Practical Resources ... Marketing by Karen Kirby, CSJ

Free Website Promotion Methods

Here are some ideas to help you get your website to do what it is supposed to do: drive more business to your door.

The first thing you need to do is get people to go to your site. Your single best source of free website promotion is 'Links' to your site, reciprocal and otherwise. Every link to your site has the potential to bring in more traffic. Reciprocal arrangements are the easiest to create. For example, ask your diocese to put a link to your ministry on their site. In turn you'll put a link to their site on yours. In some cases you may not want to link back.

Think of all the places that you would like to have link to your site. They all will potentially drive traffic to you. Many parishes have web sites. Many religious communities and institutions have web sites. Your associations and networking groups can link to you. What other organizations do you belong to that would be good to have on your side? The more links to your site the better. In order to raise your level of success with one-way linking requests, offer something other than a link as trade. How about a small ad in your next newsletter, or a one time discount on their next visit, or free limited time membership? Use your imagination!

Another source of free traffic is "Tell a Friend" script on your site and let your visitors and clients advertise for you. Ask your webmaster to help you develop a nice 'about me' paragraph that can easily be forwarded to a friend.

Also don't forget to use a signature file with your email program. You can send out a free advertisement to everyone that you send an email to. In Outlook go to Tools, Options, Mail Format, Signature for new messages, then write a one or two sentence message about your ministry after your name, address and phone number. End your message with your web site address. 

Another source of free traffic is free classified ad sites. The effectiveness of classified ads varies from site to site; try it, it's free! Just do a Google search on "free classified ads."

Do you write a newsletter? Offer a free newsletter to visitors who come to your site. Include an ad or two, yours or someone else who is paying you! Be sure to collect the email addresses with an opt-in newsletter sign-up form. Collecting email addresses any other way will lead to charges of Spamming. The first and last lines of each newsletter should include unsubscribe instructions.

And finally, make sure your web address is on everything you print.

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