Best Website Promotion Tactics?

[davisec52]

Hi, everybody. I have a rather broad question, but I would like to know what you think are your top ten or twelve ways to promote a new website. I have personally found, for example, publishing RSS feeds to as many RSS search engines and directories as possible to be beneficial. YouTube and other video sites can also be helpful in getting recognition, but I'd like to know what you think. I recently had a conversation with a veteran IMer who voiced the opinion that methods such as these, as well as social bookmarking/netorking were a waste of time. Do you think there is merit in these as effective promotion techniques? What do you think are good enough that you'd pay money for? (or maybe you wouldn't)

Any comments?

Evan Davis

[callivert]

davisec52, welcome to Webmasterworld.
There's a forum here on Link building [webmasterworld.com] that discusses these and other issues.
I think your friend is in the minority. Most webmasters consider social media and social bookmarking to be a part of an overall site promotion strategy. It's a mixed blessing. Digg traffic, for example, is notorious for coming in short, furious bursts.
As for RSS feeds, that's a strategy that I've personally neglected. I might pursue it further if it works as well as you say, although a quick glance over at the RSS forum [webmasterworld.com] and I find people saying it doesn't help with SEO at all. That's not to say it doesn't have its uses, of course.

[davisec52]

Callivert,

Hi. Sorry about posting in the wrong forum. I'll pursue this in the links forum you suggested. Thank you for your comments, however. I was actually unaware of the different character traits of the traffic from different social sites. As for RSS feeds, I don't know that they help with SEO per se, but I find for me they can be beneficial in terms of promotion and stimulating traffic flow. How successful a feed is depends, I suppose, on how broadly it is published, site content, keyword choice for the feeds, and so forth. Thank you again for your reply.

Evan