Some basic tips for website promotion
- Think about promotion when you create your homepage!
If you want to offer your homepage to as many people on the net as possible, do never use the newest technical gags and possibilities! If you do, only a small élite (where you belong to, that's fine!) can have a look on your site! Estimations say, that about 10+ percent of the surfers on the net still dare to use text-only browsers! (Some blind people are within these 10+ percent, they do not need graphics, the voice-system reads text!) And some 30 percent still use browsers that do not work with frames. May be you also cannot imagine, that java applets and active gags are unknown (or disabled by the users) to nearly half of the browsers! Include all those (like me) who configure their most modern browsers not to load videos and soundfiles. It costs to much time, and we have to pay our phonebill! And still there are those with rather slow modems (it seems that there are still some 9600 modems working, unbelievable!) who like fast loading index pages!
So think about who should have access to your site and create it according their technical possibilities!
And think about a short adress, example: If you type http://www.ch-pro.com, or if you type http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/jacobean/34/. Quite a difference to memorize, remember and type, isn't it? There are some short URL services out there that work quite reliable - see our resource page for more.
- Finish your website!
(including metatags and...). That means, the site is loaded on the server, tested and found working. Some searchengines check all your pages and links with their robots, and if something does not work thats bad! (Especially Yahoo and similar directories will not list faulty sites!) And if you add your site before it is on the server and they check it out, and do not find it, you're gone! My Tip: Before you think about beginning with promotion, finish everything and test it online! Still some things work well on my computer but not on the server!
- Think how you want to promote! There are basically four possibilities:
- a) Free automatic submit services.
With them you don't have a lot to do yourself, but on the other side you cannot choose much about how your site is performed in linklists and search engines. Such services mostly want their banner on your indexpage. For private homepages they are a good possibility. But the suppliers of such services have to compromise, they have to choose a method that all linklists and searchengines accept the submission. And those lists and machines have very different criterions. (how many keywords, how long may a description be etc.) So you have for sure in many places a worse performance than it could be - but you are for free listed in many places!
There are some "semi automatic services", where you fill one form and submit then by clicking buttons to the machines you choose. Here you need a bit more time, but the result can be a bit better - and you're sure it is done! Our own service allows you in this manner to submit your website to 45+ of the major searchengines. (Free Websitesubmission a service of No1foryou.com).
- b) Do it yourself by hand!
That is by far the best way to control your performance yourself and make the maximum possible. But calculate a good 100 hours work - or more! You can begin with going to the the Search Center and submit your site to all the engines, and if you're through, you know what you've done in the last weeks..:-). On my search engines pages click the logos and you will arrive at their indexpage.
I would recommend this way of promotion to everybody, who opens a business or needs a lot of visitors seeing his page. It is a cheap way for a very good promotion, but if you calculate your work per hour, consider the next possibility!
- c) Do it yourself with a good program!
There are two programs I recommend. One is serverbased and one is PC based.
- Promoblitza - this serverbased program is revolutionary. It concentrates on the TOP spiderbased engines. It can be set on autopliot - so you don't have to do anything again. The program helps you with metatags, gateway pages, signpost pages, (it creates and submits automatically and changes keywords etc. after every submission for high performance) checks the ranking, sends you submission reports ad more. Details see here!
- Submitwolf - this program is used by many professional submission services. Very detailed submissions possible, database of appr. 150 search negines and some 100 directories, FFA's and more, (total more than 1200 successful submissions possible per session) database updates monthly, go here for more details and download for a free testride!
- d) Paid promotion.
I do not say a lot here, there exist a lot of good (and also bad) offers for paid promotion. Here you must trust the one you pay, and therefore I recommend you work with people you know do a good work, or are recommended to you by reliable persons. I would be very careful for offers between 50 and 100 Dollars, a lot of time you can have the same for less! Because these cheap offers are normally automatic submissions, some better, some ... Even in countries with small salaries (as India eg.) nobody will work 20 or more hours for 100 Dollars. And in less than 15-20 hours an excellent, deep, handmade promotion is not possible. (This includes also checking your site, links, giving some tips for better performance, building in keywords in the text of your indexpage, recommendation of where to place ads, than a "by hand" submission to some engines that do not allow it automatic, all page submission to engines as Infoseek, etc.) There is a simple rule: If you want to have a very good promotion, you will have to invest your valuable time or some other valuables! ( =some amount of money!!!) Check the services we reviewed in this site! (MGAweb submission service, Links Rx FFA submissions)
- Go on in your work!
Your decision how to promote is now made. Now do it, and then go on. It is recommendable not to change your filenames with every update, because some indexes and search engines spider all your pages - and they need some time to find out your changes, and so there are dead links instead of your sites. Do you like these 404 errors? Other people don't either. And there are indexes and engines, where you can submit different pages (infoseek eg.), do not forget to change there if something changes with your filenames, and add new files!
One more thing: Please do not submit a site in an index or a searchengine which runs in a foreign language, if your site does not have contents in this language. Or do you like Japanese or Suaheli webpages open up when you click a link?
|
