Every channel you could use to promote a website, explained

Search engine optimisation (SEO), paid advertising, social media, email, and more: each entry here sets out what the channel actually does, roughly what it costs in the UK, and who it tends to suit, so you can work out where your time is best spent before you commit any money. If you're leaning towards SEO in particular, our organic traffic growth estimator can give you a realistic sense of what growth to expect over the next six to twelve months before you invest time in it, and if you already have a list of target keywords, the keyword intent classifier will show you which ones suit a blog post and which ones need a product or service page instead. If paid advertising looks more promising for your situation, try our ad budget calculator to see a recommended monthly spend and channel split before you commit any budget, and once you've had quotes from platforms or agencies, our cpm / cpc benchmark comparator will show you indicative UK price ranges by channel and industry so you can sense-check what you've been offered.

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How this directory is organised, and how to use it

A promotion channel is any route by which someone finds your website: a Google search result, a post shared on social media, an email newsletter, a paid advert, a mention on another site that links back to yours. Every channel works differently, costs differently, and suits a different kind of business, so this directory groups them by type.

Why the channels are grouped

There is no single best channel for promoting a website, because the right one depends on what you are selling, who buys it, and how much time or budget you can put in each month. A local plumber and a SaaS startup will get value from very different parts of this list. Each entry explains what the channel is, what it typically costs, how much ongoing effort it needs, and the kind of business it tends to suit.

What you'll find in each entry

Each channel page in this directory follows the same structure, so you can compare them without hunting through different formats:

What the channel is and how it actually works, in plain terms
Rough cost, where a meaningful figure exists, in pounds
Typical time commitment, since some channels reward patience over years and others show results within weeks
Who it tends to suit, and who it usually disappoints
Common mistakes people make when they try it

Where a channel is built on organic traffic, meaning the visitors Google sends you without you paying for each click, the timeline question is worth taking seriously before you commit any budget or writing time to it. Search engine optimisation (SEO) work rarely shows movement in the first month, and going in expecting quick results is one of the more common reasons people abandon a channel that would have paid off. The Organic Traffic Growth Estimator takes your current monthly organic sessions, the difficulty of the keywords you're targeting, how much content you plan to publish, and your domain's age, and turns that into a range for how traffic might grow over the next six to twelve months. It's a projection built on assumptions, so treat the output as a sense check on your expectations.

Before you get that far, it helps to know what each keyword is actually asking for, because a phrase like "best accounting software" is someone comparing options, while "what is accounting software" is someone still working out what the term means, and content aimed at the wrong stage rarely performs however well it's written. Paste a list of keywords into the Keyword Intent Classifier and it sorts each one into a rough type, informational, navigational, commercial, or transactional, so you can match the content you plan to write to what searchers are actually looking for. It works by pattern-matching on the words in the phrase, so unusual or ambiguous keywords can land in the wrong category, and it's worth a manual check where a result looks off.

Paid channels raise a different question: not how long, but how much, and how to split it. If you're weighing up paid search, social ads, or display advertising against each other, the Ad Budget Calculator asks for your industry, monthly revenue, and whether you're chasing awareness or conversions, then suggests a monthly spend range, a split across channels, and indicative cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-thousand-impressions (CPM) benchmarks for each one. It works from typical figures, so it can point you in the wrong direction if your market is unusual. If you've already had a quote from a platform or agency for one specific channel, whether that's Google Search, Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok, programmatic display, or YouTube, the CPM / CPC Benchmark Comparator lets you pick that channel and your industry vertical, and returns indicative UK CPM and CPC ranges alongside a brief note on what tends to drive the variance, so you can sense-check what you've been quoted. It's built on typical ranges rather than your actual account data, so it can only tell you whether a quote looks broadly reasonable, not whether it's right for your business.

Deciding where to start

Reading through every channel entry works, but most people don't have the time. The Promotion Channel Prioritiser asks a few questions about your business and budget and suggests where to focus first, though like any tool of this kind it can point you towards a channel that turns out to be wrong for your particular situation, so treat it as a starting point. For a fuller walk-through of how the channels fit together into an actual plan, the Website Promotion Playbook covers the sequencing in more depth, and the guides section has step-by-step instructions for the channels themselves.

A note on how this directory is kept useful

Platforms change their rules, their pricing, and sometimes their names, so a channel description written two years ago can quietly go out of date. Entries here are written to reflect how each channel currently works, though readers who spot something that has moved on are welcome to flag it through the contact page.

Channel	Best for	Watch out for	Time to results
Organic search (SEO)How your site appears in Google's unpaid results, built through content, site structure and backlinks.	Steady, free traffic over the long term	Takes patience, and results depend partly on what competitors are doing too	Months rather than weeks
Paid search advertising (PPC)You pay each time someone clicks your ad (cost-per-click, or CPC), so budget control matters from day one.	Getting visible quickly for specific searches	Traffic stops the moment you stop paying	Can start within days
Social media promotionWorks best where your customers already spend time.	Building awareness with an audience you can reach directly	Algorithms change, and organic reach on most platforms keeps shrinking	Weeks for engagement, longer for traffic
Content marketingGuides, articles and resources that attract visitors through search or sharing.	Answering the questions your customers are already asking	Slow without a distribution plan, so writing alone rarely does it	Months, and it builds gradually
Email marketingRelies on people who have already agreed to hear from you, so consent under UK GDPR is not optional.	Turning existing visitors and customers into repeat ones	Needs a list to begin with, and UK data rules govern how you build it	Ongoing, once the list exists
Backlinks and digital PRA backlink is a link from another website to yours. Google tends to treat a good one as a vote of confidence.	Raising a site's standing in Google's eyes	Low-quality links can do more harm than none at all	Months, and often longer

This is general guidance on how these channels typically behave, not a tested ranking of one against another. Results vary by industry, budget and starting point, so treat it as a starting point for your own decision. If you want a clearer sense of what organic search might realistically do for your own site, the Organic Traffic Growth Estimator turns your current monthly visitors, planned content output and domain age into a rough six to twelve month range, with the usual caveats about how much any projection like this can promise. For the paid channels in this table, the Ad Budget Calculator takes your industry, monthly revenue and goals and suggests a monthly spend range along with a rough split across channels, so you can see roughly where a budget might go before you commit any of it. If you have already had a quote from a platform or an agency for the paid search or social media rows above, the CPM / CPC Benchmark Comparator lets you pick the channel and your industry and returns indicative UK CPM and CPC benchmark ranges along with a note on what tends to drive the variance, which is a reasonable way to sense-check what you have been quoted before you sign anything. If you are trying to decide whether a keyword is worth an article, a landing page or nothing at all, the Keyword Intent Classifier sorts a list of keywords by what the person searching them is actually trying to do, which is a useful step before committing time to either the organic search or content marketing rows above.

This directory tells you what each channel does. The guides show you how to actually run one.

Knowing that email marketing or search engine optimisation (SEO) exists is not the hard part. The guides walk through setup, common mistakes, and what a small business can realistically manage without hiring anyone. If SEO is where you start, one early decision is which keywords to write for and what kind of page or post each one actually calls for. The Keyword Intent Classifier takes a list of keywords and sorts each one by what the person searching is likely after, whether that's information, a specific website, a comparison of options, or a purchase, using pattern matching, so treat it as a starting point on any one keyword. Before you commit time to any of this, the organic traffic growth estimator can give you a rough sense of what growth might look like over the next six to twelve months, based on where your site stands now. If you're weighing up paid channels instead, or alongside organic work, the Ad Budget Calculator asks about your industry, monthly revenue and goals, then suggests a monthly spend range and how to split it across channels, so you're not guessing at figures before you commit any money. Once you have a spend figure in mind, the CPM / CPC Benchmark Comparator lets you pick a channel, such as Google Search, Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok, programmatic display or YouTube, along with your industry, and see indicative UK cost-per-thousand-impressions (CPM) and cost-per-click (CPC) ranges, with a note on what tends to drive the variance, so you can sense-check a quote from a platform or agency before you agree to it. As with the other tools here, its output is a benchmark to weigh against your own numbers, not a guarantee of what you'll pay.

Read the Website Promotion Guides Try the Organic Traffic Growth Estimator