Traffic Generation Resources

Link Building! Free Places to Promote Your Website Online

In case you are managing a newly launched website or are just planning to develop your website, you may find this list essential. It will help you save a considerable amount of time and effort to research places and sites where you can promote your website. On the other hand, you may also find this list valuable even if your online platform has been active for quite some time now. There is a good chance that you have skipped some of a high PR ranking site that can help advance your link building campaign.

30 Free Sites to Promote Your Websites

Website promotion can be an expensive process, and business startups will not have the budget to cover these expenses. Don’t fret! We will be giving you free alternatives to promote your website online. This list includes free websites that will be enough to start building your backlinks.

Social Media Sites

Social media platforms have heaps of benefits to offer to business owners. We’ve all heard about the popularity of Facebook, but you are probably not utilizing your page to its full potential. The social media sites mentioned below may prove to be useful when promoting your business online.

  • Twitter- While Facebook might be the most popular, Twitter seems to be the most influential social media platform, especially among college students. Once an influencer mentioned your website or your account, you can generate a massive following instantly. You can also use the tool to automatically post your website content and keep your followers in the loop.
  • Facebook- This social media platform is ideal for businesses whose target market is older than 30 years old. Users of this site are commonly people who want to reconnect with their friends and families and love talking about political matters. Facebook also offers you different tools that allow you to promote your website.
  • Instagram- This social media allows users to share images and videos. It used to be a platform intended for teenagers, but it has now developed into a valuable platform for business promotion. Creating an account for your business will help you drive traffic to your site. It also gives your business and brand a human approach.
  • Snapchat- It is perhaps one of the newest social media platforms that draw the younger population’s interest. As a business, you may use it to advance your brand awareness, considering that you find a creative approach in promoting your brand.
  • Tumblr- Tumblr has now transformed into a social forum. Users can also build their blogs by sharing images.
  • Pinterest- Pinterest is excellent for small businesses. Most people will use it to share their crafts and recipe. It can improve the exposure of your small business. It also comes with analytics that will help you track the progress of your campaign.
  • LinkedIn- This platform can help you establish your credibility and authority in the industry. It is also an excellent platform for B2B brands and those who are in the service sector. It is a great way to market your business to professionals.
  • Reddit- This is a platform for discussion and is composed of thousands of rooms. It is a great way to generate attention immediately.
  • Quora- This is similar to Reddit, but this is a more intellectual and refined platform intended for discussion. While most of the Quora users will not appreciate an outright and shameless promotion, it is still an excellent network for building your credibility.
  • Mix- This site has absorbed the platform of StumbleUpon as well as its users. It has been developed to share content, especially the content intended for promotion. It is a simple way to share your materials with your followers. You can also save videos, music, articles, and anything that you can find online.
  • Foursquare-There was a time when Foursquare was considered the next big social media platform. While it may not be as active as before, there are still millions of people using Foursquare. It is a discovery and local search application that makes it easy for the user to find a local establishment.
  • Myspace- Surprise! Myspace is still alive. Facebook has taken the basic idea of this platform and refined it. Myspace might have been a smaller social media platform, but it is still a handy place to promote your business.

Online Directories

The online directories on this list will range from high-profile to local listing sites. We make sure that this will cover a considerable percentage of the population. The process is relatively the same. Start by submitting the URL of your website and provide extra information about your website. Your application will then go through verification. Once approved, you can guarantee that your link will be available when a user searches for your content category.

  • Angie’s List- This is not merely a directory for your business. It also gives your business authentic reviews, especially if your business model is involved in contracting. It is an excellent platform for legitimate companies that have a wider reach.
  • Craigslist- This is one of the very first online directories. It remains to be the most accessible place to promote your website online.
  • GetApp- This is a platform that provides the business with reviews. Similar to other applications that are based on reviews, this can help you boost the presence of your business online. Nonetheless, it is still possible for you to receive negative reviews. You should not treat this as a bad thing. Negative reviews allow you to address the concern of your customers immediately and improve your offerings.
  • Angel List-This is a site where business owners can connect with investors. Apart from new funding, you can also look for your employees on this site.
  • BBB (Better Business Bureau)- This is the place that can help the audience to determine the legitimacy and credibility of the business. BBB has always been a resource, even before the popularity of computers. The companies that are included in their list are known for being trustworthy. It gives a massive boost for a business that wants to establish a good reputation.

Other Free Places to Advertise Your Website

  • YouTube-Some businesses will find YouTube as the most powerful promotional tool. It only takes a 5-minute promotional video that is relatable that will make your content go viral overnight. YouTube offers a range of features that can help you advertise your business online.
  • Dailymotion- Just like YouTube, Dailymotion is a video sharing site. However, it has a partnership with big companies such as Hearst Digital, Bloomberg, and BBC.
  • Vimeo- It is another platform for video sharing. Perhaps Vimeo’s main difference over the other video content-creation platform is that it is focused on monetizing the video products. While using the platform is free of any charge, the monetization tool requires you to pay some cash
  • Yelp-This is an easy way to spread the name of your business in the online world. It is mainly intended for small establishments and restaurants.
  • Merchant Circle- This is another promotional tool intended for small-medium enterprises. Merchant Circle is packed with more than 100 million prospected customers and about 2 million small business partnerships. Some of the tools that you may find valuable include SEO Assistance and Digital Expansion.
  • Free Press Release- This provides a free distribution service that will share your press release to the FPR network member. It can significantly help on increasing your online visibility.
  • 24-7 Press Release- Just like the distribution service mentioned above, this site will also spread your announcement to the member of its community. It is known for its partnership with the Associated Press.
  • Trip Advisor- This site helps travellers in many ways. They will often visit this place when they are looking for the best places to visit, places to eat, things to do, etc. It can help them find the quality service and the best deals while travelling. If your business is related to travelling, you should take this opportunity to promote your business to this website.
  • Blogger.com (Also known as Blogspot)- This is the free blog-hosting site of Google. It is a powerful tool that allows you to post your content and blog articles. It also enables you to utilize the analytical and advertising tools of Google.
  • Yellow Pages- This is another institution when it comes to promoting your website. There was a time when Yellow Pages serves as the pioneer in the online business directory.
  • Town Planner- This is a platform for the smaller community and towns. It lists the schedule of different events, holidays, and news about the community. It is also packed with different advertisements from local businesses. Not all organizations will be using this platform. However, if you are doing business in a town that does, be sure to share your news and advertise on their website.
  • Manta- This website uses an online tool that allows businesses to connect with their target market. The tools are also essential for SEO and Google Ads.
  • Ezine Articles- This serves as an article directory that allows you to syndicate your articles. Submission of articles will not cost a dime, and in return, you will receive a backlink for your site. It is an excellent opportunity for a growing business to help it reach a wider audience.

Effective Link Building Strategies

Let us warn you, link building will not be easy; it is challenging and gruelling. Most marketers and website managers will struggle in building their backlinks. Regardless of the strategy that you will use, there will be instances that you will encounter some pitfalls; if this sounds like you, be proud since you are on the right path. 

Outreach 

An excellent link building strategy will revolve upon your outreach method. So, what is outreach? It is your way of reaching out to the people who can be interested in your niche that will direct them to your web content. However, you do not necessarily need to have ‘content’ to attract them. You only need to have that element that can draw their interest. For instance, it can be your product offering, brand, business, service, or even your unique personality. It can be as simple as showing them a list of essential tools that they can use. For instance, if your targeted market is business owners, you can inform them about software that they can use; it can be an accounting, SEO, and social media management tool.

Who are the people that you should reach out to? These can be the people who mentioned your focused keyword on their social media profile. They can also be people who share an article with related topic. 

Guest Blogging

It is one of the conventional link-building methods that is being used since the start of the SEO strategy. So, how does guest posting work? You will be writing an article that will be posted on another website with a similar niche. You will be leaving a hyperlink that will direct the audience to your website once they clicked it. We have mentioned some websites above where you can submit your written articles. 

The trick in guest blogging would be looking for the right topic and the platform where you can submit. Here’s a trick to help you find a good site that accepts guest posting. Using the Google search engine site, type your topic+Intitle: “write for us”. For instance, if your website niche is about anime, you can use anime+Intitle “Write for Us”. However, a lot of people are already using this trick. The better way to do this is to not look for websites that are deliberately looking for guest bloggers. A lot of websites will be open to accepting well-written articles even if they are not advertising it. No website will turn down a high-quality content. If you found a high-ranking website, you can send them an e-mail. Be sure that you will have a list of these sites since you don’t want to submit multiple articles to the same spot.

Hunting for Broken Link

This strategy is known as broken-link building. You will be looking for a broken link on a website that is related to your niche. You will then create a content that is similar to the broken link then ask those people that are linking on the dead source to use your content instead. It will be beneficial to both parties since they can avoid Google penalties, and you can advance your link building strategy.

You probably think that this method requires too much work and you will only receive a single backlink. That may be true on some occasion. However, if you find a reputable site with a broken link, there is a high possibility that a lot of people will be linking on that site. Therefore, those people should also be willing to swap their source instead of using a dead link. There are easy ways on how you can hunt for broken links; you can use free online tools such as ahrefs, deadlinkchecker, etc.

Unlinked Brand Mentions

On some cases, some people will mention your business without linking to your page. It means that they do not have a clickable link that will direct the audience to your website. It’s such a shame since you’ve almost earned a backlink. The author of the content is already aware of the existence of your business. It should be enough to convince them to add a hyperlink to their article. However, how on earth can you find these unlinked brand mentions?  Perhaps the easiest way would be with the help of tools like BrandMentions and PureLinq.

Link Reclamation

There’s just no easy way for you to develop your backlink. It all requires a lot of effort and time. However, are you aware that you can also lose them? Even some reputable sites can lose backlinks daily. They either removed the link on their page or the page where you used to link is already a dead link. It can affect your website’s PR and SERP. So how can you neutralize the effect of this? Well for starter, they can do this by building new links. Nonetheless, that might be easier said than done. Perhaps a better method would be to reclaim the lost link. 

If the link was removed on the page, there might be a reason behind this. One possibility is that the website manager has revamped or updated the content, and the link was removed due to the process. If your link was lost due to this reason, you should read the new article and look if there are opportunities for you to add the link of your website. If yes, then talk to the website managed and kindly tell them if they can add your link in the rewritten content. There are also instances when the page can get deleted. You can inform the web manager about the page that has been deleted, and they will usually reinstate it.

Linkable Assets

What are linkable assets? These are the types of content that warrant links; it can be an infographic, tutorials, blog post, calculators, and tools. You can earn a link from other websites using your linkable asset through outreaching. However, when using outreach, you are only targeting the most viable target. Luckily there’s another way to do this, and that is Paid Promotion.

Paid promotion of your linkable assets can be done in various PPC network like Google, Facebook, Pinterest Ads, etc. If you are afraid that you may overspend, you don’t necessarily have to spend a fortune to earn links. Generally, a budget of about $50-$100 will be sufficient. If the content you’ve posted will be relatable to an audience, they will link to your content. They can post it on a discussion board, blog site, comments on forums and websites, and others. You are not just advancing your link building strategy; you are also presenting your post to the right audience.

Stealing Links

I know stealing is wrong, but in this case, this can be good and beneficial for your online visibility. If you happen to discover a mediocre content while browsing a website with high PR rank and authority, you might be surprised at the number of links it has. Suppose you can create a more superior and high-quality article; don’t you think people will choose to link to your post rather than that low-quality blog post? People are linking to that content since they probably are not aware that a more comprehensive post exist. You can ask these people to link to your post instead. 

Content Syndication and Repurposing

Another possible way to build your link would be to submit content from related and appropriate websites like video-sharing platforms and infographic directories. However, you need to create content that is in the right format to do this. Fortunately, you can repurpose your content. For instance, you may have created an incredible infographic. You have invested your time and efforts in developing it. You only wished that you can introduce it to a broader audience. Then you can transform an interactive infographic into a video format. 

While people with resource and budget can buy links, we do not recommend this strategy. Remember that Google has stated that this method is against their guidelines. You can receive a penalty if the bots have traced you. Link building may not be rocket science, and even someone who has just started managing his website can do this. However, it takes time and effort to amass high PR links.

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