What is free internet marketing?

Every day I work with small business owners that try to save money by doing all or part of their website work themselves. Most of the time it is not a good idea because the time spent on the website is simply taken away from the time spent on their business. In other words, they should make much more money running their business instead.

By Alain Houle, Alco Web Design LLC

My most successful customers are those who work closely with me to design\optimize their websites and save their time and energy for free internet marketing.  Internet marketing is the art of turning your website into a powerful marketing tool. Many internet marketing techniques do not require any specific knowledge and can be implemented for free.  Here are a few ideas:

• Internet marketing is an extension of conventional marketing and advertising. Your website name should appear on every email message you send, business card, letter heads, invoices, yellow pages, promotional items, advertisement flyer, etc.
• Manually submit your website to Google, Google places, Google maps, Bing, and use automated tools for the other search engines.
• Create a links page and trade reciprocal links with non-competitive complementary businesses such as your suppliers, customers, partners, local associations you are member of, friends, colleagues, family, etc.
• Get listed with free local organizations such as the local paper, chamber of commerce, town hall, or other municipal and regional organizations and get links back to your website.
• Create a blog or social media pages such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+ and link back to your website. Once in place, ask for likes or positive reviews.
• Figure out who links to your competitors and request links to your website.
• Give a reason to your visitors to come back to your website by periodically changing content, offering sales and promotions, on-line only promotional items, creating a blog, etc. Create a distribution list and send newsletters or periodic emails with links back to your website.

Please do not hesitate to contact Alco Web Design or to visit our website if you have any questions about free internet marketing.

Alain Houle, President
Alco Web Design LLC - http://www.alcowebdesign.com
N1337 Westgreen drive, Greenville Wisconsin 54942
920-850-4642