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How and Why’s Of Promoting

There are three main problems when trying to promote your Web site. The first one is getting people to initially find your site in the first place. If they can’t find your site they can’t visit your site and you won’t get any visitors.The second problem with promoting your Web site is getting your visitors to read more than one page on your site. If they don’t like what they see on the homepage they won’t go any further. They’ll hit the back button on their browser and never look back.

The third problem is getting visitors to return to your site again and again. This is extremely important to a Web site. You need to get them hooked so they return. If you want to create a community or make money from your Web site then you need to find out what they are looking for and give it to them.

If you don’t want people to visit your Web site then you don’t need to worry about any of this.

But, if you want people to come to your site, read what you have to say, participate in forums and chats, send you email and come back again, then you need to promote your site. Promoting your site doesn’t end with search engines. That’s a good starting point but there’s so much more. Getting good traffic for your site is something you need to work on constantly and continuously.

Submitting To Search Engines

Search Engines

Before you even start submitting your pages to search engines and other places make sure your meta tags are good. You need to have a great title tag, descriptive keywords and a descriptions that tells people and search engines what they will find on your page. If you need help deciding which meta tags are appropriate for your page you can use a meta tag generator. If you just want to check the meta tags you already have you can do a meta tag analysis. Traffic Zap has many tools that can help you make sure your meta tags and keywords are right for your page.

Using auto-submitting software is alright if you want to get your name out there on the Net, but if you want to be listed in the top search engines you should do it yourself.

While you’re submitting your pages to search engines make sure you also manually submit your pages to The Open Directory Project and Yahoo!.

Keep a Log
Read each search engines rules before submitting to make sure you’re doing it right because the rules for each are different. Write down some of the important points that you will need to remember. For some of them you may be allowed to submit your pages monthly while other’s only allow you to submit your pages quarterly. If you submit a page more than once your page may be disqualified for submission altogether.

If you had to sign up before you could submit your pages then you will want to keep track of the user name and password you used to sign up with so you can get back in there again later. If you keep this information in a text document on your computer then you can copy and paste the URL’s of each search engine submission page that you use to submit your pages. You can also keep track of which pages on your site you have already submitted and to which search engines you submitted them.

Newsletters and Link Exchange

Link Exchange
There’s more to promoting your Web site then just letting the search engines know your out there. You should let other people know your site exists too. One of the best ways to get your name known is to exchange links with other sites that are similar to yours.You can keep a page of sites that may be of interest to your visitors. Look around the Web for sites that you think your readers would enjoy. Whenever you add a link to a Web site let the owner of the Web site know about the link and ask them if they would consider linking back to your site. When looking for sites to link to you want to avoid linking to other sites that you might consider competition. You don’t want your visitors to drive your readers away.

When asking Web site owners to link to you suggest that they use a button instead of a text link.

You will have to create the button yourself and you might want to include the code for them to use along with the graphic of the button so all they have to do is copy and paste the code to their page. The button should state the name of your site and a short description of what your site offers.Having other Web sites link to you can actually increase your search engine ranking. Some search engines are tracking the number of good Web sites that link to other Web sites. If you have a lot of popular, high ranking sites linking to you, it increases your rank value which in turn will increase your site’s traffic.

Newsletters
Sending out an occasional newsletter is a great way to let your readers know what’s going on at your site. It’s also a great way to bring them back to your site on a regular basis. Create a newsletter sign-up link on your homepage and on any other pages that you think might get people to sign-up for your newsletter. The more people you can get to sign up for your newsletter the more people you might be able to intice to come back and see what’s new on your site. Then send out your newsletter weekly, bi-weekly or monthly.

If you want to be mentioned in other people’s newsletters you could offer to do something similar to a link exchange. You can ask another similar Web site if they would consider mentioning your site in your newsletter and in exchange you will mention them in your newsletter. This way you are not only getting visitors from your newsletter but you will also be getting visits from the other site’s newsletter.

Other Things You Can Do

Discussion Boards
Whenever you post to a discussion board or forum make good use of your signature. It’s simple advertisement to include a link to your Web site in your signature. If someone is interested in what you have to say or in finding out who you are they will click on the link in your signature and visit your Web site.Before posting links to your site in your main messages or answering questions and linking to your site, find out the rules of the board. Some board and forums don’t allow advertising. You don’t want your site to be considered spam. Then no one will visit and you will be kicked off the board. You might want to consider lurking on the board for a little while to see what kinds of thing the regular posters post before you do any posting yourself, just to be on the safe side.

Write Articles
Keep your Web site fresh.

You can do this by adding something new every week, every other week or every month. The more often you update your site the more reason your readers will have for coming back to see what’s new. Whenever you add something new to your site write a newsletter to let your readers know you’ve added something and they should come have a look.

Pay For Advertising
Pay to have your banners and buttons or text links added to other people’s Web sites or newsletters. You may not want to take it this far but if you are really serious about making your Web site popular you may need to.

If you want to ensure that your site places at the top of the search engines you may also want to consider paying the search engines. Many of them offer programs where you pay to be placed higher to the top.

Lycos has a really good “paid inclusion program” and “pay per click” program. Both are good for increasing your site’s traffic.