How to Advertise My Domain Name

You will need more than a clever domain name to effectively advertise your Website.

No matter how well-designed and well-written your Website may be, you will need more than just a clever domain name and a business card to draw traffic. Increased Web hits mean increased visibility for your site, which can translate to bigger business profits. There are several ways you can optimize your marketing to ensure that you are advertising your domain as effectively as possible, and they can all be accomplished without leaving your computer.

Things You'll Need

• Domain name
• Published website
• Computer with an internet connection

Instructions

Promoting your domain name via the Internet

1. Employ keywords to ensure that your domain ranks high in search engine results. This inexpensive strategy works with very little effort on your part, because making a few changes to the content of your site can yield a consistent increase in hits from new users.

   You can use keywords to your advantage in a number of ways. Use descriptive titles for each of your pages and include the keywords that you want to lead users to your Website. Add these same keywords to the headers of your pages and to the first paragraph of text on each page. Search engines scan these areas of a Web page, so having keyword-rich text in these sections will improve your ranking on the search results page.

2. Network using a social media community, such as Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. All of these popular networking communities can greatly increase the visibility of your Website, plus they create free advertising opportunities. By having a profile for your business that users can follow, you will also have a quick, easy platform to communicate news, updates and promotions that your followers can share with their friends. To complete the networking circle, add Facebook and Twitter buttons to your Website so that users can easily connect to you.

3. Implement traditional Internet advertising for time-tested methods of achieving results. One choice is to use pay-per-click ads. Your ad will appear on keyword-related search results pages, and you'll only pay for each instance that the ad is actually clicked by a user. You can partner with Google AdWords (google.com/adwords), Yahoo! Search Marketing (searchmarketing.yahoo.com) or Microsoft AdCenter (adcenter.microsoft.com) on this type of advertising.

4. Rent commercial email lists. These are targeted lists of email addresses for people who have agreed to receive email advertisements on topics that they are interested in. These lists are purchased through an email list broker and can cost anywhere from $0.04 to $0.40 per name.

5. Maintain a continuing relationship with your current customers. Keep a database of email addresses for your registered users or past customers. Periodically keep in touch with email updates, discounts and special offers that will bring them back to your Website and that they can forward to friends. Old-fashioned word-of-mouth can still be an effective advertising tool in the high-tech world of Internet marketing.

Tips & Warnings

• If you are interested in doing an in-depth analysis of your domain's search engine rankings, there are software packages available that can report your Website's rank, guide you through the optimization of your page and submit your URL to search engines. One highly recommended package is WebPosition 4 (webposition.com).

• Avoid using unsolicited emailing as an advertising method for your domain. Most people view these emails as spam, and your efforts will likely land in someone's "Deleted Messages" folder or be removed from their inbox by a spam filter.

References

• The Web Marketing Checklist