Website
promotion is essential to your success. Now that your site is designed and loaded to your web hosting service, you
should review every page and check every link. Make certain EVERYTHING is working properly.
STEP FOUR: Submit Your Site to Search Engines
Like
every other step taken so far, you must do some strategic
planning BEFORE submitting your site to search engines.
In March 2005, 47.3% of Internet searches were conducted on Google,
20.9% on Yahoo, 13.6% on MSN, and 4.5% on AOL. No other search
engine had more than 2%. Notice that the top three had
over 80% of the searches.
Google
Submission Information: Google wants ONLY your top level
(front) page submitted. You may add comments and keywords in the
comments section but that is used only for Google's information
and does not affect your actual indexing.
Yahoo
Submission Information. Earlier in 2005, Yahoo acquired
the Overture Search engine. The new name is Yahoo
Search. You must register with Yahoo in order to "suggest
a site". Yahoo states that 99% of its listings are found by its
crawler (robot). Yahoo only want the URL of your front page.
Yahoo does say that sites currently listed in its directory that
link to your site will speed the process of your site getting
listing in their directory.
That's
why we link to all sites created by NetVentures Unlimited from
the Online Little Rock site and the Online Little Rock search engine.
It helps our clients.
DMOZ
Submission: DMOZ is an open directory of Internet resources
and swings a fairly big stick in the search engine world. As you
might imagine, DMOZ is huge. Why is DMOZ huge? All search engine
robots can find new sites to crawl via DMOZ. In other words, DMOZ
provides a link to your site that robots will find...and follow
to your site.
You
are required to submit your site to the CORRECT subcategory of
the subcategory of the category. And you might need to throw in a couple more subcategories into
that last sentence.
The
DMOZ rules and guidelines are numerous. Here's an example from
Step Four: "Once you've selected the best category for your site,
go directly to that category on dmoz.org and then click "suggest
URL." Follow the instructions on the submission form carefully.
Descriptions of sites should describe the content of the site concisely
and accurately. They should not be promotional in nature. Submitting
a promotional description rather than an objective, well written
description may significantly delay your site from being listed
or prevent your site from being listed at all. Auto-submission
software is (and always has been) a violation of this procedure.
Sites submitted automatically are flagged and deleted after the
submission is accepted, without notification to you. Persistent
automatic submission may force us to ban you from the dmoz site,
so we can provide resources to real human beings."
Be prepared
to spend time on the DMOZ site researching the correct category
for your submission. Your submission to DMOZ will be reviewed by
a human. They state it may be two weeks to several months before
your site is reviewed. Do it anyway.
All
The Web uses Yahoo Search. There is no need to submit
to these folks. MSN, like Yahoo and Google, only
wants your home page submitted if you site is not already listed
on their search engine. They do not want any automated submissions.
AUTOMATED
SUBMISSIONS: Are automated submissions in your best interest?
Personally, I don't think so. You, at the very least, do not want
your information submitted more than once. Some submission services
say they will resubmit your site every three months. That could
get you in trouble with the big search engines.
Use
an automated program only if you can control the search engines
to which your site is submitted. Opt out of Google, Yahoo, MSN
and DMOZ. If you cannot opt out, don't use the service.
You
see, there are thousands of smaller search engines. If an automated
service will allow you to submit to them (and no free submission
service that we know of allows you to choose) that would be okay.
Just DO NOT use an automated service for the big guys.
STEP FIVE: WEBSITE PROMOTION
Basically,
publish your website URL to the world. Put it on stationery, t-shirts,
scribble pads, mouse pads, whatever. Create a signature for your
email accounts that contains your site URL.
Create
a Yahoo account with as descriptive an ID as you can. Create a
signature for your Yahoo email. Create a Yahoo profile that contains
links to your website. Join Yahoo Groups that are relevant to your
website and become known in those groups.
Now,
do the same at Google. Look for forums you
can join. Always create a signature that contains your site URL.
Yes, this is time consuming. Yes, it is worth it.
Classified
ads are not the most effective means of promoting your
website, but some people will see them. Ezine advertising is
another promotion. Writing articles for Ezines can get you free
advertising. Join blogs. Create your own blog.
Be sure
to check our Web Design
Tools Page for more information.
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