Web Promotion | Search Engine Optimization | Online Community Building | Email Marketing | Mobile Marketing | Exit Traffic
Web Promotion Basics
Web promotion is the art of advertising and promoting your website. "If you build it they will come" - is the biggest load of bullocks I've heard watching television. I thought if you build it with search engines in mind then promote it, and then advertise it, then maybe they will come.
So at all corners you should look at means of saving money. This starts with the hosting and domain name purchases itself.
Once you have a host. You should set about getting an informational architecture design. You don't build a house without a blueprint do you? So don't build a website without one.
The days of everything being free on the Internet are over, get a bit of a budget and start working.
Search Engine Optimization is a still top of any online marketers wish list. You should then submit the site to directories like www.dmoz.org with a good title and description.
Listed below are some of the factors affecting web promotions.
Please note: our affilliate marketing and Website Promotion site tries you give you a basic understanding of the methodologies to online marketing, as a webmaster you should take this as a guideline and try your own techniques as well as do further research on your own.
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Web Promotion Terms
Before proceeding further, let's define some terms.
Traffic - The number of people who visit your site. The more of this you get, the better. Whether you're selling something online, putting out information about your company, or whatever, more traffic means more potential sales. If you don't promote your Web site, your traffic will probably hover around zero.
Promotion - Anything you do to increase your site traffic. This includes site submission, advertising, sending out press releases, etc.
Submission - The process of notifying the various search engines and related sites about your Web site.
Search Engines - Sites that people use to search for information on the Web. This is the primary way that people find Web sites, so a Web site owner needs to know as much as possible about search engines and how they work. Although some popular sites such as Yahoo are more accurately described as "directories," the term "search engines" is often used to include all sites that act as tools for people to find other sites.
• Search Engine Optimization
We will cover these aspects more in detail later...
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Promoting your site
Before moving on 10 ways not to promote your site:
1 - Do Not Spam!
This is the golden rule of Netiquette. Mass, unsolicited e-mail is not acceptable, anywhere, for any reason. There are hundreds of hustlers out there trying to sell you databases and software that you can use to spam, but don't believe their promises. You will suffer the consequences. Spamming will make enemies for you, not friends. It can also get you barred from large ISPs, crippling your traffic.
2 - Don't shell out big for submission services
Submit your site to 500 search engines for $19.95! Bad deal. There aren't 500, or even 100, search engines worth submitting to. The 19.95ers simply run your URL through an auto-submitter (like www.selfpromotion.com or www.submitit.com), which you can do yourself for free. If you want a professional to submit your site, plan on spending a few hundred bucks at most, which should buy you a careful and thorough job.
3 - Don't waste time on the Arthur and Martha of the Web
Submit your site to the major search engines and directories, perhaps using one of the auto-submitters for some, and doing others individually. There are about 30 that are worth submitting to. Then seek out specialized directories that are appropriate for your site (travel, investment, shopping, country-specific, etc.). Don't waste time with obscure search engines and kids' links pages. There are billions of pages like this, but they get zero traffic. Your time is better spent carefully doing your submission to Yahoo.
4 - Don't rush through your Yahoo submission
Yahoo is by far the most important directory, and the hardest to get into. Submissions are reviewed by real editors, so follow the instructions to the letter, and really try to convince them that your site is a useful resource. Some good tips are to be found on the rather obscure page called "My Site on Yahoo," and www.selfpromotion.com also has some good Yahoo tips.
5 - Never submit your site until it's open for business
Test your site thoroughly, and make sure every section is complete before you begin submitting. Most surfers will never return to a URL where they found a dead link or an "under construction" sign.
6 - Don't forget to integrate your URL into your business
It's amazing how many companies spend big bucks to build a Web site, then balk at the cost of printing new business cards to include the URL. Your Web site URL should be on every piece of company media from letterheads to coffee cups - anywhere that a phone number would be included.
7 - Don't mess with dark art
There are a lot of sneaky tricks discussed in the various Web promotion newsgroups and mailing lists that claim to improve your search engine rankings. Loading your page with invisible keywords, creating special "doorway" pages with magic dust on them, and secret programs (for $19.95) that "force-feed" your page to search engines. Don't fool with it. The search engines and directories wage an ongoing battle against those who would "beat the system," and they can and will bar you if they suspect you of "spamming" them. Do use META tags, keywords in titles and body text, and that sort of thing, but don't overdo it, and always follow the submission rules.
8 - Don't put anything in your Web site directory that you don't want the public to see
Most of us have a few "test" pages, or perhaps pages of personal material, that we keep on our Web server, but that isn't meant to be seen by the public. Straight search engines like Excite and Altavista, however, will automatically "spider" and index every page on your site, unless you tell them not to. Create a text file called "robots.txt," and place it in your Web site's root directory (usually the "htdocs" directory). This file has a list of pages or directories that you want to keep the spiders out of, and it looks something like this:
This tells all visiting spiders not to fool with any of the 3 named directories. Note that the directory names must end with a "/".
9 - Don't ignore the analytics
Some wise man said, "If you can't measure it, you can't manage it." Be sure to keep your server log files safe, and use the software tool of your choice to analyze them. Your ISP may offer one or more free tools for your use. Getstats is one popular free one. If you can shell out a few hundred bucks, high-powered traffic analysis packages like WebTrends can really help you boost your traffic by telling you how many hits are coming from each search engine, and what keywords people are searching on to reach your site.
10 - When you're finished, keep on going!
Site promotion is an ongoing process. Once you've made your submissions, check back a month later, and you'll find that some of them didn't take. Resubmit as necessary, but don't overdo it. Always be on the lookout for new sites that might be willing to give you a link, and for new (but legitimate and preferably free) promotion opportunities.
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