Marketing Strategies

Win Awards

A great way to gain attention for your site is to win awards.

You should design a page strictly used for showing off the awards you have won, with a link to that page on all of your other pages.

The more prestigious awards should be displayed on the first page of your site as well as on your award page.

Before applying for any awards, you should be completely finished with your site...well, as finished as you can be, since you will always be adding content to your site.

You must not have any under construction signs or broken links or images. Everything must work, the pages must load fast, and the site must be easy to navigate. You also cannot have a site that is just full of links to other sites. You don't want that anyway, since that only takes people away from your page.

Once you are sure your site is finished, and in order, you should go to:

Award-it
Market-Tek Ultimate Award Submit

Apply for all the awards your site is eligible for, and keep records of where you applied, in case you have several different sites to submit.

When you win awards, you should let people know. State that fact in your signature file, or in your ads. If you publish an ezine, let your subscribers know!

 

Offering an Award

Another way to use awards to attract attention and visitors to your site, is to have your own award to give to other sites. Designing an award is simple, using a graphics programs such as Paint Shop Pro.

Once you have designed your award graphic, you should make a page on your site, with a link from all your other pages, that explains the guidelines for winning your award, and how to apply.

Be very selective when choosing sites that win your award. If it is too easy to win, it won't be worth much. It must be coveted!

With this done, you need to set up a page that will be a "link" page for all the sites that do win your award. You also need to stipulate that, as a condition of accepting the award, and displaying your award graphic, the winners must link the graphic back to your site. This is standard procedure when applying for and winning awards, so the winners won't mind a bit.

So, you can use awards to gain attention and visitors to your site in two ways - By winning awards, and by offering awards!
 

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