SEO for Websites that are Not Blogs

December 6, 2008 · Posted in Search Engine Optimization

I’ve taken a great interest in Search Engine Optimization since having started WealthBoy early this year, and GeekLad just a few months ago. I’ve learned the importance of blogrolling and promoting others. To be honest, I’m beginning to find that performing SEO on a blog is actually not that difficult, although it is time consuming. But what about promoting a site that isn’t a blog?

Promoting a corporate website or a startup web service is a daunting task. It’s not as easy to promote a brand that is not a person, as it doesn’t lend itself to community. A blog can easily be promoted by guest posting on other blogs, commenting on other blogs, joining social networks, and so on. This is a big reason why there are many people that have been able to afford a living from blogging. However, a web startup does not have such advantages.

I’m living proof of this. I created a service to send text messages for free over 7 months ago, and it still sits at a dismal PageRank 0. Yet I managed to reach a PageRank 3 in less than a month with GeekLad. I recently decided that in order to really learn more about SEO, I was going to have to learn how to promote a website that was not a blog. ForeverSMS presents me with the perfect learning opportunity!

I decided to take the first step by writing a press release and submitting it to free press release websites. Christine O’Kelly (Self Made Chick) wrote a great hub on Hubpages about how to write and distribute a press release. She also made a presentation on writing and submitting press releases. I did my best to follow her advice when I wrote my press release for ForeverSMS. So far, it has been published to the following sites:

PRLog
SeeNation
dBusinessNews
Google Base
Google Base seemed odd to me too, but it was in Christine’s presentation, so I figured what the hell

I’ve also submitted to the following, but it hasn’t been published yet (as far as I know):

I got the idea for adding Launch Feed and Get Satisfaction from a post on marketingstartups.com with 10 tips on how to get your startup noticed. The article couldn’t have been more timely, as I had just written the press release a couple of days before.

Of the sites that have published the release so far, I think the SeeNation release is closest to what I wanted, with the proper hyperlinks and all. Unfortunately, some of the press release sites would only allow HTML or wanted money to add links. I figured I’d try my hand at doing it for free since I’m all about free stuff (i.e. I’m a cheap bastard).

Hopefully the press release will help create some buzz (and this blog post may not hurt either). It does seem that some of the sites I’ve submitted to have syndicated it. A quick search for ForeverSMS Press Release on Google shows a few sites where I didn’t even submit it. So the first step towards promoting ForeverSMS is well underway. Now I have to figure out what the second step will be.

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Comments

Malcolm Johnston

Squidoo and Propeller are two great sites to write about the product you are promoting and link back to the website. Also get a gmail account and use google documents to create webpages and a log about your product with links back to your site. Find out where your competitors link (just use a link checking tool) to and use the same sites for easy links. Comment on high pr blogs (like Matt Cutts). Embed relevant videos into your site. Make sure your site has a site map so the spiders can crawl it with ease.
Have lots and lots of pages.
It does seem a more daunting task to promote a website than a blog, and it does require a lot more time (I think anyway).