Build a Website: Publicizing Your Site
As the newest medium for interactive communication, the World Wide Web offers the potential for tremendous exposure, even notoriety, if you know how to use it to promote yourself and your work. There are a variety of ways to bring traffic to your corner of cyberspace. How much and what kind depends on the content or service you offer, and how you've designed your website.
Competing for attention with millions of other sites makes the task challenging. Don't be discouraged though. With realistic expectations, you can increase the chances of people finding your site or blog. How do you do it? Read on for some strategic advice.
Register Your SiteSearch engines such as Google and Yahoo! receive tens of millions of hits a day, because people use these tools to locate specific information on the Web. Free and simple, this is probably the best way to get people to your site. What better way to increase your visibility than by being listed where everyone goes to find things?
Get things going by registering your site with the major search engines:
Be sure to read their FAQs to understand how the process works. The best results are obtained by tailoring the registration information to reflect the unique attributes of each engine. For more information, visit Search Engine Watch.
When registering with directories like Yahoo!, it's important to determine how you want your site to be categorized and by which keywords you want to be identified. For example, if you are a retailer selling health-related products like vitamins and herbal remedies, and also include recipes for nutritious dishes, you would probably register under the Health and Fitness category. You could also register under the Commercial/Business category and include keywords that relate to specific content at your site, such as melatonin, papayazyme, and low-fat recipes.
Although Yahoo! lets you register in multiple categories, many others will only accept your URL. To ensure that people can find your site, make sure the text on your home page accurately describes the site's purpose and content. Whenever possible, HTML document titles and file names should be self-explanatory. This increases the odds that your site will turn up in more searches.
Be aware that once you register your site, it can take weeks before the listing shows up. Check regularly to make sure the listing is there. If it hasn't appeared after a month, contact someone at the service to find out what happened. Don't be afraid to be aggressive. It works!
