You can pay various websites to publish your press release and sometimes that will help your press release get more attention. However, there are many places to submit your press release for free, which is what I recommend if you have a very small advertising budget. The only exception is that you really should pay to upgrade your prweb release, if you can afford it.

Here is a list of press release websites that I recommend and that I have used in the past:

http://www.prweb.com (most popular choice for most web masters)
http://www.pressbox.co.uk
http://www.press-world.com/add
http://www.24-7pressrelease.com
http://www.ereleases.com

One last Press Release website I would like to mention is:

http://www.express-press-release.com/nationwide.php

When you submit your press release to the above site your press release is listed on each of the following State press release sites as well:

http://www.california-press-release.com
http://www.newyork-press-release.com
http://www.texas-press-release.com
http://www.illinois-press-release.com
http://www.georgia-press-release.com
http://www.florida-press-release.com
http://www.washington-press-release.com
http://www.ohio-press-release.com
http://www.massachusetts-press-release.com
http://www.virginia-press-release.com
http://www.maryland-press-release.com

You should also send your press release to industry specific news sites, because many of them will reprint your press release.

After issuing a press release, if someone in the press contacts you, be sure to take notes. If they want to interview you, make sure the topic of the interview is a topic that will help you promote your website in a positive way. An excellent way to prepare for the interview is to have a friend or family member give you a mock interview (I always have done this for job interviews and it really does help).

Press Releases are an excellent way to get your online business free publicity, and free traffic. In my original book, I wrote a lot of infomration on creating and writing press releases. However, since that time I have found some more in depth resources on writing press releases and decided that I would post those articles.

How to write a Press Release

Press Releases – How to write a great Press Release

Guide to writing succesful press releases

However, if you feel compelled to advertise in a newsletter, do LOTS of research ahead of time. Find out as much as you can about the newsletter. Look for testimonials from past advertisers, and compare their products with yours. Make sure your product is a good fit for the eZine you choose to advertise in. I strongly recommend that beginners not bother with advertising in other people’s newsletters unless they are advertising for free or next to nothing.

There are many free places you can start a blog, or you can host your own blog. I recommend owning the domain your blog is on, because you have more control over it. Most web hosts provide blogging software for free, so it is easy to set up a blog on most web hosts.

If you want to go the free route, here is a small list of some free blogging sites (there are many others):

http://www.blogger.com/ (this is what I use for some of my blogs, they are owned by Google®)
http://www.blogeasy.com/
http://www.blogstudio.com/
http://www.blog-city.com/
http://www.xanga.com/

Once you have a blog be sure to link back to your website from the blog. Also be sure to list your blog in all the related blog directories you can. This will help your blog get indexed by all the major Search Engines and help some with it’s Search Engine ranking. Use Robin Good’s list of blog and feed sites to submit you blog to (http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/). It is the most comprehensive and up to date list for promoting your blog that I have come across.

Trading links with other related blogs is another way to get good links to your blog. (I don’t do that nearly as much as I could).

A well done, regularly updated blog can significantly increase your website traffic . It can also be a great marketing tool for your product and/or services.

For more information on starting and running a blog here is a list of the best resources I know of:

Andy Wibbels Blog

Performancing

ProBlogger

There are still many ways to get good links, writing articles (like this one), trading links, buying links, etc. But I have never noticed people talk much about one of the BEST ways not only to get a powerful link to your site, but also to drive traffic to your site. And that is….

Review Sites!

There are more and more website review sites, and product review sites popping up on the Internet. For one thing, creating one can be a good way to make some extra money. Some people can even earn a living by owning review sites.

That said, review sites can bring you TONS of traffic. Sites that I have worked on have had over *3000 visitors in a week by being featured on a review site. Not only that most review sites archive their reviews, which can mean a continual flow of traffic to your site, and a permanent link.

If you want a ton of quick traffic to your site, search for review sites that review websites in your industry. It can be a great way to drive traffic to your site.

I know you might be wondering what review site brought my site over *3000 visitors in a week. It’s called family first and you can visit them here: http://www.familyfirst.com/

They review family friendly websites. When I had my site reviewed it was free, but now they charge a small fee. Most reveiw sites are like that.

If you have a really cool or different site, you might want to submit it to Cool Site of The Day (http://www.coolsiteoftheday.com/). We had a site reviewed on cool site of the day and got over 2000 visitors from that link the day it was featured.

There are many more review sites out there just waiting for your site to review. Review sites (especially the bigger ones) can be an excellent way to drive traffic to your site without the Search Engines.

*Note: I have had other sites reviewed on Family First and not generated nearly the amount of traffic as my first site, probably because they have changed the way they link out to sites. They used to link out to sites on their main page, but now they bury the links deeper in their site making it less likely to get visitors from being reviewed on their site.

To learn more about getting tons of traffic to your site click here!

1.It gives your website more content (which Search Engines love).
2.It gives your visitors more content (which visitors love).
3.It allows you to have more internal links to other areas of your website (which help search rankings).
4.It allows you to target more keywords (which helps your traffic).

When you reprint an article you shouldn’t always blindly use the name of the article in the title tag and heading tag. Find related keywords that it will be easy to bring traffic to your website with. It’s important to use other people’s articles in this way.

Lastly, when you reprint articles, make sure you only put articles on your website that you believe are well written and are of great value to your visitors.

http://www.articlesfactory.com/
http://ezinearticles.com/
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/Free-Content/
http://www.freesticky.com/stickyweb/
http://www.web-source.net/article-announce.htm
http://www.ideamarketers.com/

There are many other places online to submit articles, just use your favorite search engine to find other places.

In addition, I highly recommend that you check out Jim Edwards ebook, “Turn Words Into Traffic”. It explains in detail how to maximize the use of articles to bring traffic to your website. It is an excellent resource for those of you who plan on writing articles to bring traffic to your website.

Writing articles accomplishes three things:

1.You get free traffic from websites that reprint your article.
2.You get a link to your website, which in turns helps your Search Engine rankings.
3.Over time, you develop a reputation as being an expert in your field.

The by-line of your article should have the name of the article, your name, a short description of the article, reprint information, and a link to your website. For example:

————————————————–

Choosing Keywords – The Truth about KEI
Written by George Manty, owner of http://websitepromotionbook.com

This article can be reproduced in whole or in part, providing this byline is included along with a link to http://websitepromotionbook.com

Forums and mailing lists can also help you keep up to date with the latest news in your businesses field of expertise. Actively answering questions on forums can help establish your reputation as an expert in your field. My suggestion about participating in forums and mailing lists is to stick with mailing lists and forums that you would participate in even if you didn’t have a business to promote. The reason that I say this is that you can spend a lot of time every day on forums and mailing lists keeping up with the posts. This is time that could be spent promoting your business in other ways, running your day to day business, or having fun with your family.

Participating in forums, discussion groups, mailing lists, etc. helps you become part of the community for the niche you are in. It is ideal for you to be participating in forums or mailing lists in your niche a long time prior to starting your business. Because one of the best ways to get instant traffic to your site is to already be active in the community your site is targeting.

While forums can help you get traffic, they can be very time consuming. You need to balance your forum participation with your goals. If one of your goals is to work smarter and not harder, then I suggest spending a minimal amount of time on forums and spend more time using other promotion methods. That said, forums that allow you to place your website in your signature certainly can help increase the traffic to your website and forums can be a great way to get involved with the community you are targeting.

One important final note: It is better to be active on a forum with a huge membership than on a forum with very few members. It will give you much more exposure in your niche.

Aaron Wall has written an excellent free ebook that covers all the details of PPC Advertising. I highly recommend you take a look at it. You can download it by clicking here.

We will be discussing these methods in detail in future posts, starting with PPC ads.

Whether or not it helps your search rankings, getting links to your website will always be important because of the traffic that the links themselves will bring to your website.

The general idea is that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

You may also want to look at hiring Website Promotion or Search Engine Marketing expert as opposed to a strictly Search Engine Optimization expert. It is best to get traffic from a variety of sources and not rely totally on the Search Engines. Search Engine Marketers and Web Promotion experts focus on the whole picture and not just the SEO.

The general idea is that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

You may also want to look at hiring Website Promotion or Search Engine Marketing expert as opposed to a strictly Search Engine Optimization expert. It is best to get traffic from a variety of sources and not rely totally on the Search Engines. Search Engine Marketers and Web Promotion experts focus on the whole picture and not just the SEO.

Some people are against buying links, but it’s not really different than spending money on PPC advertising. It’s just another method of promoting your website. It has it’s pros and cons. Be sure to research ahead of time how to make the best use of any budget you set aside for buying links. Every link you get has a price, whether it be the time you spent writing content that people linked to, or the time you spent finding reciprocal link partners, or the time you spent commenting on blogs, etc. Every link has a price, you have to decide what is the price you are willing to pay for the traffic you get and how to best make use of your advertising budget. It isn’t always easy and takes time to figure out.

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.

PPC vs. Link buying

Another way to get links is to buy them. It might make sense, but spending your money on Pay-Per-Click advertising like Yahoo® Search Marketing might make more sense. It just depends on your budget and goals. The big advantage of paying for links is that it not only increases your website visitors by getting traffic from visitors of the website you are advertising on, but it also could help your Search Engine Rankings.

The big advantage of Pay Per Click advertising, is that you are only paying for actual visitors to your website. In the case of buying links or banner space on other people’s sites, you don’t know how much traffic you will get from the links. Also, paying for links is harder to quantify in terms of ROI (Return on Investment). My recommendation is that if you choose to buy links, be sure to buy links that are likely to bring traffic to your website, and be sure to shop around for good deals.

If you want to buy links primarily to raise your Search Engine ranking then I recommend you purchase links from directories. Shop around for the best deals, but also be sure to buy links from the more prominent directories. In the case of directories, you aren’t really buying the links per say, you are spending money to get your site reviewed by an editor of the directory. If the editor believes that your site is acceptable they will include it.

I personally have never had a problem getting my sites listed in directories, but if you were to submit an evil web portal or spam site I would NOT expect it to get listed in many directories.

PS. If you want to learn more about Pay Per Click advertising then I highly recommend you download Aaron Wall’s free PPC ebook.

Don’t confuse link farms with blogrolls. A blogroll is a list of other blogs that you link to from your blog. While many times blogrolls contain reciprocal links, blogrolls are in no way, shape, or form the same as a link farm.

At one point in time, many Search Engines were not fond of interlinking all your websites together. However, with the advent of blogs that has all changed. Several years ago when I was monitoring baby related search terms weblogsinc kept showing up in the results. When I looked at their blog network, I was just SURE that they were going to be banned by google for excessive interlinking of sites. But they never were banned! Realizing the power of being able to interlink all your blogs together (wheter related or unrelated) without a Search Engine penalty I decided to see if I liked blogging. It turned out that I did enjoy blogging and started building a blog network of my own.

To summarize:

link farms bad, blogrolls good

1. Some people use automated programs to earn extra credits, so your website won’t even get seen by a real person in those cases.
2. The traffic you get is not targeted traffic. In fact it is worse than that, it’s traffic from people who are visiting your site mainly for the reason of getting people to visit their website. In other words, your visitors are not motivated to buy your product.
3. Time is money and wasting time looking at other peoples websites, so that they will look at yours, could be better spent promoting your website in other ways.
4. You can’t run Adsense on your site if you use a Traffic Exchange, because it is against Google’s Terms of Service for Adsense to use a Traffic Exchange program.