This entire site has been self -promoted, in the spirit of the internet, below is the full skinny on how we did this completely free. There are links to all the resources you may need that will cost absolutely nothing. We believe in free website marketing after all that was what the internet used to be about. We do not believe in paying companies that may use dubious methods to gain so called search engine appeal.The tactics used by some of these companies can have a detrimental effect on your site and cause annoyance to Internet users who just want to find what they are looking for, without wading through pages of rubbish just because they contain 1,000s of hidden phrases designed to attract the search engines. It is not only a waste of money, but you can do a better job yourself. The following is a series of tools available, mostly free, to help you get your website where it belongs.
Reciprocal linking is the process of getting other sites that are similarly themed to your site to place a link to you. An amazing statistic that most people do not realise is that only 6% of traffic to your website will come from search engines. That means that 94% comes from other sources. Reciprocal links is about 80% of this. They also happen to be the only way to get top rankings in the search engines, but to be honest by the time you have enough links to impress the search engines, you won't care about them. I had someone doubt me on this, and wasn't in a position to prove it. Now I can say that those figures are true.
Many people fall into the trap of using automatic link exchange programs. Whilst these can rapidly bring up the number of links to your site, they allow you no ability to verify the content and quality of the sites you are linking too. A link from a non themed site (one that is not related to your site) or a link farm, will actually reduce your ranking!! You are much better off to go and find sites, send the webmaster an email asking for a link. I have hundreds of links to my site and a good few friends have been made in the process. Getting links and maintaining them is a lot of work, but really worthwhile. If you're very good with access or databases you can probably create your own method of maintaining and continually checking your links. I use a program called Zeus. You can get it completely free by following this link. When you download Zeus you wil have to register with an email address. They do not continually bombard you with emails, but send quality information on how to best go about your link exchange program.
If there is anything you do not understand about Zeus or reciprocal linking, email me with questions at webmaster@baviera-accommodation.com
Banner Exchanges simply allow you to show adverts to other sites on your site. For every banner you show you earn credits, these credits then become banners shown on other peoples websites. From my experience, these plain and simple do not work. They are far to easy to scam. I was concerned about the number of so called hits I was getting to my site, and discovered that they were incredibly easy to trick. I was managing to earn 6000 credits per day from a single PC running a script. If I can do it, you can bet others can too.
Traffic exchanges are websites that allow you to surf other peoples sites for credits and in return, they surf to yours. There are a number of good traffic exchanges out there, but the one that works best for me is trafficswarm. Traffic swarm is another totally free method of marketing your website. All you need to do is spend 30 minutes a day surfing through the trafficswarm websites to get lots of people surfing to yours. Traffic swarm also allows you to buy credits if you don't want to spend the time surfing. I actually spend a lot of time surfing trafficswarm and have gained some really valuable information there. The following banner will get you to thier site for more information.
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The most important concept of getting your website seen and working is understanding who, why and how you should market your website. I know of no better way to learn this other than getting Glenn Cannady's book "Gorilla Website Marketing" Glenn has marketed one of his websites so succesfully that he appeers at the top of nearly every major search engine. You can see the proof of this at his site by clicking the banner below. To be completely honest you would not be reading this if is wasn't for what I learned from this book. This one isn't free I'm afraid, but check out the site and I think you'll want to buy it.
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So that's my contribution to website marketing. Remember the key is to do it yourself using the help of those resources listed in here. It's hard work, but very satisfying and the best thing is you don't pay anyone for doing it for you. Good luck and feel free to email me if you have any other questions.
Jon
