Your site is ready for promotion, but your wallet is not? No problem, here’s a surefire way to get things off the ground with no budget at all. Then once the sales are rolling in you can start to fund higher end advertising solutions.

Meta information will be your friend. Metadata is like a fingerprint of your site. This is the underlying information search engines feed from to build a profile of your website. They combine the content of your site with your site’s metadata to determine what your site is about.

To begin, make sure your website effectively tells who you are, what you do and what a user can do to utilize your service or purchase your goods. Once you have established this information, it’s time to make a name for yourself.

Someone who is frequently published or quoted will quickly be sent as a professional in thier field. Doctors and lawyers strive to have their findings published in medical and legal journals for this very reason. That is why, as the owner of a website, you should strive for the same thing. Find forums that cater to your niche and make your advice and information indispensable. Don’t be a salesman because besides being tacky, it may get you banned from the forum. instead, use your signature line to promote your site with a link or any promotion allowed by the site’s terms of service.

The more frequently you post and help others, the more your site will stick in their minds. This can be a very effective method of generating targeted traffic and increasing sales.

Viral marketing on social networks is another way to draw attention to your site. Create something that people will want to pass on to their friends and will keep people coming back to your site and telling others. There are many other ways to promote your site for free. Just keep it creative and keep on going and before too long you will see the traffic.

Ever wonder how some businesses become successful through online marketing? You don’t have to be a web guru or marketing genius to successfully market your business online, however you do need a lot of patience and a great marketing plan.

There are several ways you can effectively market your company online, using message boards/forums, pay per click advertising programs, link exchanges, social media sites, blogs, video sharing sites and search engine optimization (SEO). As a rule of the thumb, it is recommended you apply one or more of these methods in order to increase your chances of success.

Online Forums(free)

Online message boards otherwise known as “online forums” are a community of internet users who discuss common interests and activities with each other. Some online forums allow each user to have a unique image, text, or other graphics that is always tagged to each of their posts, these are referred to as signatures. If someone clicks on your signature link they will be redirected to your website or online store. The more you post, the more exposure you get.

Pay Per Click Advertising (paid)

Another option for marketing your online business is using pay per click advertising programs such as Google Adwords or Yahoo Search Marketing. A clear benefit to these programs is that you pay only when someone clicks on your link, just as the name “pay per click” suggests. I would not recommend this method if you are just starting out. If you have a limited budget and have no clue what you are doing, you may want to save this type of marketing for later. PPC can get very expensive very quickly.

Link Exchange (free)

One popular method of advertising online is called link exchange. Just as the name suggest, you exchange links with other websites to gain exposure, you post your links on their website and in exchange, they post their links on your website. This is a great option for entrepreneurs with a limited budget because it is free of charge. You want to make sure though that the companies you exchange links with are not your competitors, as it will generate more exposure or income for them.

Social Networking Sites (free)

Social Networking has become and essential part of online marketing, websites like Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin can significantly increase traffic to your site if used correctly. Social Networking helps promote your site by sending you direct traffic and by generating awareness. With Social Networking people are encouraged to interact with each other and with companies, so you want to make sure you ads are appealing enough to generate some interest.

Blogs (free)

Uses of blogs in marketing has really evolved and companies are finding that is a less costly way of promoting their products and services. You can use your blog to create dialogue with the customers and to explain features of your products or services. If you have incredible, original content on your blog and comment regularly on other relevant blogs, people are likely to link to it, increasing your site’s PageRank.

Video Sharing Sites (free)

Videos can be a very powerful marketing tool and you should consider it an important part of your marketing campaign. You should also optimize it so it can be ranked high enough to help you. For example, if you were to get a top-ranking video on Youtube that mentions your site, it could drive a lot of traffic to your site. Entertaining videos can quickly become viral, being passed around by hundreds of thousands of people, most of them connected through online social networks like Facebook.

Search Engine Optimization (paid)

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a way of optimizing your website to be more search engine friendly in order to increase traffic. The keywords and metatags yo choose are very important.Content is the heart of SEO as your website needs to be saturated with keywords that search engines can pick up. As standard internet searches play a large part in generating traffic, SEO is an essential part of online marketing. Some businesses prefer to hire SEO specialists for this purpose, however if you are just starting out, I would not recommend you do this as it can be a little pricey.

Remember when you launch your small business, it is always better to start small. Always try to refrain from investing money in things that you can either do or get for free.

The internet is considered to be a place of instant gratification where people try to have the fastest connection, instant downloads, and where people reputedly make a pile of money without even trying. However, the reality of the internet is that while many things can be done quickly, having a successful business isn’t one of them. One of the keys to having success is having the patience to do all of the little, detail oriented things that must be done in order to get the maximum visibility and thus get the traffic you need.

Blog Writing and Pinging

Blog writing and pinging your blogs are two things that individually don’t take too long, but it’s something that has to be done. Writing a blog is a very common practice for business owners, but it has to be done with care in order to be picked up by the search engines. You not only have to write the blog, but you also have to optimize it for search engines (many blog sites have a form to fill out that does this for you), do the keywords, do any backlinks to things like affiliates or your own sites, and when the blog is all done and published, you then have to ping it. Pinging is a generally free service online; when you ping your blog, you notify blog directories and services that you’ve posted something new. This directs search engines to you in hours instead of days, so it’s definitely worth doing.

Update the Social Networks

Again, updating the social networks shouldn’t take long, but it is one more chore to do. Update your fan page with whatever’s been happening, do a tweet on Twitter and do all of the other little updates on any other social media sites you frequent. Make sure that everyone who’s following you knows the latest; not only will this let everyone know when you’ve done something new, but search engines have also been known to track things like Tweets, so it’s a good way to get higher in the rankings.

Answer Your Emails

As your business picks up, you’ll get e-mail from customers asking questions, modifying orders, or just wanting to drop a line. Make sure to answer them, even with a standard one-liner. Answering email makes the customer feel important and gives you a better idea of what people are thinking. This can take a while, but it’s worth it for the information you can glean from it.

Chat it up at the Forums

Drop a few lines at any forums you’re a part of. At first, you should try to just keep up with one forum, but as you get more efficient at doing everything else, join more forums. Remember that the majority of people on forums are friendly, curious, and kind, so don’t be shy. And every time you post, you give out free advertising and can make some great online friends.

These may seem like small chores, but they are very important and should be incorporated into a daily ritual for your online business. When you do that, you’ll see your traffic rising and the profits start coming in.