There is no point in having a new website that looks beautiful and is unknown to the internet community unless you take some active steps to promote it,oe else all your efforts will be futile and useless.If you are not sure where to begin, here are some steps that are bound to prove useful.

1. Tell Your Associates:There is no need to reach the unknown millions of people out there surfing the Internet,instead it would be wise if we contact our friends and associates.Look at your e-mail address book and get the word out, tell your business contacts, friends, relatives and tel them to tell their friends too. Channelise them in a proper way.

2. Link to Your Own Site:If you already have one website, make sure that this site is linking to your new site. A website without any incoming links to it will have a very low page ranking in the all-important Google search engine and will face an uphill battle to be seen in Google search results, especially if you are in a very competitive category.Even when your site is in the construction stage you, or even your web designer can link to the new site from another already well-established site, mentioning that the new site is under construction. If you already have several sites, then link them to your infant site. It will help the new site to be seen in competitive search engine listings even in its debut period.

3. Get a paid inclusion in one of the big search engines:It takes 4-6 weeks to get listed in Google, and other search engines are equally slow. However there are a few fairly important search engines that have inexpensive express inclusion programs. If you join these programs, then your site will be listed in 48 hours. Inktomi, which provides results for MSN and 100 other search services, has an inclusion program which costs $39 for the first URL that you submit, and subsequent ones cost $25. The value of the Inktomi submission is that they revisit your URL every 48 hours and if you make changes on the page you can see the results in the MSN listings very quickly. Thus, you can tweak your pages and see how it affects your position.

4. Add your site to the Open Web Directory and the major search engines:Quality is more important than quantity when it comes to search engine submission. Forget about the sales hype that tells you to add your URL to 300, 000 search engines. Only a few search engines and directories provide the lion’s share of Internet traffic. If your site is in good shape, no longer under construction, then go to ODP - Open Directory Project. This is the Open Web Directory. Find the category where your site fits, and make a submission. If you are accepted here your site will appear in the many search engines and local directories that use the results from the Open Web Directory. Inclusion in this directory usually takes time but it will help you a lot. Similarly submit your site to Google, Alta Vista and All The Web, these are the remaining giants where you can submit for free.

5. Start a reciprocal links campaign – Once you have given yourself a link from your other sites or from your designer’s page, you can go out and ask other complementary sites for links.Always try exchanging links with sites that have a good page rank for it indicates that the site has good hits and is often visited.By having a trackback link chances of your site having hits is enhanced.

6. Write an article about your product or service – If you have a website the chances are that you are an expert in the field that your site is all about. Write an article about your product or service, or write an article related to the subject matter of your site. Submit the article online to various websites and e-mail lists dealing with your topic. The publication of your article in a big e-zine, or on a popular web site can get your new site off to a roaring start.

7. Promote Your Site Off-line – Now that you have a site, put the URL brochures, business cards, TV advertising, and circulars.The cafepress.com has a program enabling you to put your URL on these items and even sell them online.
Last but not the least be unique and be promotionally inclined initially for traffic generation.