You’ve already figured out that your small business needs a web site to compete with the big boys and maintain an ongoing, good relationship with your customers. But once you have your web site up and running, you’ll need web site promotion ideas so that people know about your web site. After all, no one will visit your web site if they don’t know it exists.

The first of your web site promotion ideas is submitting your web site to all the major search engines. Search engine traffic is a major traffic supply to web sites and most webmasters will tell you that the vast majority of their traffic is coming from search engine clicks. Most of the major search engines have a specific page you can use to submit your site. Once it’s submitted, it will usually take a few days to a week before it starts showing up in keyword searches.

Other web site promotion ideas include advertising your web site on internet message boards and discussion forums centered on subjects related in some way to your business. For example, if you run a small business selling pet supplies, you could go to message boards and discussion forums frequented by pet lovers.

Other tried and true web site promotion ideas include affiliate and banner exchanges. You can contact other web sites involved with the same target market and ask to exchange banners on each others’ web sites, or you can sign up at a banner exchange portal that will automatically generate banners for other sites on your site and banners for your site on other participating sites.

For even more web site promotion ideas, there are many online resources dedicated solely to teaching people how best to create awareness of their web site through the internet at large and strategies for attracting more visitors to their web site. Start with these basic ideas and when you’re ready, explore for more!