Launching a new website is a very involved process. Not only do you need to design a website that is going to be worthwhile and will bring in traffic, but you also need to get word of your website out there.

If you can get your website’s launch right, you will stand every chance of success in the long term. However, launching a website properly and then taking it to maturity is a much taller order than you might realize.

Obviously, a website can only continue to be successful as long as it is publishing quality content and managing to attract new readers and grow its audience.

Unfortunately, quality content is only part of the story. There are lots of really great writers out there who are filling their blogs with excellent content that no one is reading. That’s because the blog owners aren’t marketing themselves as effectively as they should be.

Starting your website off on the right foot is important, especially if this is a commercial endeavor. If your business is designed to generate money for you, then you need to show it the same care and attention that you would if it were any other kind of business.

The following tips can help any new website to promote themselves effectively and reach as wide an audience as possible.

Start a Mailing List

Email marketing is a tried and tested method of marketing a website that has a huge potential. The difficulty lies in compiling a list of email addresses to send your marketing materials to.

Some of these will be people who have visited your website and signed up to your mailing list willingly. But others will be designed to either bring people to your website for the first time or to entice them back after an initial visit.

Needless to say, if your emails are going straight to the spam folder and not reaching your recipient’s inbox, they won’t be able to accomplish their purpose. But how do the various email providers decide what gets automatically flagged as junk?

A big part of it is to do with domain reputation. It’s important that you know how email sender reputation works.

In simple terms, every sender has a sender score that is determined by a variety of factors. Websites or services with a reputation for sending out spam will find that they are put on a blacklist by email providers and their messages won’t get through.

As your website ages, you will want to use some form of email list verification to affirm that the addresses you are sending emails to are live and working correctly.

Get Your Website Ranked in Search Engines

Search engines are an integral part of the internet infrastructure. Without search engines, most of us would be hopelessly lost whenever we went online. We’ve become so used to searching for what we need and having it delivered to us instantly that we rarely give much thought to how these search results are brought to us.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process by which a website can make sure it appears more prominently in search results listings. Search engine optimization for new websites involves first getting yourself on the results pages and then doing whatever it takes to climb to the top.

SEO is by no means easy, but fortunately, there are a variety of techniques you can use to improve your score.

It will take time for your SEO measures to have the desired effect and to get everything into place. However, the sooner you start to think about and work on your SEO, the sooner you can reap all the benefits.

Promote Your Site on Social Media

Social media is an essential component of any marketing strategy. If you are someone who uses social media regularly already, you will probably have a reasonably good understanding of how your chosen platform works. However, you should be aware that the way you use social media for a business is different from the way you use it personally.

Simply creating a social media profile for your website isn’t going to be enough – this is a garden that you need to regularly tend to. Once your profile is created, you need to draw people towards it.

Remember, the people that actually search for you on social media must already know who you are. In terms of reaching a new audience, you need to be active in the right places on social media.

If you post on the pages of other businesses and groups that are relevant to your website, users will visit your page and be led to your website. This is how you will grow your audience; simply existing on the platform isn’t going to be enough to make a significant difference to your fortunes.

Register with a Business Directory

Compared to social media sites, business directories can seem hopelessly outdated and irrelevant. However, underestimate the business directory at your own peril.

First of all, any new website or business is going to want to get itself in front of as many people as possible, and business directories are a simple way of doing this.

However, one thing that you need to remember is that having your website listed on the wrong directory can actually harm your SEO.
For example, if the directory has a reputation for containing malicious or low-quality links, search engines won’t look favorably upon any website that is listed there. Conversely, getting listed on the right directory, a reputable business directory, will massively improve your SEO score almost overnight.

Online Advertising

There is a plethora of forms that online advertising can take. In a way, all of the tips above could be considered to be forms of online advertising. If you do it right, online advertising will cause your readership numbers to explode.

You can either handle the creation and distribution of your online advertising yourself, or you can hire an advertising provider.

Unless you have a good grasp of how online adverts work, how they should be produced and where they should be displayed, it is usually a better idea to have someone else handle this for you. For example, if you have no experience with SEO or with producing your own online adverts, it makes more sense to hire someone who understands these things.

You can and should learn about them for yourself, but don’t fall into the trap of trying to do everything yourself.

That way, you can benefit from the knowledge, skills, and experience of others while reaping the benefits for your website.

Launching a new website today is very different from launching a website a decade ago. Whether your website is a standalone entity or is tied to a business, the rules for increasing your readership numbers remain the same.

Promoting a new website effectively is not easy, even when you know what to do, but actually pulling it off is a different proposition. Don’t be afraid to turn to other businesses and services that you think might be useful to you.