How do you promote?

[utopia]

What are people doing to promote their sites? I've posted in different forums. I've exchanged links. I've listed in serach engines. Word of mouth. If anyone has any good ideas I'd love to hear them. I've yet been able to crack into google. Thanks all.

[casauxanh]

maybe you need to put it in a search engine　alexa

[losdev]

Marketing a new site will take time for it to gather momentum.

Cracking Google is not as easy as MSN and Yahoo I am afraid, all new domains go into an ageing process to begin with (how old is your domain?)

Sounds like you have made an excellent start on marketing. What is the overall aim and market goals of your site (do not answer, it is for you to reflect), once this is clear in your mind, you can then structure a full campaign and move forwards towards greater traffic.

Loads of pitfalls to avoid, but also many good avenues to explore, I shall post more specifically if you wish, but please guide me in two areas;

1 Is your site specific niche or generic
2 Open trading or restricted

Oh, and Alexa? why? Only good indicator if ALL the www community has this 'Alexa Toolbar' installed, not an accurate indicator at all. It is as important as the Google PR...JMTC

[dmc]

So, what brings a UK design company onto these forums - are you developing any Geo Sites?

Makes a change to have someone to chat to who's not on US time!

:)

[losdev]

Hi

Yup, just got a client using GEO Ent. Version

Boy, what a beast of a program!

Once you get the hang of the basic workings, it really is a powerful piece of kit, versatile and very user orientated (so far :D )

Midlands UK, (as the company name suggests :P )

The board is a bit quiet GMT...

[utopia]

Loads of pitfalls to avoid, but also many good avenues to explore, I shall post more specifically if you wish, but please guide me in two areas;

1 Is your site specific niche or generic
2 Open trading or restricted



Thanks losdev,

1. My site is a niche (sports cards)
2. Open trading

Any avenues that you could recommend would be great.

[dmc]

Hi

Yup, just got a client using GEO Ent. Version

Boy, what a beast of a program!

Once you get the hang of the basic workings, it really is a powerful piece of kit, versatile and very user orientated (so far :D )

Midlands UK, (as the company name suggests :P )

The board is a bit quiet GMT...

There is a lot to it. Once you’ve got your head around it then it sort of makes sense (the whole index.php/site_class.php thing)

We took the Enterprise Classified version and have been re-coding quite a bit to fit our needs though there is quite a lot you can hook into if you know what you’re doing (my background in J2EE/Oracle/mySQL so the PHP stuff was quite new but not a problem)

Our Geo site is at http://www.theshoppersbible.com which is just being populated (and final fixes rolled out now.) Let me know if you’d like a free promo code to place listings as we have a few categories that would be suitable ( http://www.theshoppersbible.com/index.php?a=5&b=334 )

Also we own http://www.webit.net which is a b2b market place we developed in J2EE before this project.

What is the client’s site’s URL if you can say?

BTW - I also recommend the UK Business Forum (my main home) at http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/

[losdev]

Hey DMC

Cheers for the heads up on the forum, looks interesting, will be joining that soon me thinks.

Cannot send out the url yet, JB wants to wait until it is finished and fully populated.

Same here, PHP is a relatively new ball game to me too, but I am getting there. (Just taking Coldfusion/Mysql/PHP Specific courses through the OU, helpful indeed)

Mostly working on the core layout, just tweaking here and there for now, our client wants to see if it takes off before investing time and mula into redesigning from the ground up.

Regards

[dmc]

Nice thing about a redesign from the ground up is you only need to do one page, the others are just subsets of that one. We're planning a XHTML version but not top of our list.

OU training courses, why the OU?

Check out the free listing link as well as the forum link, offer stands.

Give me a shout if you've any questions as I've been working with this for a few months now.

DC

[losdev]

Cheers for the offer DC will take you up once I get free time (you know what it is like)

Yup, XHTML/CSS is the way for us too, just bashing a few e-commerce sites to bits too and rebuilding....oh joy!

Never seem to have time for my real job (SEO) but hey, one day soon.

I will also take you up on the questions help too, may well need it...just trying to figure out the <<modules>> and what they do :shock: HOW MANY?!

[losdev]

Hey DC

we will have a URL ready for you to view later today, we look forward to your feedback as an experienced GEO user.

Regard
Daren

[losdev]

Hi DC

As promised, our latest project is nearing completion, the url is below

Classified Ads (http://www.itsold.co.uk)

Not fully populated yet, two headliner pages underway and the footer are this afternoons to do, but you get the general gist. Look forward to your feedback.

Regards

[losdev]

Hey DC

Launched and live....at

The UKs Premier PC and Multimedia Classified Ads (http://www.itsold.co.uk)

Let me know what you think buddy (and others of course :D )

Once you get your head around the concept of the software and templates, I have to say, very nice and compact to work with....

Kind Regards

[julesbrad]

I've been looking round to see if there are any sites showing how you can make the stadard layout look good cos a lot of users of the geodesic software leave it looking pretty similar to the original - found yours and see that you can make it look fantastic when you put in some hard work.

Excellent site - hope it goes well for your client.

[Festus]

To promote my classifieds...

I have had classifieds on my site since 1998. I have used a number of different scripts, the latest and best of which are the Geo classifieds products (I have Premier and Enterprise). The best way I have found to promote the classifieds is to write other, content rich pages on related topics and post them on the site. I really work hard to optimize these other pages for the search engines. When users come in from the search engines for these pages, they see the classifieds and go to them. They come for the other pages, but wind up staying and returning for the classifieds pages.

This is obviously best suited for classifieds sites that have a theme (dogs, cats, horses, cars, boats, whatever), like mine. Then you can write your articles to suit your theme.

I have had very good luck with this. My site stats tell me that right now I am getting about 19,000 page views per day, mostly on the classifieds, but the stats also tell me very few people "come in" to the classfieds. The vast majority of my new visitors come in through the search engines and land on one of my other pages, but then they look around and go to the classifieds.

Best of luck.

[utopia]

What is your classified site?


To promote my classifieds...

I have had classifieds on my site since 1998. I have used a number of different scripts, the latest and best of which are the Geo classifieds products (I have Premier and Enterprise). The best way I have found to promote the classifieds is to write other, content rich pages on related topics and post them on the site. I really work hard to optimize these other pages for the search engines. When users come in from the search engines for these pages, they see the classifieds and go to them. They come for the other pages, but wind up staying and returning for the classifieds pages.

This is obviously best suited for classifieds sites that have a theme (dogs, cats, horses, cars, boats, whatever), like mine. Then you can write your articles to suit your theme.

I have had very good luck with this. My site stats tell me that right now I am getting about 19,000 page views per day, mostly on the classifieds, but the stats also tell me very few people "come in" to the classfieds. The vast majority of my new visitors come in through the search engines and land on one of my other pages, but then they look around and go to the classifieds.

Best of luck.

[Festus]

The site with the classifieds is Cowboyway.com (http://www.cowboyway.com). Please note the "rodeo schedules" area is using Geo Premier, and the "classifieds" area is using an Esvon script at the moment. The classifieds will be moved into Geo Enterprise soon, hopefully before April (2006). I have the Entereprise installed and set up, I just need to get the database moved over.

[daves1997]

Why not just harvest relevent email addresses and bulk email all of them?

[Festus]

Hi,

I do have an email list and send emails (as in a newsletter type of thing) to anyone who opts in. This works really well to bring people back - seems to help remind them you exist and you can also tell them about things that are new. My own trouble with this is I have to write fresh content all the time to put into the emails. Finding the time to write the fresh content, or even figuring out what the content is going to be for a particular email, can be difficult when you've been doing it several years.

With articles on the site, I can post them once and just let them sit there. Not a great technique for staying in touch with existing visitors, but it does work well to get new ones.

[danzo]

What email newsletter software do you use?
Did you sent out text email with a link back to site,
or html email or file attachements?

I am interested as I am having difficulty getting this up using MailMan in our operations....


Hi,

I do have an email list and send emails (as in a newsletter type of thing) to anyone who opts in. This works really well to bring people back - seems to help remind them you exist and you can also tell them about things that are new. My own trouble with this is I have to write fresh content all the time to put into the emails. Finding the time to write the fresh content, or even figuring out what the content is going to be for a particular email, can be difficult when you've been doing it several years.

With articles on the site, I can post them once and just let them sit there. Not a great technique for staying in touch with existing visitors, but it does work well to get new ones.

[hall_n_a]

danzo - have you tried phplist?
http://tincan.co.uk

[Festus]

I mail my newsletters two different ways: 1) I email to everyone registered in the ad system and 2) I email everyone who opted in to receive my newsetter (I have a "sign up for our newsletter" link on the site on pages that aren't part of the classifieds).

Mostly, the newsletter is the same for both lists. I use YourMailingListProvider (http://www.yourmailinglistprovider.com ) to mail out the emails that are not part of the ad system. I like them, but haven't shopped around for awhile so there may be others out there as good or better.

I send the newsletter out with the complete content in plain text (no formatting) inside the newsletter. I also include a link at the very top that says "to see this same newsletter in html format, please click here". The link takes them to a page on the site that is formatted and just looks nicer than the plain text. I do both because I know I have a low-tech subscriber base and I'm trying to keep things easy for them. I also do not send out attachments for the same reason - I'm afraid a lot of my subscsribers would have no idea what to do with an attachment.

I do include a lot of links back to the site in the newsletters. I also try to stick to the rule that people who subscribe to newsletters have WIFM ("What's In It For Me?") stamped on their foreheads. This means I try to make the newsletters informative and useful. That can be difficult when my main goal is to get them to come back and buy something, but I know they just want to be informed. I try to strike that balance, which is always a challenge.

[Ivillages]

For our main site at http://www.hificlassifieds.com, I've been sticking to Google for promotion since they dominate the SE market. I've got a small budget set up with Adwords to promote key phrases. Also have added this url to Open Directory which is kind of a foundational reference for Google and other SE's.

For getting higher page rankings in Google you will want to optimize your site's pages to make it spider friendly, placing keyword-rich content everywhere you can. Once of the big items that Google uses to valuate your site is backlinks-- how many sites are linking to yours. There are a few good backlink vendors that you can pay-to-play, and/or just get other sites to link to yours. Also, get accounts on bulletin boards within your industry and put a link to your url in the signature, since Google will see this as a backlink to your site.

We do quite a bit of SEO work for our clients and it takes 6+ months to start seeing the benefits. HiFiClassifieds has been online for almost a year and now has a page rank of 4 which ain't bad for the firs year, starting at 0 on a very limited budget.

Bob

[identity]

You need to be careful that you aren't putting links to your site on spammy sites... at the least it will be a waste of time and won't help, at the worst, it may hurt your SERPs, especially if it is requiring a link from your site to theirs.

Caution on dropping a lot of money on paid links, at least if your focus is on Google. These will be seen as paid links and will be devalued. These may still help with the SE's for now anyway, so it just depends on your strategy.