How to promote your business website

This advice is meant to follow on from the explanation of what search engine optimisation (SEO) is and the description of the on-site SEO that we build into every site we make. See our main business website advice page if you haven't read that yet.

Once your new site goes live Handcrafted Websites will build a network of incoming links to ensure that the site is listed by Google and the other search engines. However, as far as promoting your business website is concerned, that is the beginning rather than the end of the story. If you are relying on the search engine listings to find new clients, you need to throw yourself into the competition for the most sought-after slots on the first two or three pages of the search results. How can you get ahead?

Hire an SEO specialist?

We wouldn't advise this, at least in the beginning. There is a lot you can do yourself to promote your website, and it would be a good idea to do what you can yourself first and see the results before paying for expensive SEO specialists. So what steps can you take?

Basically you have to build a bigger and better network of incoming links. The search engines use information about those links when according a position to your pages in the search engine listings. Pages with lots of incoming links are judged to be more popular and authoritative, so they tend to get a higher listing.

To promote your website effectively, though, you need to know that some incoming links are better than others. The good ones are those that highlight the most appropriate keywords for your business. So before you worry about the links you need to do some thinking (and perhaps a little research) to choose the most important keywords for your website promotion campaign.

Choose the right keywords

Basically, there are two questions to bear in mind here. The first is: Which words are my potential clients most likely to type in the search box of Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc when searching for my product/service? To answer this you need to put yourself in their position. They want to type as little as possible, but they also want to be as specific as possible so they don't have to wade through lists of irrelevant sites.

The second question is: Which lists give me a realistic chance of getting on the first few pages? The point here is that you might dream of seeing your brand new holiday website on the first page of results when people search for UK cottages, but the competition there is just too stiff (at least as an initial goal, and we need to crawl before we can walk). The competition for a more specific phrase (e.g. "sherwood forest self catering cottage") will be less intense, which means that although the pie to be divided between you and your competitors will be smaller, at least you will have a chance of taking a bite. In other words, new websites need to find their niche (or niches). Instead of just being more geographically specific, you could aim for people looking for something "romantic", something "pet friendly" or something with "cycle storage", for instance if you are an accommodation provider.

You should do some research. Google has a very good free tool to help you with this - the keyword tool that can be accessed once you have a Google account (free) and log into to Adwords section: http://adwords.google.com Within the adwords campaign management area (you don't need to actually start a campaign) click the tab marked "Tools" and select the Keyword Tool.

Enter the keyword phrases you were toying with plus your website URL (e.g. http://www.mysite.co.uk). Make sure the filters are appropriate (location, device, etc). Then click "Search". The results can be enlightening. Here is an example:

This is a site for holiday flats in Keswick. "Keswick cottages" is clearly a very popular term, but the flats aren't exactly cottages, so perhaps that isn't the best term to aim for. No one is looking for holiday flats, so we can drop that from our list. "Holiday lets" barely features in the results, so that can be dropped as well. That leaves us with "keswick apartment" and "keswick self catering". The normal Google search shows that the competition there doesn't look too stiff, so those are the terms we initially want to highlight in our link building.

After drawing up a short list of keywords, we need to set about creating a few incoming links. But what should those links look like? It might help to take a short class in link anatomy.

The anatomy of a link

Let's have a look behind the scenes at the code for a link to really understand what a link on a web page is made of. Here is the code for a link.

<a href="http://www.keswick-holiday-lets.co.uk" title="Keswick self catering apartments">Self catering apartments in Keswick</a>

Like most of the code for web pages it is made of tags that each begin and end with angle brackets: <a> </a> The "a" in the opening and closing tags tells the browser that this is a link (or anchor - "a" for anchor). On the web page this would appear as: Self catering apartments in Keswick.

The words that appear highlighted in the browser window are known as the anchor text. This is one of the places where we need to highlight our keywords (avoid just writing your business name if it doesn't contain any keywords).

You will see that within the opening tag there is also a title. Not every link has a title, but titles for links boost their SEO value. The title text appears in a little popup if you mouse over the link. The link title is another place to highlight our keywords.

The HREF attribute of the tag simply holds the URL of the page that the browser will show once the link is clicked.

Now that we know about anchor text and link titles, let's look at some places where we can create some incoming links.

Links from social bookmarking

One of the easiest ways to create incoming links is to use some of the many social bookmarking sites. These are sites where people can make a note of the web pages they like and can also see which pages are the most popular with the rest of that particular online community.

Social bookmarks play a dual role in your website promotion campaign. Firstly, each bookmark functions as a nice incoming link. Secondly, by listing your site/page with that service you make it easier for other users of that service to find your website.

To use the social bookmarking services you will need to register with each one to set up an account (for free) before you can bookmark your web page.

As a first step in the murky waters of social bookmarking, you could sign up with one of the biggest sites delicious.com. After you have created your account and logged in look for the link that says "Save a new bookmark". Once that is clicked you are presented with a form that needs to be filled in like so:

Title - this doesn't have to be the same as the page title. It should highlight some of your key phrases.

URL - the full web address for the page you are bookmarking (beginning http://). If you are bookmarking your home page, it should look like: http://www.mylovelynewwebsite.co.uk/

Tags - these are used by the social bookmarking site to categorise links. Caution: Before typing anything here find out how this particular site wants the tags typed and separated. Delicious.com wants keywords hyphenated and the phrases separated by a space. Other sites want the tags enclosed in quotation marks. Then use the two or three keyword combinations that are at the top of your list.

Notes - enter a longer description of the page that accurately describes the content of the page while also incorporating those keywords again.

All the social bookmarking systems use similar systems for recording details of bookmarked pages. Elsewhere the "Notes" are called "Description" and in some cases there is a separate field to enter your keywords.

So much for delicious.com. What about the other social bookmarking sites? It is easy to feel swamped at this point because there are masses. Here is a short list of the sites that we use and have found useful in the past.

• digg.com
• folkd.com
• stumbleupon.com
• reddit.com
• bookmarks.yahoo.com
• buzz.yahoo.com
• jumptags.com
• google.com/bookmarks/
• mylinkvault.com
• diigo.com
• linkagogo.com
• googletop.net
• oyax.com
• mister-wong.com
• blinklist.com
• bibsonomy.org

Social bookmarking sites come and go, and some of them look very dodgy, so exercise some caution before signing up. If you see a big flashing ad at the top of the page saying you have won a huge amount of money because you are the lucky billionth visitor, click the back button of your browser and move on.

The chances are that Handcrafted Websites will have installed a social bookmarking widget on your site - a widget like the one below:

This can speed up the process of bookmarking a page providing you have already registered with the social bookmarking service in question. Alternatively, the widget can be used to have a look at other social bookmarking sites that you haven't visited before.

Points to bear in mind:

1. There are good psychological and SEO reasons for taking this link building campaign slowly. Add a couple of links a day and see this as the beginning of an on-going campaign.
2. Don't copy and paste the same titles and descriptions each time. Vary the text slightly. The search engines are on the lookout for duplicate content and will penalise it.
3. Do it manually. There are automated bookmark submission tools on the market. They would save time, but the results might not be as good (e.g. because of duplicated text).

Links from social networking sites

These are sites where the emphasis is on creating a network of online contacts and "friends". You may well not be at all interested in finding online chums , but there are opportunities here to create useful incoming links and to highlight your product/service to other people in your networks.

Four popular social networking sites are:

• google plus*
• facebook.com
• twitter.com
• linkedin.com

*For some good info and advice about setting up Google Plus business pages see this article.

Each of these services work best when used as mini-blogs. In other words, you need to be writing little snippets of news from time to time. Some of those snippets can include links back to your site. Aside from those links, if people find your little snippets interesting, they may look at your profile and see there your link to your site and click it to find out more (so make sure you fill out a profile and include a link to your site).

Google Places

Businesses that expect to have visitors to their physical business premises must get listed with Google Places. Google often puts a selection of its Google Places entries at the top of geographically specific searches on page one - a nice place to be! Note that this is NOT the same as having a simple Google map. Even if you already have a Google map, you need to visit Google Places and get listed there.

Links from directories

Look for relevant website directories and get listed with them. Begin with those that offer free listings. Two universal directories are particularly important: dmoz.org and dir.yahoo.com. You may not have heard of DMOZ, but that is a directory that Google pays particular attention to. When submitting links to directories be careful about the way you word the title and any description, and make sure those keywords are highlighted again.

Some directories specifically aim to list businesses. Look for ones that list other businesses like yours and that are also geographically relevant. Be careful to list your business in the most appropriate category. There are some paid listings worth considering (e.g. yell.co.uk) but before considering those, try these free ones:

• freeindex.co.uk
• hotfrog.co.uk
• cylex-uk.co.uk
• bizwiki.co.uk
• ufindus.com
• uksmallbusinessdirectory.co.uk
• thesite.co.uk
• accessplace.com
• netinsert.com
• diroo.com
• the-free-directory.co.uk

Links from review sites

If you sell a product or provide a service, there will be a website where people can leave reviews about it. If happy customers are not spontaneously filling these sites with glowing reviews and including links to your site, you could perhaps encourage one or two people to make up for this oversight. You can use your favourite search engine to find the most relevant review sites. However, not all of them enable you to post a link. Here are a few sites for holiday reviews.

• www.tripadvisor.com
• www.ivebeenthere.co.uk
• www.virtualtourist.com
• www.tipped.co.uk
• www.iexplore.com
• www.reviewcentre.com

Note that a listing on Tripadvisor (and Tripadvisor often gets its listings high up in the search engine results) is no longer free. At the time of writing, holiday accommodation providers have to pay for a listing with Flipkey, which then results in also being listed on the Tripadvisor site.

Links from blog comments

If you have a UK travel-related website, put "uk travel blog" in your favourite search engine to find a few interesting and popular blogs. Then look for interesting posts that you could add a comment to. Lots of people leave comments like: "Great post! Thanks for sharing" but it would be better if you had a more interesting point to make in your comment.

You might be able to add a link in the body of your interesting comment. Even if you can't, most commenting systems ask for your website and then turn the name you declare into a link to your website. You might want to consider using a name that includes one of your keywords instead of your favourite nickname.

Note: Lots of blogging systems have a way to invisibly stop links in comments from passing on any SEO benefit (they add the nofollow attribute to the link tag, which tells Google not to follow the link). However, the link may still be of value, if only because human readers might stumble upon it and click it (which is why the comment itself needs to be interesting and informative).

Links from your own blog

You could start your own blog. It would involve putting up short, interesting pieces on the web, and in some of these you can include links back to the relevant pages on your site. However, for this to work you then have to promote your blog and the individual posts (using the above website promotion techniques) as well as promoting your main website. As part of your blog promotion campaign, you would need to get your blog listed with a fair number of the blog directories (like technorati). This is a lot of extra work, but a well-written, newsy blog can attract regular readers whereas a fairly static brochure website has nothing to encourage repeated visits.

If you have the time and the literary inclination, you can set up a blog for free at either www.blogger.com and www.wordpress.com.

Be aware that for a blog to be an effective tool in a website promotion campaign, it also needs to be well-optimised. The blogging system is not necessarily set up by default to be well optimised. With the Wordpress system, for instance, you will need to look into how to tweak the permalinks to get the best search engine friendly URLs for your post, and you will need to install a plugin to add well-optimised titles and descriptions for the posts.

Links on question and answer sites

You might find that a Q & A site has questions relating to your product or service. Have a look, for instance, at uk.answers.yahoo.com. It might be possible to slip a link to your site into your answer. However, you need to do tread carefully and intersperse those answers with less promotional ones otherwise you may soon find yourself blacklisted on that particular site.

Link baiting

This refers to putting up material on your website which proves so interesting or useful to your visitors that they spontaneously create incoming links as part of the natural process of recommending your page to their friends and readers. This is the ideal path to success on the web: You upload interesting stuff and the incoming links just mushroom.

Publish an article

There are lots of sites that let you publish an informative article, and one that can include a link back to your site. Sites we have used and benefitted from include:

• www.squidoo.com
• www.hubpages.com

Once, again you will have to promote that new webpage so it gains some value that can then be passed back to your site via the link, and also so that it attracts visitors/readers.

Reciprocal links & links pages

Businesses that are promoting related products and services can help each other by setting up reciprocal links - "You link to me and I'll link to you." How should this be done though? It isn't a good idea for the two of you to create a page entitled "Links" and then list each other on those pages. The best approach is to create a page with genuinely informative content and a more useful title. A local adventure centre, for instance, could link to your holiday cottage website on a page dedicated to accommodation in the area, and instead of just a list of links the page includes paragraphs of keyword-rich text that recommends your accommodation (and others). That would also be a page that visitors to the site are more likely to actually read, and so it could actually drive more traffic your way (regardless of the SEO benefits). To reciprocate you could include a paragraph about the adventure centre on you activities page with a link to their site.

The most valuable links are those embedded in real content that people might actually find useful, so try to avoid situations where you end up just having to put up a link somewhere completely out of context.

When arranging quality reciprocal links with your business contacts make sure they set the link up with good anchor text and remember to include a title in the link, and make sure that the title of the page has some relevance to the service that you are offering.

Isn't there a quicker fix?

You may come across ads promising an amazing boost to your Google ranking overnight. These need to be treated with caution. The systems at Google and elsewhere are continually being developed to weed out sites that use techniques to create an artificial impression of either extreme relevance or extreme popularity (sometimes referred to as "black hat techniques", and the people offering quick fixes are likely to be wearing black hats) .

Because of this, our advice is to ignore the ads and be patient. With your own hand-made social bookmarks, social networking, reviews, comments, blog posts, genuine directory listings, embedded reciprocal links, etc you can slowly raise the visibility of your site, increase the traffic, and boost your website's listing. This takes time, but it is safer, doubtless more effective in the long run and certainly cheaper than paying for a dubious "quick fix".

How can I beat the competition?

Before you try to beat your competitor it might do to learn from him/her. How? One step is to see what sort of incoming links they have gathered. To do this just type their web address in Google and look down the list to see the sites that mention them or link to them. Look at the sites and see how to get your link included or your business mentioned.

For a more focused list of incoming links to sites, use the free Yahoo Site Explorer service - you will need to create an account (free) with Yahoo first. The Site Explorer doesn't list all the incoming links but it is still a useful tool letting you see some of the incoming links that your competitors have. Bear in mind that it is not the number of links that really matters, but the quality of those links (and unfortunately the site explorer gives no assessment of quality).

How can I gauge the success of my efforts?

Of course there are two criteria of success: your traffic figures and the position of your site in the search engine listings for your most important keywords. In relation to the latter, if you can't see your page in the search engine listing for Google, try this Google position tool (it can give a useful indication although the results are not necessarily 100% accurate).

Another useful (and free) tool is the Google Analytics service. This provides you with detailed stats about your visitor numbers together with how many people arrived at your site from the search engines together with the search terms they used. If you sign up for Google Analytics you will need to add a few lines of code to your pages. Handcrafted Websites can do this for you.

When will I be able to relax?

This depends on your competitors. If others a few rungs below you are busy building up their links and furiously optimising their pages for search engines, you might find yourself slipping back again. You will need to keep an eye on your position in the list and make sure that your rivals are not getting the edge.

Welcome to the treadmill.

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