Tips to Advertise Your Online Business

Getting the word out about your online business is important for success. How can you expect customers to purchase from you if they don’t even know your business exists? Here are some of the top free and paid ways to advertise your online business.

SEO: Search Engine Optimization (free)

SEO is where you place special tags in your HTML code called Meta Tags. These tags allow you to write descriptions about each of your pages online, enter target search keywords and create titles.

Search engines crawl your metadata for this information so they know what to serve up to users. You must use careful consideration for the descriptions and include information about what the page is all about. Each page should have a unique description, title and keywords. When adding in your target keywords, don’t repeat words and don’t put ones in that are irrelevant for that page. This is called keyword spamming and search engines, like Google, will penalize you for it.

Let’s do a quick example; Say you are selling scented candles. First, you would do some research to find out the keywords people are using to find stores offering scented candles. Those are the keywords you want to focus on for your meta description and meta keywords. Your home page would have your main navigation, brief information about your business and what you are selling. So your meta description could say something like this: “Shop at Candles N More for top-quality scented soy candles, home fragrances, and potpourri. Our soy candles burn cleaner and feature intense fragrance oils.”

See what I did there? That description contains the word candles 3 times. There is no mistaking that’s what is being offered here. Then I threw in some additional keywords that are used to find those products like; scented soy candles, home fragrances, potpourri and fragrance oils. So you will craft your descriptions something similar to that and use your own found keywords that people would use to locate you to help advertise your online business for free in the search engines.

Ads: (not free)

Advertisements come in several forms. You can use paid advertising in search engines called PPC’s or banner ads on other websites. (We talk about ads on other sites below)

PPC means Pay-per-click advertising. You create an ad based on what they want (usually a title, a small description and a link) for a search engine, and pay that search engine company per click. Cost can rack up quickly! So if you are new to selling online, make sure you create a budget, stick to it and watch it closely! That way you don’t get an unexpected costly invoice that you would have to pay out of pocket.

Backlinking Directories: (free)

There are also websites out there that will allow you to advertise your online business by placing an ad on their site. People used to call these Backlinking Directories, but they are mostly COUPON sites now.  So just do a Google search to locate those. These Directories and Coupon sites will allow you to place your company name, brief description and a link back to your website. Be careful though, there are good ones and bad ones. So make sure that you do your homework about the site before posting there. Google considers some of these spam sites, so just be picky about it & don’t try to just post your company information all over the place. Choose the ones you think are a good fit and ensure they won’t cause issues with Google and other search engines. You can check good and bad backlinking sites with tools like SEMRUSH.

Forums, Blogs and Other Websites: (free unless you want a banner ad)

If there are blogs or forums online that are talking about products that you offer, then you can join these sites to comment on other users messages and include a URL to your store (if allowed). Some of these sites also allow PAID banner ads on their pages, unless you have an affiliate program. In that case, you can contact the blog or website owner to see if they’d like to join your program and earn money for their valuable website space.

Social Marketing:

Facebook, X, Instagram… these are just a few of the platforms that many businesses use to gain more traffic. They all have ads you can buy. These ads are highly targeted to audiences based on what those people press the like button for, things they search for and you can narrow down to demographics. If you don’t want to pay to advertise on these sites, you must be seriously active on them. Posting things daily, following people with the same interests, commenting on others posts and being clever and funny or caring and hope that things you post will get shared by users. Social marketing should be fun! So be as silly as you dare to be if you are offering fun products and show the lighter side of more serious products. Or be very educational and thought provoking!

Whether you choose free, paid or a combination of both, always do your homework to see what would work best for you to get the most reward for your efforts.

Want some more tips? Check out the SEO and Marketing section of the blog for more!