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What do you Mean, PROMOTE MY SITE?
© 2003
by Gail Hornback and Michael Smith
So, you've spent some long, hard hours and invested your
hard-earned money into creating the perfect website for your
business. Now its time to start promoting.
But what exactly does that little word, "promote",
mean?
Well, to tell you the truth, it doesn't have ONE meaning. It
has a LOT of meanings, or at least you might say it has a
lot of different elements.
Many people believe that all they have to do is submit their
site to the search engines, and sit back and wait. Actually,
there are a lot of people who think that all you have to do
is build the site, put it on line, and do the sitting back.
But both are mistaken.
Site promotion consists of a variety of different elements,
which, as much as possible, you should have going all the
time. Yes, as a site promoter, you have to be good at
multi-tasking.
Search Engine Submissions are definitely important.
But just submitting your site URL to the major engines is
not all there is to it.
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You must take time to create and perfect your meta-tags.
(Site title, description, key words, included at the top of
each page of your source code.) And knowing how to
insert and utilize the best keywords is critical.
Ultimately, you should research the optimum key words BEFORE
you author your site, and then include those keywords woven
throughout the text. In actuality, it is sometimes
easier to write the text for your site, and then go back and
editwhat you've written to include the keywords that you
have chosen.
How do you KNOW the best keywords? Do some research.
Go to one of the popular search engines, and search using
the keywords you believe folks will use to find your site.
Visit the top 2 or 3 sites listed, and look at their source
code to see what keywords they use.
Or, you can invest in software that will do a keyword
analysis of your site, and report to you the top recently
searched keywords in various categories.
Once you have chosen the best keywords, you need to create
your Site Title, Description and Keyword list within your
Meta Tags. Oh, and don't think that you can just put
popular keywords into your tags, and they not be a part of
your site. The keywords in your Meta Tags, MUST also
be used throughout that page.
NOW you're ready to submit to the major search engines. You
can do this by visiting them one by one, or you can invest
in software that will help you in the submission process.
You should, if possible, submit every page of your site
individually,also. And do this at least once a month.
Most search engines frown on submitting more frequently than
that.
Link Trades are another area of promotion that you need to
spend time working on regularly. Many people are not
aware of the fact that link popularity can affect your
search engine rankings. The search engines take into
account how many related sites link back to yours. So,
it is wise to regularly do searches for sites that
complement yours, and contact them to request reciprocal
links.
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Set up a page within your site called "Related
Resources", or "Related Links", and provide
your visitors with VALUABLE links that they will be
interested in. Don't just put up a page linking to
anyone and everyone who wants to trade.
These are basically worthless, to you and to the people
whose links you are listing.
One of the FREE services we offer connects webmasters
interested in trading links. http://promote2succeed/promote2succeed/linkexchange.htm
Do you publish an ezine? We've preached on this so
much in the past, that you may be tired of it. But,
you won't keep up with the competition if you don't publish
an ezine regularly to build relationships with visitors to
your site. There's enough about that to write a whole
separate article. Or you could request our free
Mini-Course: mailto:ezineminicourse@demandmail.com
Once you are underway with your publishing, you will want to
work with other ezine publishers and trade ads and
promotions within your publications. This is a great
way to get the word out, without paying for advertising.
Of course there are still many other promotional ideas you
can invest time into. Giving away items to subscribers
that are branded with your information, creating resources
to give away via an AR, creating ebooks to give away, the
list is pretty much endless. And as long as you are
actively thinking, and using your imagination, you should be
able to keep adding to the list.
As you can see, there is more than one way to promote your
site. And if you're not using more than one, you'll be
getting behind. In fact, you should be doing some kind
of promotion for your site on a daily basis.
Establishing and maintaining a website is obviously a LOT OF
WORK. Don't let anyone tell you its a breeze, and they
made millions (or even thousands)overnight. But your website
CAN be a money-maker. If you're willing to do the
work.
Happy Promoting!
Mike and Gail
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Gail Hornback and Mike Smith are experienced site designers
and internet marketers offering help to anyone wanting
to put their business on the internet. Some of their sites
include: http://cmymtc.com http://tcsnet.com
http://promote2succeed.com
http://coyoteart.com
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