How and where do you promote your personal site ?

[kevincohr]

I am interested in finding out how and where you promote your personal web site, including paid and free resources. For example, many people may be familiar with classified listings such as Craigslist : are there other similar resources out there ?

Also, any comments on what you have found to be particularly effective would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Kevin

[TravelPixel]

The most effective and cheapest way to promote your site is to optimise your sites content for the search engines, as this is how the majority of customers will discover your site. Making sure you research niche keywords that provide your site with a market 'vertical' will help bring quality traffic and custom your way.

Also linking to RELEVANT sites and having those sites provide inbound links helps boost your popularity.

Google adwords are a good cost-effective way of promoting your site - just make sure you identify some effective phrases!

Dave

[pinkeyemedia]

Perhaps im being niave but when I look for a villa to rent, I always look at the sites that list them all, ie holiday-rentals, holiday-villas etc, I rarely look at a page that ive found in google (ie one that goes direct to the homepage of a villa owner). The problem is, all the big companies can spend masses of money getting optimised in google whereas Joe Bloggs is never going to spend 6 months rental income on optimisation. Of course, it is possible to use resources and make changes to your site yourself by adding keywords and anchor text for example, but I think it must be hard to be #1 in Google for 'fench gite' for example.

Do most people advertise in holiday-rental.com like sites or hope to get bookings from natural Search Engine Placements?

[TravelPixel]

Perhaps im being niave but when I look for a villa to rent, I always look at the sites that list them all, ie holiday-rentals, holiday-villas etc, I rarely look at a page that ive found in google (ie one that goes direct to the homepage of a villa owner). The problem is, all the big companies can spend masses of money getting optimised in google whereas Joe Bloggs is never going to spend 6 months rental income on optimisation. Of course, it is possible to use resources and make changes to your site yourself by adding keywords and anchor text for example, but I think it must be hard to be #1 in Google for 'fench gite' for example.

Do most people advertise in holiday-rental.com like sites or hope to get bookings from natural Search Engine Placements?

I think if you have the time resources you can do well in a organic search engine result, it just takes constant monitoring and precise adjustments to your SEO. Its a fair point to assume that these 'big' companies have someone dedicated to working on SEO.

dave

[paolo]

If you do want to search for accommodation and prioritise personal websites, use MSN Search

It ranks sites differently to Google and a personal site can compete with the big listing sites.

[Hells Bells]

I have spent absolutely zilch on promoting my website, but it seems to be doing OK on Google as well as all the other search engines I've tried. I set it up mainly to link from other places, but it does OK by itself.

[Yvain]

Helen, what sort of sites do you link from?

[Hells Bells]

Yvain, I have links from a couple of ski forums, a ski school (the instructors wife looks after my apartment), and some rental sites that allow links.

[kevincohr]

I have spent absolutely zilch on promoting my website, but it seems to be doing OK on Google as well as all the other search engines I've tried. I set it up mainly to link from other places, but it does OK by itself.

Helen,

When you say it is "doing ok", do you mean that you are getting lots of visitors from searches on Google and other search engines, or do you mean you can find it when you search for it ?

Thanks,

Kevin

[BungleBob]

If you're looking for quality inbound links....There is a round-up of quality travel and web directories for listing your website at http://www.vacationrentalsdirectory.net ... tories.php. The additional inbound links should boost your rankings and can have quite a big effect in niche categories.

Hope this helps!

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