How to Promote Your Website: 10 Steps to Glory

1 Choose the Right Web Host

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To make sure your website can handle all of the traffic that your website promotion is going to generate, you have to choose a strong web hosting provider.

The right web host will be able to supply your site with enough resources to accommodate large numbers of visitors at one time, which will prove invaluable when you start to promote your website.

How do I choose the right web host?

The major players of web hosting – which we’ve ranked in our guide to the top 11 web hosting providers – are determined by factors like server uptime, storage, bandwidth, and value for money. Depending on which factor you think is most suitable, we recommend picking one of these providers:

• HostGator – best for server uptime
• Bluehost – best for storage and bandwidth
• A2 Hosting – best value for money

Not sure which provider will best set your site up for success? Our comprehensive web hosting comparison chart will give you more information on the top providers!

Now that you’re in-the-know when it comes to setting up your site, let’s get into the rest of our website promotion tips.

2 Supercharge Your SEO

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With so many tactics on offer, learning how to promote your website can be overwhelming at times. However, we’d recommend starting with search engine optimization (SEO). It covers all of the changes you can make to your website so that it ranks higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).

The higher your website sits in Google’s rankings, the more traffic it will get – the first five organic results (i.e. non adverts) alone account for 67.60% of all the clicks in a Google search!

You can outsource to SEO specialists to boost your rankings, but we have some useful SEO tips that you can implement on your own, for free! There are over 200 factors that can affect the ranking of your website, but we’re going to cover the easiest and most effective ones:

• Optimize images
• Customize page titles and meta descriptions
• Simplify URLs

Optimize Images

Optimizing your images will make your site more attractive to search engines. You can do this by adding image alt tags, which are descriptions that clearly tell search engine crawlers exactly what each image on your site depicts.

You can also compress your images before you upload them, which reduces the file size, and makes it easier for your pages to load quickly. We recommend using the free tool, kraken.

Customize Page Titles and Meta Descriptions

Page titles and meta descriptions are what form the “snippet” you see in Google search results:

You want your titles and descriptions to be short and relevant – they’re the first impression many people will get of your page, and you’ll want them to draw in potential visitors! For example, that “…” you see in the example title should be avoided, if possible. The shorter and sweeter your title, the better!

You should also aim to include a keyword in your page titles (we’ll show you how to do this soon!). A keyword is the word or phrase people search on Google that you want your page to rank for. 

For example, if you want your page to rank for the keyword “workout tips,” then you’ll want to include that phrase in your page title, e.g. “Our Top 5 Workout Tips.”

Using targeted keywords is one of the most effective ways to promote your website, hugely affecting your website’s rankings, which in turn will have a huge effect on traffic.

Simplify URLs

Short and sweet URLs are superb for SEO.  It makes it easier for search engines and users to understand what the page is about. We also recommend separating the words of your URL with hyphens to create a simpler reading experience.

Keyword research is a great SEO tool when you’re just figuring out how to advertise your website. We’ll cover it in the next section, because it can help you decide which topics to cover on your blog.

3 Use Email Marketing

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If you want to know how to promote your website quickly, easily, and affordably, then get your email accounts at the ready. Email marketing is one of the most lucrative marketing methods, returning $42 for every $1 you spend on average.

To create your emails, you can use tools like MailChimp, or if you’re using a website builder such as Wix, you can use marketing features like Wix Ascend to build and send email campaigns in one place.

Create Killer Subject Lines

How do you get recipients to open your email and read about your new website? You need to nail your subject lines – and we’ve got some useful subject line tactics to help you do just that:

• Personalization – personalized subject lines generate 50% higher open rates.
• FOMO (fear of missing out) – tell users they’ll soon miss out on your discount, which can only be found on your new website.
• Intrigue – tap into users’ curiosity by asking strange questions, or by making bizarre (yet professional) promises
• Humor – website promotion is always more fun with puns
• Pain points – explain how your new website can help your users

Research has shown that the five most effective subject line keywords (words that increase the open rates the most) are:

1. Upgrade
2. Just
3. Content
4. Go
5. Wonderful

So, when writing email content about your wonderful website that’s just had an upgrade, you should try the above tactics and keywords we’ve included. Go!

4 Start Blogging

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Most website builders will allow you to add a blog page to your site at the click of a button, which you can update regularly with posts and photos.

A blog is an excellent tool for website promotion. It adds a human interest element to your brand, and shows that your site is constantly being refreshed with new information.

What would a person who visits your site want to read about? This is where keyword research comes into play. You can find out with free online tools, such as Google Trends and Answer the Public, which show you the search volume of different keywords over time. 

You can use this information to decide which keywords to model your blog posts after!

For example, if you sell makeup online, then you could blog about the latest beauty trends. In that case, you’d want to use keywords like “popular makeup” or “new makeup.”

5 Create Videos

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This goes hand-in-hand with blog posting as a way to personify your website promotion efforts. As long as your video contains a link to your new website, you can post your videos on forums, attach them to emails, and post them on social media.

To make an explanatory video about your business or niche, you can use free tools like  Lumen5. Or, you can create a more unique video using a smart phone with an awesome camera, a microphone, natural lighting, and your own friends or colleagues as actors.

Below is a snapshot from one of our videos discussing Wix from our YouTube channel. We love talking about website builders, so why don’t you record yourself discussing your much-loved niche and brand new website? It would make excellent content for posting on social media or Reddit (more on that later).

Where to upload your video

If you’re worried about videos slowing down your site speed, there’s an easy fix for that. You can upload the videos to platforms like YouTube or Wistia, and then embed them on your site.

By uploading to a third party and embedding, rather than uploading directly to your site, the “weight” of the videos falls on the third party instead.

These videos can sit on your “About Us” page, your landing page, or anywhere else on your site! Showing pictures and videos of yourself and your team is the best way to build a connection with your audience. Just don’t forget to compress your images using kraken before uploading!

6 Invest in Paid Marketing

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You can’t always rely purely on organic marketing to promote your website – sometimes your efforts will need a cash injection.

With paid marketing, you can promote your web pages by using platforms like Google Ads or Facebook for Business to target users on search engines and social media. Paid advertising takes a few forms, which include:

We’ll walk you through how to kick start and monitor your first paid marketing campaign.

Step 1: Set a target

Setting a clear goal will help you assess the success of your marketing efforts, and will ultimately help you stay on track.

Let’s say you want to gain 1,000 subscribers within a month for your movie streaming service, and you have $2,000 to spend on paid marketing. That means you’re aiming to spend $2 per email sign-up.

The average CPC (cost-per-click) on Google Ads is $2.69, i.e. the amount you’ll need to pay Google each time a user clicks your promoted link.

So, as long as your website visitors sign up every time they click your promoted links and visit your website (better make sure your checkout page is persuasive!), then you stand a good chance of reaching your target of 1,000 subscribers with a $2,000 budget.

If you’re selling a one-off product rather than a subscription, then you need to calculate the average cost per customer, and make sure it fits within your budget. Let’s say you spent $100 last year on marketing, and acquired 100 customers in the same timeframe – your customer acquisition cost would be $1.

Step 2: Target your audience

Also known as demographic targeting, this tactic ensures your website is promoted to the right user at the right time.

To advertise on Google, you’ll need to use Google Ads to target your audience by selecting user characteristics such as gender, age, location, income band, and more. For paid advertising on Facebook, you’ll need to use the ‘Audience Insights’ option, which is free to use.

With Google Ads, once you’ve logged in (it’s free), all you have to do to set your demographic, like the image above, is press these buttons:

1. Search Campaign
2. Audiences
3. Demographics
4. Edit

Et voila! You can now set your target audience, and have your content reach the perfect potential customers.

Step 3: Choose platforms

To reach the greatest number of valuable customers, you’ll want to target different users on a variety of platforms.

For instance, Instagram and YouTube are great for video ads, while Twitter and Facebook are best suited to sponsored posts, where you pay the platform to promote your advert on user’s timelines.

For a quick overview of your options, the most common types of paid marketing ads include:

• Sponsored posts – pay to have your content appear in users’ feeds or timelines, even if they don’t follow your account
• Mobile ads – adverts that are designed to fit on mobile screens
• Video ads – advertising through a video format
• Display ads – typically seen as banner ads on websites, apps, or videos
• Promoted listings – paying to have your web pages appear higher on the SERPs

Step 4: Experiment and optimize

The beauty of paid advertising is that the fun never stops! You can always edit and optimize your campaigns to keep those profit margins looking happy. Using Facebook’s Audience Insights or Google Ads, you can refine your ads to reach new audiences if you feel you’re not getting the results you want.

7 Pitch for Guest Blogs

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Guest blogging means authoring posts for other websites. Doing so gets you exposure to new audiences, but it’s also a massive SEO benefit because it generates backlinks from the guest site back to your site.

Backlinks are great for SEO because they indicate to search engines that other websites view yours as an authority on relevant topics. 

How to promote your website with guest blogging

To get started with guest blogging, you need to send out pitches to relevant, quality websites. 

You’ll want to search for websites that you would read yourself, and then pitch to sites that are:

• Within your niche
• Have a similar readership to your own
• Deemed trustworthy

How to write a guest blog pitch

Once you’ve chosen a site that you’d like to write for, you’ll want to pitch the editor via email or social media. 

Before you begin writing your pitch, it’s best to research the website and its editors, and read as much of the website’s content as you can, to show that you understand the writing style they’ll be looking for.

Then, you’ll want to brainstorm around three topic ideas to send to the editor. Each topic idea should be presented with a title, and a summary blurb of about 100-200 words.

You’ll want to give editors more than one option to choose from! Use high-volume keywords and gaps in the site’s existing content to inform your decisions. Once you have three top-notch headlines and summaries, you’re ready to pitch!

8 Advertise on Social Media

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By building up a following on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, you can raise awareness of your site among the billions of people using those platforms.

But it can be overwhelming to try to gain visibility on platforms with so many other users doing the same. The best way to promote your website on social media is by finding and following other pages within your niche.

If you’re running a website showcasing World War II photography, then follow artists or collectors you’re a fan of, or users who are involved with similar projects to your own. 

Once you’ve followed these pages, make sure you interact with their posts – send an encouraging comment, repost what you like, and ask questions.

This is a great way to gain exposure to other artists’ followers, and the odds are high that they’ll be interested in what you have to offer. The same goes for a website in any other niche!

Once you’ve started growing an audience, social media can also help you keep that audience engaged. Respond to comments and messages, and ask questions or run polls on social platforms to make sure your viewers know that they have a say.

9 Post on Reddit

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No journey of website promotion is complete without a trip to Reddit. A fountain of knowledge, memes, and conversation, Reddit gains over 21 billion screen views each month.

To post successfully on Reddit – that is, to get users to click your links and check out your new site – you’ll need to find out where users are talking about your niche, and gently promote your website without sounding too pushy.

To find out where users are talking about your niche area on Reddit, use the site search function on Google, which will take you to a discussion known as a ‘subreddit’. Simply type this into the Google bar:

Once you’ve found the holy ground that is Reddit comments, you should start integrating and interacting with the users to build trust. Let’s say your new website sells new and old soccer jerseys – you would type in the following text in the image below, and click the search results:

React to their posts, study the type of content they’re posting so you know how to promote your website successfully (e.g. are they posting memes, TikToks, or YouTube clips?), and add valuable insights that will demonstrate your knowledge of your niche topic.

When you’ve established yourself as a reputable Redditor, you can start to subtly advertise your website. There’s nothing worse than shameless plugging, so you should only introduce your new website when it could genuinely help or interest the Reddit community.

10 Update Your Email Signature

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Considering there’ll be 4.3 billion email users in 2023, it goes without saying you should be using email to promote your website. By simply personalizing your signature with links to your website, sending emails to your mailing list represents a quick and easy way to get your new website out there.

You should also include your business logo, and links to the social accounts that you created (remember Step 6?). Editing your signature can be done easily through your chosen email provider, making it one of the easiest methods of online promotion.

To customize your signature on Gmail, start composing a new email, then click ‘Insert Signature’ at the bottom.