The Basics Of Website Promotion

Most people with new websites overlook the easiest way to promote their new website, and that is to create and use an email address containing the new domain name. How many times have you seen someone trying to promote their website URL in a newsgroup, business card, brochure, magazine, or newspaper that also includes an email address that has nothing to do with the website domain name they are trying to promote. One of the major pluses of having your own virtual domain is that you will receive at least one POP3 email account and very likely the ability to create numerous email forwarding addresses. Doesn't it make sense to use your new domain name whenever you can? The whole idea of having your own web domain is to build your own presence on the Internet. Whenever you list your Internet address using a domain name that is not your own you miss an opportunity to create a new impression for your domain name in the mind of the recipient of the message. Think of your domain name as a form of calling card and the most basic piece of promotion material that you have in your arsenal of promotion tools. Why would you want to pass out someone else's calling card when you really want to promote yourself and your web presence? Of course, there may be times when it is inconvenient or inappropriate to leave your domain name calling card, and for those times you may want to leave a generic email address. So, make sure that you have an email address for your own domain name, and use it, especially when you are promoting your web presence.

When most people think of website promotion they are thinking about getting their website listed with search engine. There are literally hundreds (if not thousands) of search engine on the Internet, but there are perhaps only a couple dozen search engines that are considered key search engines. One of the best primers on web promotion and search engines is found on the Secrets of Searching the Web & Promoting Your Website pages. The Netscape NetCenter through their associated !Register-It! URL submission service provides an excellent listing of the major search engines at what they appropriately call their Search Engine Guide. Another excellent search engine resource is the Search Engine Watch, which was formerly known as "As A Webmasters Guide To Search Engines". For keeping up to date on search engine news visit Search Engine World frequently.

However, it is very important that your website be ready to submit to search engines. Before you even think about submitting your website URL to a search engine be sure that your website has the following:

	A good page title for each and every webpage included on your website;
	A "keywords" meta tag for each webpage;
	A "description" meta tag for each webpage;

To learn more about how to build meta tags for your webpages and other extremely useful information about search engine check out the Secrets of Search Engines webpage. There are several techniques discussed on the "secrets" webpage, but you should be very careful about using the hidden keywords technique because when it is overdone search engines may actually reject the keywords on the assumption that you are spamming keywords.

There are several websites on the Internet that provide what is called a "meta tag" generator. Once such website is found at the Netscape Center. The Meta Tag Generator provides a real-time online tool that will create meta tags for your webpages based on your input. Another meta tag generator website is provided by US Websites. The US Websites meta tag generator is called the US Websites PagePromoter. The PagePromoter works very much like the Meta Tag Generator at the Netscape NetCenter. All you have to do once the tags are generated is copy them to your clipboard and then to your webpages. There are other meta tag generators available on the Internet, and URL submission software programs like SubmitWolf PRO will also create meta tags.

One of the best articles every written on the topic of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has been preserved at the Webmonkey website. The Search Engine Optimization FREE! article delivers details on everything you ever wanted to know about optimizing your website for search engines, including how to avoid being drawn in by SEO "consultants" promising more than can really be delivered. The article is something every web designer should read again and again. One important thing to note about the article is that it entered Google's index at #7 for "search engine optimization" a month after it was published, ahead of hundreds of professional SEO consultants websites, mostly because it took its own advice.

Once your website is designed and published to the Internet you will want to begin submitting your website URL to search engines. The seven (7) basic ways to get your website URL listed with search engines are as follows:

You can do nothing to promote your website URL and let the search engines find you with their own robots and spiders. There will always be a search engine that you do not know about or one that comes online after you do your own website URL submissions, but it is not wise to simply assume a search engine is going to find and list your website URL.

You can submit your website URL manually to search engines using either the links provided from the Free Services webpage or by using a search engine to identify the hundreds of search engines found on the Internet. The only expense in using this method is that of your time. If there is an advantage to this method, it would have to be that when you do it manually there is no doubt that it was done.

You can use a free URL Submission service. There are several of these free services on the Internet. Some of them provide the means to submit your website URL to a handful of search engines and others may enable you to automatically submit your website URL to several hundred search engines. These services can be most useful for a new website.

Many web hosting services, especially paid web hosting services, will submit the URL of a new client's website to as many as several hundred search engines. There may be little harm in this, but your website URL may be submitted to search engines before you have had a chance to even load your website to the web hosting service servers. Also, the web hosting service may perform the URL submission prior to the time when you have fine tuned your "keywords" and "description" meta tags. In any event, you should check to see where your website URL is listed and re-submit the website URL when you have completed the meta tag tweaking.

You can use the services of a paid website URL submission service. The cost of these services ranges from less than US$30.00 to well over US$100.00 each time they perform the service. Since website URL submission is something that should be done on a fairly regular basis, most experienced webmasters feel that paid website URL submission services are both over priced and not necessary.

You can download a shareware URL submission software such as the following:

dumpTRUCK from trafficSTUDIO is a batch URL submission tool. (Shareware)

The unregistered downloadable version of the dumpTRUCK program enables you to submit your website URL to 14 major search engines.

You can purchase your own website URL submission software that will enable you to not only submit your website URL to more than one thousand (1,000) search engines, directories, and link lists but also afford you the opportunity to add additional search engines to the submission routines that may not already be included. One of the best such programs is SubmitWolf Pro, which also provides free update scripts to ensure that your website URL submission software is always current. This is probably the best solution for anyone really serious about wanting to promote their website URL on a regular basis. The cost of the software is less than US$100.00, and you can add a number of specialized search engine packs.

Beyond submitting your website to search engines there are other ways to promote your website. Below is a selection of products that enable you to attract more traffic to your website and keep track of your clients and customers.

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