5 Things You Shouldn’t Do When Promoting Your Website

We can all be a bit over-zealous when it comes to promoting our websites. After all, given the time and money that went into creating them, we want to make sure that people actually come and visit. However, there are a few things that you may be doing wrong, which might actually do more harm than good.

So without further ado, here are five things that you shouldn’t do when promoting your website:

1. Unsolicited Bulk Emails

No matter how well-intentioned you are, unsolicited bulk emails are generally considered SPAM, regardless of how you acquired your mailing list. And if you do it too often, you could get your server blacklisted and/or be liable for criminal action.

2. Black Hat SEO

It is frustrating to see illegitimate websites at the top of search engine results pages. So you might try using black hat seo tactics to mimic their success. However, before you go down this path, it is important to realize that once search engine discover your tricks, your domain name will be indefinitely banned from their indexes. So, for most websites, this is not worth the risk.

For additional information on black hat seo, see our article Black Hat SEO: 6 Ways To Get Your Website Banned.

3. Excessive Link Placement

We’ve all seen this; the person who adds their links to forums, blogs, discussion boards, and any other available website, regardless of relevance. If you are one of these persons, here are some tips to help you leave better links:

• only leave links on related websites, or when the subject matter is relevant
• leave several comments or messages, only a few of which promote your link. This will make the webmaster more likely to allow your link to remain active.
• write unique comments for each website. Do not copy and paste generic messages.

4. Dishonest Promotions

The easiest way to get people to a website is to offer free stuff. And while it is very easy to abuse this technique by creating ‘fake’ giveaways, it is a good idea to be honest. And at the end of the giveaway, you can add credibility to your website by posting info about the winner, or adding a link to the winner’s website.

5. Promote a Half-Finished Website

If your website is not fully-complete and thoroughly-tested, then you should wait before you start to promote it. Consider the recent launch of the Cuil search engine. By launching a poorly tested search engine, they managed to alienate almost all of their potential users. See the Alexa graph below which shows the declining percentage of internet users that use Cuil.

For information on how to promote your website the right way, see our articles 15 Ways To Market Your Website and 5 Free Ways To Increase Your Website’s Traffic.