If you are just new in the website scene and you have just finished your website, you would now understand that the next big step to make is make the most number of people see that you have a website and you have something to offer the general public and no, at this juncture, the path is totally different in advertising your website as it is in the traditional advertising world where all you have to is pay some people to create print and television ads for you (if you can afford it) and then place them in key positions on the streets (billboards), in major broadsheets (newspapers), and on the television. In this case, yes you can still pay websites in order for them to allow you to place your ads on their web pages but the scope of its coverage is so small and it would take you a humongous amount before you can cover all the demographics that you want to reach.
If you research more, you will hear of the term search engine optimization and this scheme (or culmination of schemes and strategies) is one of the most effective ways to bring people to your website so that you would be able to share to them what you have. It would be best to implement search engine optimization on your website while you are on the building stages and one of the first strategies that you can apply is the use of the CSS or cascading style sheets and the XHTML or extensible hypertext markup language to make sure that all your coding is done using the correct grammar while on the implementation of your search engine optimization plans.
If your website is not that complicated and if its just a couple of web pages long and you have a completely good grasp of web developing and other topics associated with it, then it would not hurt at all to learn the basics and probably even the advanced stages of search engine optimization instead of paying someone to manage your strategies for you. However, if your website is a bit complex with menus, shopping carts, and other stuff that requires multifaceted types of coding, then you have to consult an experienced web developer to assist you in the implementation of your SEO strategies.
The search engines especially the major ones such as Yahoo, MSN Bing, and of course the ever popular Google, are the most tried and tested methods of driving visitors to your website and you can imagine millions of people making searches online utilizing these search engines and without these your website will be floating out there in internet space without anybody knowing you exist except your close friends and relatives whom you shared your URL with. If people are only relying on word of mouth to have their sites advertised, then it would taken us years before we could have known Facebook or the other more popular sites today. SEO acts as your anchor to keep you in place so that people search for words that have relevance to you, the search engines know where to find you and immediately advertise your location to the searchers.
