It can cost a small fortune to market your site, often more than you thought it would. Advertising on google adwords is a good example. Before you know it, the bill mounts up much faster than you anticipated.

So, if you don’t have a big marketing budget to spend here are 4 techniques you can use to promote your website for free. They will, however, take a little time. You didn’t expect it to be effortless as well…did you?

Directory listings - whatever your niche there are bound to be directory sites, or portals, and many popular or key reference sites too. You can generally get your website listed for free on most sites. If you get your site listed on an ‘authority’ site with a high page rank, you will get some page rank returned. Start your search with directory of directories.

Forums - you can be sure there is a forum or bulletin board, often many, on your topic. The best advice is to join in the discussions and provide helpful information along with your signature or web address. Never blantantly advertise you website or you will be ‘flamed’. Big boards tracks the the most active forums and message boards on the web.

Articles - writing articles is time consuming and slow, but ultimately, very effective. There are many article directories and by posting your article, you get a link to your site and, if it is good, your article will be used on other sites too. Always have an author ‘bio’ with a link to your website. Ezinearticles is probably the biggest article directory and a good place to start.

Link exchange - exchanging links with other complimentary websites is a good strategy. Two-ways links won’t give you any extra ranking with google, but you will get traffic from interested visitors to your link exchange partners website. One way links to your site carries much more weight. All about links builds single links, but I haven’t used them so I don’t know if they work.