Free Website Promotion, Website Traffic, and SEO Tips

The best deals for paid links are links that require a one time fee or a low annual fee. These links can often be obtained by:

1.Joining trade associations.
2.Sponsoring or supporting 501c organizations.
3.Sponsoring other websites.
4.Paid directory inclusion.

Trade Associations
Finding trade associations related to your business and joining them can help your business in many ways. Most trade associations have pages that list their members and include a link to their members websites. Getting involved in your community also helps you promote your site in other ways.

Sponsoring or Supporting Websites
Many 501c websites allow people to donate money to their organization to become a sponsor or supporter. On many of these sites you will get a link to your website. Sponsoring sites that will link back to your site for a small donation can be an excellent way to buy links that point to your website and in addition you are helping out the site you sponsor.

Paid Directory Inclusion
Many directories require payment to be included in their directory. Usually the payment is a one time editorial fee to determine if your site is appropriate for their directory. Directoriy links can be an excellent deal. Don’t just look for general directories, also look for industry specific directories. Many times industry specific directories will bring you more traffic, because people use them to find businesses in your area of expertise. At least I have found this to be the case for our sites. Also, some Search Engine’s (Google) might not look at a link from a directory as being nearly as important as a link from another site.

Links from Link Brokers
Text link brokers (sites that manage the buying and selling of text links) offer monthly payment programs, where you pay for a text link for one month on a particular related website. These programs will give you a variable degree of traffic. I can’t recommend one broker over another. However, I can say that some Search Engines (like Google) are trying to discount paid links for Search Engine ranking purposes.

My personal plan is to spend a very minimal amount of money on link building, mostly focused on a few related directory submissions. These days I prefer to spend my time and money on other methods of promotion. When you are first starting out and/or when you are running a strictly ecommerce site, spending money on links can help get you noticed.