come back. Blogging helps update your website and make it more information-rich. Visitors rely on the Internet for information about the products or services they want to purchase. You want your website to be known as an authority in your niche to be able to maintain brand recognition.
A well-maintained blog is a good way to engage customers. You get to connect to your audience by addressing their pain points and challenges related to the product you are selling. The best website builder for small businesses should be able to provide you with sufficient tools to add a blog section to your website.
Whether you are writing for big or small business websites, make sure you apply SEO principles to help your website and content be found more easily by search engines.
For example, you can target specific keywords in your content. You can then use those keywords in the description, or alt-text, of the images you use in your content.
You can also start doing a linking strategy when you already have enough content on your website. For example, you can link one of your articles with your other articles. You can also reference articles outside of your website, and if possible, reference an article from a website that has more visitors or authority than your website
If you feel that these things are difficult enough, you don't need to worry. You can easily find guides or articles on the internet that can help you understand the world of good content writing.
You can also hire freelance writers who are ready to write for you. You can find individual freelance writers or marketing agencies with experience in your niche or industry.
6. Add a Subscription Form
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You can use newsletters to promote your small business websites. To use the newsletter feature, you need to at least have your customers’ contacts, especially email.
How do you get your customer contacts?
One way that you can use it is by adding a subscription forum on your business website.
This form is generally placed at the beginning or end of a business website. If put up front, the subscription form is generally accompanied by a Call-To-Action (CTA). For example, "Write your email to try our product for free now"
If placed at the end, this subscription form can also usually be a question form. You can add a subscription form to your small business website design by using a custom form provided by Strikingly.
Once you have your customer contact, you can send newsletters directly from your website using a custom email address. On a free plan, you can send a hundred newsletter/month with Strikingly.
Besides being able to promote your business website, you can use the newsletter feature and subscription form to do various types of marketing. For example, you can try Electronic Direct Mail (EDM) marketing where this strategy uses messages that target specific segments of your customers.
7. Join Online Community Forums and Organizations
Look for niche communities you can participate in. Sign up and make sure to post in the forums regularly. Try not to do a hard sell of your site or your business, however. You want to come off as a reliable source of information in your niche. A passive promotion by putting your website URL in your signature or maybe mentioning your business where appropriate should suffice.
How do you find the right community to promote your business?
First, you can start from your personal social media. Are you a member or part of a community? You can also start looking for communities on social media by using relevant keywords.
Apart from that, you can also use forum websites like Reddit where you can find various communities very easily.
In order to further maximize your promotion through the community, you can ensure a number of things.
First, make sure the community is active. You certainly don't want to be tired of promoting your business website on a website that is no longer active.
Second, make sure the community has a relatively large number of people. Not all communities have a high number of fans. However, you should still look for communities in the niche or industry you are in that have a high number of members to maximize your promotion.
Third, you can try to find out whether the community has an influencer that you can work with. Using influencers is an effective way to build trust in a community you follow.
Those are the ways you can promote your business website.
Promoting a website is not always about expensive or costly advertising. Both large and small business websites can promote their website for a little budget or even for free.
To start promoting your business website, you can start registering your website with Google to start getting data for you to use to develop your website.
You can also create a blog and start producing quality content. While you are creating content, you can learn SEO principles that you can apply whether on your business website or content.
You can do these steps even on free websites. But, of course, a free website will not provide too many benefits in the long run.
So, what are you waiting for? Build and promote your website to the fullest with Strikingly today!
