Web Site 101 - Page 6


Contents of Web Site 101 Part VI - Web Presence Promotion



Should I actively promote my Web presence? What is a Web search engine? What should I do prior to submitting my site? How do I submit my site to these search engines? What are some of the more popular search engines? What other methods could I use to promote my site?

Should I actively promote my Web presence?		Yes. The promotion of your Web site will be critical to its success; If few people are aware that your site exists then your audience will be extremely limited. Word of mouth advertising is a valuable catalyst for popularity but will not be enough to garnish a return on your investment. Luckily, there are ways to go about promoting your Web site that are both effective and relatively simple. Contact Premiere Media Group for a more detailed discussion of this topic at 281-334-9081.

What is a Web search engine?		Search engines are a wonderful resource, each maintaining a separate index of tens of millions of Web pages. These search facilities allow visitors to query for keywords or phrases contained within the indexed sites and return a list of all pages that match the query. Submitting your site to all of the popular search engines is the first step you should take after establishing your presence on the Web.

What should I do prior to submitting my site?		Before you begin submitting your site to the various search engines available you should make sure to include two important META tags into the HEAD of each of your site's pages. A complete definition of all the META tags that the HTTP protocol understands is beyond the scope of this guide. Simply put, they direct the way in which various entities (servers, browsers, robots) treat the content of the HTML page. Between the <HEAD>...</HEAD> elements of each of your pages, insert the following text: <META name="description" content="XXX"> <META name="keywords" content="YYY"> Replace 'XXX' with a description of your site. This is the text that will be used by many search engines to describe your site to those who view the engine's index to it. Replace 'YYY' with as many keywords as are relevant to those who may be searching for something that your site could offer them. An example: <META name="description" content="Widget Industries manufactures the finest quality thingamahoofers available."> <META name="keywords" content="widget manufacture thingamahoofer anycity anystate affordable quality">

Okay okay! I get the META tag thing, now how do I submit my site to these search engines?		In order for your site to be indexed by a search engine in a timely manner, each one of them has to be told that your site exists and where to find it. Each search engine provides a form that you can access from their main page and documentation is provided in each case. The quickest way to get started is to use one of the more popular mass submitting facilities available on the Web. These facilities will allow you to enter information once and they will then use this information to submit your site to dozens (or hundreds) of search engines. There are too many of them to list here

What are some of the more popular search engines?		Yahoo Yahoo is the world's most popular search engines. It provides thousands of categorized topics, making it extremely easy to narrow your search down and increases the likelihood that you will find what you're looking for. Before submitting your site to Yahoo, make sure that you navigate down to the desired category before clicking on the 'Add URL' button at the top of all Yahoo pages. If your site is representing your business, and your business caters to those who are local to your establishment then the best place to start is Yahoo's Regional category. OneBigYahoo OneBigYahoo is the highly anticipated search engine of the future. The project is still hush hush but we are keeping an eye out for this amazing tool. AltaVista AltaVista is a very powerful search engine with a massive amount of bandwidth and a mountain of DEC based high performance servers. Hotbot HotBot is a very nice search engine. So nice in fact, that the author of this guide is willing to overlook its sickening green initial background color. Excite Excite is a powerful and unique search engine that will try to use a keywords intended meaning to greater expand search results. WebCrawler WebCrawler is AOL's popular search engine. Infoseek Infoseek is another powerful search engine.

What other methods could I use to promote my site?		Promote your site locally. In almost every region there exists local directories of business or personal Web sites that welcome new submissions. Find these directories and add your site to them as they will increase the amount of local traffic that your site receives. Reciprocal Links. Contact the Webmasters of high volume sites that you feel are visited by individuals who may be interested in what your site has to offer. Ask them to add a link to your page and do the same for them. Direct Email. No, not SPAM. People may do undesirable things to you if you SPAM them. Direct Email is the politically correct way in which to make direct contact with your target audience via Email. There are services that, for a fee, will send an Email message that you have created to your desired target audience (programmers, architects, interior designers etc.). Join A Link Exchange Link Exchanges are free service that allows you to create and submit a small banner graphic as an advertisement for your site. All that is required is that you include some HTML in your page(s) - that they provide - which will display a small banner within your page. Each time someone visits your site, you earn 1/2 a credit. For every full credit that you earn, your banner is displayed in another member's page and the visitor may opt to click on the banner to visit your site.

Part I - On Establishing a Web Presence Part II - On Developing a Web Presence Part III - Web Presence Layout Part IV - Web Presence Graphics Part V - Web Presence Content