The State of Free Advertising
There are two ways to advertise on the Web: free or for a fee. This may be oversimplified, but this is one way to categorize Web-based advertisements. This Website has since its beginning focused a lot on free advertising in addition to information related to Website content optimization and Website building blocks. There is a reason for it.
In the early days of the World Wide Web the landscape was different and it required knowledge on free advertising resources for individual and small companies to start generating traffic to Websites. There was no single source of huge traffic that could be accessed as needed. Driving traffic to Websites required hard work on submitting URLs to thousands of search engines, directories, free classifieds sites and message boards accepting free ads.
Things have changed a lot on the Web since then and mostly in a very good way. Today there are Web services that can drive gigantic volumes of traffic to Websites totally free. Learning to master only few of these Web services can result in millions of dollars in sales or advertising revenues. Free advertising today still requires hard work, but it also requires knowledge on search engine marketing, social media marketing, micro messaging and finite real time discussions.
Web Search
There are only two primary players in Web search; Google and Bing. Few will argue having Websites favorably listed with Google search is the best advertising opportunity there exist today. Having your Websites listed in favorable positions with Bing is also worth the effort.
Thankfully it has become very difficult to trick Google into listing Websites using black-hat optimization techniques. It has evolved to the point where content, natural linking, reputation and common sense page structure matters more than ever before. Tricking a Website into top positions with Google with excessive linking is hopefully over and we have seen it in action.
We know less about Bing than Google, but from what we have seen similar quality content and linking measures will do fine with Bing.
The first step for every Web site owner is to focus on getting the Website listed with Google and Bing. Successful search engine marketing efforts will reap great benefits within a reasonable time. It will not happen quickly, but it will show eventually.
Social Media and Micro Messaging
Marketing a Website using social media marketing is a relatively new Website promotion method. It is very obvious that many companies are having problem understanding this new media and therefore might get fewer results from their efforts than expected and suggested by the media coverage on this hot and emerging type of Web services.
Understanding social media is in fact very simple. Social media is all about conversations and by conversations we mean two-way communications. Many use social media Web services to broadcast and announce instead of sharing, helping, engaging in conversations and communicating with potential or current clients.
The social media Web services that are most likely to generate traffic to Websites are Facebook, Twitter and more recently Tumblr. Websites that frequently publish content can wire their RSS feeds directly with these Web services making it very easy to have their content appear instantly on these services. However, the best results come from using the social elements of these Web services: follow other people or companies, engage in conversation and share your knowledge freely. It takes time to build social media reputation, but once your there your content will gain significantly more attraction and visits.
Real Time Finite Discussions
Discussions taking place on the Web have moved away from being solely on discussion boards into the Web publishing mediums and the blogging and social media platforms. Many bloggers have probably commented their way to success using other blogs. There is one thing any Website owner must know before engaging in discussions on blogs and social media platforms. All discussions that take place are almost in real-time made available for others to find. This can have advantages and disadvantages. Be careful before you hit the submit button and make sure you want your words to be findable on the Web forever. That is why we call real time discussions finite.
Mastering two search engines, few social media Web services and engaging in conversations on the Web is the new free advertising today. Everyone that masters the techniques required to successfully use these few, but powerful, Web services to market and sell digital content, products or services will gain more success than possible few years back.
