After reading Google and SEO: The Real Story you will understand more about targeting your neighbourhood. If you haven’t read it do that now. Done that? Good, now lets address the question you really came here for:

The essential 10 step checklist of FREE marketing techniques.

Understand that your niche may require a different order and to take advantage of other niche specific opportunities (such as blog carnivals for blogs, competitions for quality design etc).

1) Search Engines

• Are you taking care of your keywords? (use Adwords Keyword Tool and Keyword Spy to find more information)
• If you know your keywords then make sure you feature them in your copy.
• The following steps will all contribute to your SEO
• Google Ranking: Making Friends With The Spider, Google and SEO: The Real Story

2) Directories

• Submit you website to niche directories (google “-your niche here- directories” to find them. Also remember to submit to DMOZ)
• Submit your product to product directories
• Do Not Make These 4 Mistakes

3) Blogs

• Create a blog to link back to your website
• Blogs 101 The Essential Tips For Setting Up WordPress
• Comment on other blogs in your niche (insert your URL)
• Why YOU Should Start A Blog – The Top 10 Reasons And 26 More

4) Forums

• Participate in forums in your ‘neighbourhood’
• Put a link to your website in the signature
• Get Traffic From Forums By Not Being A Loser.

5) Social Networking

• Build up a network of people who follow the same things as you.
• Post about your topic, and if pages on your site a relevant then post them too. (Dont spam..)
• Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc
• Increase Your Twitter Followers – 7 Ways To Get And 3 Ways To Keep, 3 Ways To Get Targeted Twitter Followers (For Free!)

6) Article Sites

• Submit articles relevant to your topic
• Submit to Article City and EzineArticles
• Make sure you have read Article Blog Secrets – How To Write Article Titles For Traffic

7) Videos

• Create a YouTube channel and link back to your domain.
• Video sites have a lot of traffic and are very popular with google.
• Remember to write standout titles for your videos.

8) News Sites

• Submit articles and stories to news sites in your niche.
• Write great articles for them and they will get used.

9) Social Bookmarking

• These can create massive traffic if you can get enough votes for your posts.
• Usually you will need a base traffic flow for the posts to get enough votes to get noticed.
• These are sites such as Digg, StumbleUpon, Delicious and many more.

10) Auction Sites

• Create a back link to your site from popular Auction sites.
• Create and about me page or blog on eBay and you can link back to your site.

This is just a checklist and over the next few weeks I will post on each of the topics explaining in more detail how you should approach each one and include the successful strategies that work plus the resources to get your site cranking.

So to get more detail make sure you sign up to the site and stay up to date.

Any more startup ideas that should be covered? Leave a comment..