I stumbled on this article "30 Free Ways to Market Your Site" by Carrie Hill from her column "Little Biz" on Search Engine Watch that had some excellent ideas for marketing a small business web-site that I thought were especially relevant with the economy slowing and budgets tightening and wanted to share some of them with you.

Not only are her suggestions relevant to building the link popularity of your site, but they help in getting you familiar with, and involved in, the on-line community. Most small businesses are members of their local Chamber of Commerce or other networking groups, but many small business owners are not familiar with the same networking communities and opportunities that exist on-line. Following these tips is a perfect introduction to the on-line community and a good guide to how to become involved.

You will find that the knowledge gained while investigating and following many of these steps will be as big an asset to your company growth as the potential business you may generate.

Here are some of my favorites (some new, others nice reminders of things forgotten):

1. Write a press release on a new product or offering and send it to some free press release distribution sites. [ed. on-line]

2. Send the press release to your local media outlets, or any niche media outlets that may be interested in what you do. [ed. print]

13. Start a blog.

17. Submit a product (or 20) to GoogleBase. [ed. This is a new beta service of Google http://base.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=59260]

22. Install Web analytics on your site, if you don't already have them. [ed. If you don't use these on a site we host--ask us to install them for you.]

You can view her entire article here (http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=3628785)