Website Promotion

A web presence without the right promotion and exposure is not really a presence at all. It's like printing a glossy brochure but not distributing it! Part of our website design and promotion package includes extensive promotion, via the major search engines and by other methods. We also offer these services for existing website owners who are not getting results. For more details of our promotional services click here to view the options available.

Step 26 - A Dynamite Way To Generate Website Traffic
 

One of the main reasons for the enormous popularity of the internet is it's 'free' nature - particularly when it comes to information or software.

If you can provide something of value, that can be accessed directly from your website, for no cost, then stand by for some serious traffic!

What is of value? Well that all depends on your audience.

Take this web design and promotion guide for example...

If we chose to simply put up a few pages saying we're the best, we've done all these websites and so you should let us do yours, would that generate a hail of traffic?

Or would we be one of thousands of similar sites out there saying pretty much the same thing?

But if we invest the time and money to produce something of 'value' and make it available for free, in this case our humble guide, then doesn't that change the rules a little?

Directories, newsgroups, forums and the conventional media can now be approached and offered something of potential value to their members, viewers or readers. A blatant self-serving 'advert' would never be acceptable to even a fraction of the same audience. Why should it?

So, ask yourself the question. What can you invest the time and energy in preparing, to offer for free, that the kind of visitor you want to come to your site will gladly visit your site to obtain?

If you can think of such a feature and are prepared to commit the resources to the preparation AND ongoing support of it you are half way home to some pretty awesome traffic.

This is the most effective method to generate 'value' in a website.

OK, now it's time to take a good look at your audience...

Step 27 - Preparing The Pages For Submission

When we coded the html pages for the website we also ensured these were search engine friendly and effective. Without going into too much detail, as it is quite an involved topic, this includes:

Making The Titles Effective

There are 3 main reasons for crafting page titles carefully (this is what you read in the blue line at the very top of Netscape)

Keywords in the page title are treated with special priority by the major search engines when your pages are ranked during a keyword search.

Most of the major search engines will use this as the title of your page when results are displayed following a keyword search.

This is the title that will appear in a browser's bookmark page if they visit and then bookmark your site.
You'd be surprised how many pages out there have 'No Title' or 'Index' or 'Home Page' and miss the opportunity. Imagine getting a number 2 listing in a search on say Altavista and then having a useless title! The title is effectively the same as a newspaper headline and should convince the searcher to click on your site first, regardless of whether you are number 1 or number 10 on the search results.
Making An Effective Summary

The summary that is displayed on search returns is almost as important as the title in that this should also compel a searcher to visit your page. This can be controlled by the use of meta tags and comment tags to ensure that you draft this description, and it is not put together by what the search engines think it should be.

Keywords and Search Terms

To get as high a ranking as possible under searches in the major search engines for relevant keywords and search terms the pages need to have these crafted into the html very carefully. Not doing this will compromise your chances of being found and overdoing it can get your pages booted out. We stay very close to what is happening with the major search engines to ensure that the techniques used work with the latest changes to search engine algorithms.

Step 28 - Submitting to Yahoo!

Yahoo! was the first search service on the internet and remains today the number one in terms of searches and hits per day. A recent analysis of over 35 million unique daily visitors to over 100,000 websites showed 55.81% of search engine referrals came from Yahoo! (Alta Vista came second with 11.18% and Excite third with 9.66%). This was some years ago...

Yahoo still remains the Top Search Directory ( A directory listing is made by real life persons who evaluate your site and list it thereafter, whereas a seach engine is a spide or robot driven search utility). Studies have shown, that also most customers who are ready and willing to make an online sales by Credit Cards result from Yahoo!

A good listing in Yahoo! will often outperform all the remaining search engines and directories put together. This is why we start with your Yahoo! listing and devote a significant amount of time to it.

To decide whether or not your website is acceptable for a listing within Yahoo, si crucial..It is most important to have the site ready, appealing and to submit the information correctly. 


For companies, the title must be the company name and these are listed alphabetically. If you are in a large category, then Zebra Investments is not exactly going to get a lot of traffic - if you haven't yet chosen a name try and use one starting with 'A' or 'B' to get a high ranking on the directory pages of Yahoo! and most similar directories.

The second consideration is for your ranking on keyword searches. The only keywords that you will be found under are those in the name of the directory category, the title you have selected and your 25 word description. So, we need to take the main keywords that relate to your site and place these in the title and description AND still make a legitimate and compelling summary. Even then the human reviewer at Yahoo! may edit this or choose not to list your site at all and give no reason or feedback regarding this!

It can be frustrating and on average we spend 2 to 4 hours just submitting your site to Yahoo! but the results from a good Yahoo! entry dwarf the effort involved.

With your Yahoo! submission complete we now turn our focus to the major search engines.

Step 29 - Submitting To The Major Engines and Directories

Nearly 90% of a large group surveyed by the Georgia Institute of Technology indicated they found new web sites primarily via the major search engines. This makes an effective listing in these the highest priority behind your Yahoo! listing.

Step 30 - Submitting To Google and other Search Engines

Most important search engine we would consider Google. Google and Yahoo! work together in a sence, that searches witch lead to no results in Yahoo will be handed on to Google automatically. Google, however is, unlike Yahoo! a search engine. Without any doubt it is by far the most advanced search engine which delivers the most results.

Now how to get listed within Google? They have a submit button on their website which will accept your domain name willingly. But how comes, that so many website owners face difficulties to get listed in Google?

The answer is simple: You have to get listed in the Open Directory Project first. The Open Directory Project (dmoz.org) is a human edited Directory. It serves as a Free Tool for listings for

All  the Web - AltaVista - Google USENET - Google - HotBot - Lycos - Northern  Light - Yahoo

In other words: all these search engines get their listings directly from dmoz.org. Without even submitting to them, they will index your site once they update from the Open Directory Project (2-3 weeks).

Who are the other major search engines and directories?

Excite
WebCrawler
Snap
MSN
 

 
The techniques used to gain key rankings in each of these differs to some degree and a detailed description would take as many pages as we have already covered. They also change continually as the various engines and directories change their algorithms to give more effective results and to combat 'spamming' of their indexes.
We do share this information with clients however, in detail, once we reach this stage of designing and promoting their website. If you have any questions please feel free to send me an email.

Depending on the website, a lot of time may need to be invested to gain effective listings. Once this is completed we move to the minor engines...

 

Step 31 - Submitting To The Minor Engines and Directories

What we call the minor engines are the smaller search engines and directories. These are typically regional, serving a particular industry or interest, or general link pages.

Depending on the nature of your website they may not be so minor in that a good listing in a highly appropriate directory, with targetted traffic, will yield excellent results.

We start by submitting your site to the ones that we believe are relevant to your industry or interest, then to those that may be regionally appropriate. For companies located in Asia we have a particularly extensive database of regional search engines and directories. After this we complete a bulk submission using automated software to over 1,000 general directories and link pages.

Aside from traffic that may come from these listings, each link is measured by the major search engines who often place a weighting on how many sites link to you as a measure of your popularity and elevate your rankings during a search. Sometimes every little bit helps!

Once we have completed the start of the search engine and directory process (as each one will take from hours to months to actually list you) we move to examining other ways to promote the website...

Step 32 - Search Engine Positioning Software

The major search engines and directories will take from two days to 8 weeks to index and rank your site pages. Please note that we say 'pages' because each page is typically an independent entry with its own unique identity and keyword effectiveness. We'll touch on this more on the next page...

We use proprietary software designed to monitor all of your pages and the rankings they gain under selected keywords for the following search engines and directories:

AltaVista
Excite
HotBot
Snap
Yahoo!
WebCrawler
InfoSeek
Lycos
Magellan
PlanetSearch
What-U-Seek
MSN
AOL Netfind
Printed reports are emailed to you as attachments or the results can be posted as a web page for you to view and browse the contents. Once we see the progress and rankings achieved, corrective measures can be taken where engines are not indexing you or the rankings are not being achieved.
At this stage we can recommend another option - doorway pages...

Doorway Pages To Boost Search Engine Rankings:

If you really have your heart set on achieving a top ten listing in the major search engines under selected keywords, doorway pages may be the answer.

We don't concentrate on a number 1 position by the way, a top ten position is enough. Think about it... When YOU search Altavista under a keyword, do you blindly start from the number one return and work down to number ten? Or do you glance at the ten results returned and then pick the most compelling? That's why we invested the time to write a killer title and enticing site description!

So, just being in the first ten is all we want to be. Actually the next ten and the next ten are not so bad but if you are not in the first thirty - forget about getting any traffic from that particular source.

One option we offer clients is to generate a list of the keyword and search terms they want to be ranked highly under, and then let us work on getting them the rankings. The way we usually do this is by producing custom pages, each tailored to rank highly in a particular search engine or directory under the selected keyword or search term and then submitting these and monitoring progress.

These 'doorway pages' do cost extra and the cost depends upon the time involved but for many clients it has paid embarrassing multiples of the sum invested.

Again, we can cover this in detail if it is an option that would seem to be of benefit to our client at the time.

Once this base is covered, we simply need to maintain the site...

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