So you just spent countless hours designing and building the most visually attractive website in the history of the internet, Congratulations! …Now how are people going to find it?
No matter how professionally developed your website is, there needs to be traffic for people to appreciate it. Here are 4 simple methods of earning better rankings, getting more traffic, and getting your masterpiece more exposure.
1. Find similarly designed sites and sites with the same basic theme – then steal their links!
Using tools like open site explorer and yahoo site explorer you can find out who is linking to your competition. Chances are they will also link to you. By earning more links your site will perform better in the search engines – thus exposing more eyes to your virtual masterpiece.
Link theft is one of the simplest, most actionable ways to build incoming links to your website – it should be one of the first steps in any webmasters marketing barrage.
2. Submit your site to CSS galleries and web design blogs. Also apply for web design awards (free ones)
This is a complete no brainer. You have a pretty site, right? Well why not submit it to galleries that exist solely to showcase other “pretty sites”? There are literally thousands of CSS galleries and directories looking to feature visually appealing sites – just like yours! Not only will you gain backlinks to your website, but you will also start to gain reputation as a kick ass web designer, which could open more doors in the future.
3. Write blog posts detailing your design methods, biggest problems, and solutions
But writing is no fun, right?!! Hey guess what? By documenting things that you are already working on you could be simultaneously marketing your site – without even knowing it! How to articles, lists of your favorite/least favorite, commentaries, trends, etc. These are all great ideas for content that could not only earn you backlinks and traffic – it can help others! Guess what that makes you? …A respected authority figure within your community. Which we already said, will open more doors down the road and make your life a heck of a lot easier.
You can put this content on your own blog, or shop around your articles as guest blog posts. This will create links and traffic from many different domains so you can 1) improve your link profile 2) diversify your traffic sources 3) Feel really cool that other people will actually publish your ideas!
4. Offer your photos and graphics to earn links
Do you take beautiful photos? Attend a local or national event with your camera and you could end up creating marketing material at the same time! Industry specific events in your niche are the perfect opportunities to earn links with photo journalism. Simply take amazing pictures and offer them to any media outlet covering the event. These could be blogs, websites, magazines, or even newspapers. Not only can you gain a link and exposure for your website – but you could also end up becoming the next Ansel Adams!
There are hundreds of creative methods for gaining exposure for your blog. All it takes is a little marketing savvy and a whole lot of creativity (which I know you have!)
About Guest Author:
C. Wise is an internet marketer and SEO for the personalized stationery provider Expressionables and the customer appreciation program Customer Rave. He designs everything from baptism invitations to custom wrapping paper.
Lots of great information and inspiration, which we all need! I really appreciate the efforts made by you for this. Well Done! Thanks for sharing the information with us.
Thank you for your nice article, one more think I think we should do is sharing it widely on the social network about your new design.
Also, we can send a polite email to website owner to include your website into their gallery or round up design article too.
good tips but how do you “steal” links (not a fan of that term). I assume you mean ask nicely? :)
Here is another way, convert your design to wordpress theme and add a link to your site at the bottom then give it away in wordpress.org, you will get a link from every site using your design and they’ll get a good looking site, everybody is happy.