How do you promote your website for free?

Have nanny service and want to promote website to get hits. Any ideas?

How do you promote your website for free?

You want quality hits. I'm assuming that your business is within a certain locale, which means that getting placed in a broad category such as "nanny service" on Google or Yahoo's search engine is going to yield a lot of garbage traffic. You may want to focus on regional search engine ranking terms like "your city nanny service" (with your city being where you are located). I won't go into how to get listed and ranked in search engines here because it's beyond the scope of the this forum. If you want to get ranked in the search engines, I suggest you do some homework or hire someone. Also get listed on dmoz.org. A lot of people pull their directory content from dmoz--including Google. This means you'll get listed on a lot of web sites just by being in dmoz. Also look for web sites that make a natural fit for your service locally, and ask to do a link exchange. This helps in two ways. First you are listed on a targeted web site where you will get direct traffic, and secondly it helps your overall search ranking to have more sites linked to your site. In addition, look for free listing sites to post a listing--like as someone else mentioned craigslist.org--there are more of these types of sites out there. Also, this sounds obvious, but make sure your url is on every piece of business collateral and advertising you put out there. Another thing you should do is use the power of word of mouth. Tell everyone you meet and talk to locally about the web site (this is where an easy to remember url comes in handy), as well as every business conversation you have you should mention your web site. You never know who will tell whom about your site. And finally, talk to the business editor of your local paper(s) and/or business magazine and try and get a story written on your web site and/or business. If your town is small enough you can also talk to your local TV stations into doing a story on you. Most small market stations have small business spotlight segments. This all comes from years of experience in working with small business clients. My additional advice would be that you spend a little money and join your local chamber of commerce. They often provide free member listings on their web site as well as providing network to help market your business amongst other business people.