1. Optimize your site for search engines. Start with keyword research. Focus on both on-page and off-page optimization.
2. Submit your site to web directories.
3. Get listed on search engines. Click here to submit to top search engines for free.
4. Interlink your websites and blogs.
5. Write articles and submit to article directories. Link to your site from your resource box.
6. Start a blog and use it to promote your site. You can easily set up a free blog on Blogger.com, WordPress.com and others.
7. Quote other people’s blog posts and use trackbacks to link back to your own blog.
8. Launch pay-per-click campaigns on Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, and others.
9. Create a page or group on Facebook and invite your friends to join.
10. Build a Twitter following and tweet your link to your followers.
11. Submit your site to StumbleUpon.
12. Join and participate on MyBlogLog.
13. Join BlogCatalog and visit member sites to leave your avatar on their widgets.
14. Submit an article to Digg. Solicit others to Digg your article by embedding a Digg widget in your article.
15. Make a video and upload it Youtube and other video sharing sites.
16. Create a social network on Ning.com and invite friends, clients, and acquaintances to join. Use to your network to promote your site, products, and services.
17. Create a free toolbar on Conduit and offer it as a free download on your site. You can make money from the toolbar while using it to bring back visitors.
18. Create RSS feed for your site and submit it to feed directories.
19. Add your blog to Technorati and ping it every time you update.
20. Join Squidoo. Create a Squidoo lens and add a link to your site.
21. Ask people to link to your site. Search on Google for sites related to yours and simply send a nice email to their owners to link to you.
22. Exchange links with others. Use search engines or forums to look for link partners.
23. Buy links to your site. Buy links from online brokers like TextLinkAds.com and LinkAdage or get them more cheaply through forums like Digital Point and V7 Forums.
24. Participate on forums and link to your site from your signature.
25. Promote your site offline.
26. Post ads on online classifieds like Craigslist and Backpage.
27. Run a contest. Photo contest, random drawing, writing contest, etc.
28. Share knowledge on Yahoo Answers.
29. Join Entrecard. Surf member sites and drop your business card (125×125 banner) on their Entrecard widgets.
30. Buy banner ads through BuySellAds.com.
31. Give away free stuff on your site, e.g. downloads, coupons, gifts.
32. Set up a mailing list. Embed an email subscription form on your site and invite visitors to join. Send out regular newsletters.
33. Comment on blogs and link back to your site. Write relevant and interesting comments, not spammy cut-and-paste comments like “Great article” and “I couldn’t agree more”.
34. Content is king. Focus on providing fresh, original, relevant and unique content.

I seem to recall a link exchange service called “linkfart.com” a while back. The site no longer exists. Such a name as “link fart” is attention-getting, but not the kind of attention that would a site an overnight success. To be sure, I have no idea how much of a factor the site’s name was solely responsible for linkfart’s downfall, but its flatulent name was not enough to keep it afloat.

Link baiting has become a catch phrase in the SEO community nowadays. The idea is to get others to link to your site naturally through attention-grabbing, often provocative, content. You can bait others to link to your site by stirring controversy. The concept is basically a new twist on the old “content is king” mantra. The concept is perhaps more descriptive of methods that provoke.

Anything that evokes a negative response, such as anger, disgust, and envy, even on a subconscious level, may backfire, so it’s not always prudent to provoke to get people attention.

Link-baiting can be a double-edged sword. One should not try to create a buzz at the expense of detracting from their online professionalism and reputation. One should set a limit on how far they’re willing to go to get people’s attention.

Many people ask me, how do you promote a blog? Well, a blog is a website, so you promote a blog as you would any other site. But since blogs tend to be more personal and informal than typical websites, traditional techniques used to promote, say an e-commerce site, are equally effective for blogs.

First your blog should focus on a particular topic matter. Some people like to use their blogs to write about whatever comes to mind or rant about the 1001 injustices that life throws in their ways. Even if your blog falls into this category, chances are, there will a recurrent theme that surfaces over and over, and that theme would be your topic.

Once you’ve decided what your blog is about, go to Google.com and search for popular forums on your general topic. You should get a bunch of results. Pick only a handful– not more than five– of the most popular forums to join.

But before joining make sure the forum allows you to have signatures linking to your site. This is the least they can do for you for the time that you will put into to help add content to the forum.

It’s important that the forums you join are popular because you don’t want to waste your time contributing to ones that no one reads.

After you join the forums, become active on them. Use them to raise questions, answer questions, give advices, debate issues, and so on and so forth. But be sure to include a signature pointing to your blog.

Your signatures helps to promote your blog in two ways: (1) by helping to build links to your site and (2) by drawing direct visitors from people reading your message. Therefore, it’s important that you have something interesting to write because if people like what you have to say on the threads, they’ll check out your link to see what else you have to offer. Writing one-line responses simply to get links is not recommended since you risk getting flamed by other members and appearing like a village idiot.

As I’ve mentioned earlier blogs tend to be more personal and informal than other websites. Since forum exchanges share these traits, they complement each other very well. I’ve often come up with blog topics by reading the forums and vice versa.

Another point to keep in mind is that your fellow members on the forums are your peers. It’s important to avoid writing in a way that is condescending or even pedantic to your readers. Instead, write in peer-to-peer rather than a teacher-to-student perspective. This is true for both forum participation and blog entries.

I’m compiling lists of free and reciprocal web directories to let you easily submit your site. This is an ongoing project as directories come and go, and many switch from free to paid and back to free at the whims of their owners.

You’ll find on the lists links to both the main and the submission pages of the directories.

We submit to these directories on a daily basis for our manual directory submission services. This allows me to keep the lists up-to-date.

1. Free Directory List
2. Reciprocal Directory List

Note that these lists are very incomplete as we keep track of thousands of directories for our manual submission service.

I have to juggle among 60 websites, so I’ll work on the list as I find spare time.