Christian Advertising

Christian advertising can make your business grow. If you have a home-based business, you probably have your own Website. As you know, the most wonderful Websites do not accomplish anything if no one sees them.

And so we look for ways to get more people to our sites. If your e-mail box looks anything like mine, it probably fills up every day with e-mails and ads telling you “None of those other things you’ve heard about will work – my product is the only answer.”

Well, I don’t claim to have the only answer, but I would like to offer a few ideas you might find helpful for your Christian advertising.

First, take your time to think things through and compare advertising/marketing offers. When you are bombarded with possibilities, it’s easy to try this and that helter-skelter. Slow down. Make a plan. Proceed carefully.

Solutions that appear to be the fastest and easiest might not be the best. Be extremely cautious about huge safelists, search engine submissions to 700,000 search engines done automatically, FFAs, and all mass market approaches. You need quality hits. Hits from people really interested in what you have to offer. A carefully targeted approach to your Christian advertising might take some time and extra work – but it can be worth the effort.

Some of the best sources for building traffic include:

• Link exchanges. Done correctly, quality link exchanges can bring traffic to your site from other sites and can also move you up on the search engine lists. Again, quality targeted linking is what counts. Link with quality sites reaching the your targeted market. If you are interested in exchanging links with this site, please e-mail me.

• Manual submission to the major search engines. Manual submission to 6-10 of the major search engines can be more effective than automatic submission to thousands. The major search engines frown on automatic submissions; these mass submissions can also bring a ton of spam to your mailbox.

  Take time to manually submit to key search engines. Be prepared with a 25-word description of your site that includes two to three of your most important keywords. Also be sure the meta tags on your site are up-to-date and complete (name, description, keywords). Even though you might want to focus primarily on Christian advertising, there are some secular companies that give outstanding service that you might want to consider using. Good Keywords is a great little tool you can download for free that will help you find the best keywords for your site and even configure meta tags for you. If you want more help, I highly recommend using Site Build It! as your host. They are my host for this site and I can’t begin to describe the help they provide—including a system for analyzing keywords and search engine submission.

  Along with your Christian advertising, secular search engines and directories that you will probably want to consider include

  Alta Vista
  AOL Search
  AllTheWeb
  Ask Jeeves (list with Teoma)
  Google (a must!)
  MSN (list with search providers LookSmart and Inktomi)
  Open Directory
  Yahoo

• Write articles and offer them to newsletter editors. Write about those things within your business field that you know best. Participate in forums. Get your name – and your URL – out there.

• Selectively place e-zine ads.

• Build an opt-in list. Stay in touch with your subscribers – always offering new ideas, new products, success tips, training – useful things that will be worth their while to read.

• Set up an affiliate program.

• List your site in targeted directories on other sites. Here is a list of Christian directories and search engines. There is a charge for some of the Christian advertising; most basic listings are free.

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  Other Sources

  123Christian.com
  5BarleyLoaves
  711 Christian Directory
  Acts Christian Search
  CBD - Search
  ChristianPortals.com
  Christian Top Sites
  ChristiansUnite.com
  Christpages
  Cross Canada Search - For Canadian sites only
  CrossDaily.com
  CrossGuide
  CrossSearch
  Everything Christian
  Fish the Net
  JesusJournal.com
  JesusLinks
  Look for it online
  myChristianWeb.com
  NZION
  Praize
  StainedGlass.com
  The Best Christian Links (TBCL)
  The Christian Internet Directory
  The Christian Link
  The First Christian Root Directory

  JCSM's Top 1000 Christian Sites
  Ultimate Christian Resources
  

  Click here for more links to
  Christian Search Engines and Directories