Advertising - Free Methods

Search Engines:

Search Engines are a great way to get people to your site for free. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, search engines have become much more intelligent and reputable in recent years. The king search engine is currently Google, followed by Yahoo and the relatively new but powerful Microsoft Bing.

Gone are the days when driving a search engine to your site involved simple tricks like hidden text and descriptions in empty pictures. Now, the big search Engines require content and format to fit their needs in order to rank your page high on their index (the list of sites they keep). This can be a time consuming process. We provide basic optimization with every design. If you aren't getting the results you want, you may wish to consider our more advanced optimization Services. Google does not accept paid placement (that is, you can't pay more money to get ranked higher in their search results), though Yahoo and Google both have ads you can purchase which are placed at the top of search results, which look different from, but are similar to search results. These will be discussed later.

The problem with search engines is that they are a slow, cumulative process. It may take months for all the search engines to find your site. While this can be hurried along, beware of promises of huge boosts. Anything that might give you a big advantage over other sites is probably an unintended exploit (bug) in the search engine, which will probably be changed, and you might find your site blocked permanently from that engine. One great way to get more traffic is to have a popular, related site make a permanent link to you. This will make your site more noticeable to people and the search engine.

This is a case where you can get an excellent service, for free, but not quickly.

Youtube

Another Google Product, Youtube, provides a place to host your videos. There are millions of viewers every day. If you have a fun or interesting commercial or video, you can put it on Youtube, along with a link to your site. This will let more people see it. While this is free, it should be noted that most people won't be searching for a commercial on Youtube, and many will avoid it unless it sounds interesting or highly relevant. Things like guides and how-to videos or funny things will attract viewers far more than a flatly delivered speech. This is an example of a free service which may or may not yield big results, depending on what have. Video Production is an available Service, and if you need us to post the video on Youtube for you, there is a $15 one time charge.

Facebook/My Space

Though they were originally just social networking tools, MySpace and Facebook have become great free advertising vectors. While you can pay for ads on these sites, you can also create a free group dedicated to your service, church, product, band or even yourself. The hard part of this kind of advertising is getting people to "friend" you; that is, you need people to opt-in to your advertising by some method.

One method is to give away something. Newegg is a large computer and electronics dealer. They have thousands of people who choose to view Newegg's advertising every day on Facebook because Newegg offers special deals and contests every day. If you're starting with a small organization, you may need to offer something small, or less often, but it's a good way to get people interested. Bands on MySpace often have MP3s of their songs, or parts of their songs, so that people who are interested can listen. Churches have an established community of people who may already be on Facebook. As friends add the church, their friends will see notices that the friends like the church, and see the church will be linked in their profile.

This method of advertising is great if you have customers/congregation/etc who are really excited about you or your product, or just want to show they are a part of something. However, things will only grow as fast as people's interested in you and your operation.

Others

There are other free advertising options, including Craig's List, Forums and Online Coupons. It's beyond the scope of this article to detail them all, but feel free to inquire with us about them.

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You may want to check out Paid Advertising Options.