www.i93.com: Marketing your web site.

Web Site Promotion

Through Search Engines and Communication Mediums

Increase traffic to your web site.

Search Engines and Directories

Search engines work by spiders or robots making their way through the world wide web collecting information to place in databases. When you use a search engine it uses a database to provide matches to your query. Each search engine has their own individual methods and criteria to rank your site and position it within their databases. Ex. are Hotbot, Alta Vista, and Dogpile.

Directories are search engines that organize information about sites in a format simuliar to a telephone directory. Ex. Yahoo and About.com. These type of search engines often link only to high priority and revelvant sites.

For your web site promotion, we encourage you to focus on a multi-modal approach in tackling the task. However, you do not need to do anything to get listed in the search engines. What follows will assist you in increasing your chances of getting listed, ranked towards the top and maintaining repeat visitors.

Domain Name:www.yourcompany.com domain name extensions, which are the original extension for commerce sites, provides a site with added credibility and in effect higher rankings. Also in choosing a domain name consider what search keywords may be for your site. Including these in a domain name and even separated by hyphens will improve your results. For ex. www.ski-bike-sports.com. Try to avoid shared address or affiliated sites.
Web Site Content: Search engine spiders look closely at a web sites contents in making the decision of rankings. A web pages content should be limited to under 650 words and the content should match the keywords especially within the first one hundred characters in the web pages body. When your meta tags match your text content it is referred to as "food for the spiders" that rank your site. Search engines are also susceptible to keeping up with the rapid changes in technology. From this please keep in mind that content including flash, cold fusion, animation, database driven content and/or frame driven pages will often hurt your rankings by causing search engine blocking. Frame driven pages may ease the sites navigation, however spiders have a difficult time picking up all of the pages that create the web site. This type of formatting is often invisible to search engine spiders and at times will trap spiders in your site resulting in not getting listed in the search engine(s) or part of your web site listed in a search engine however, not the entire site.
Web Site Content: Providing useful content. Give your users a reason to return. A reason to bookmark your site. Provide informative content that may serve a purpose for your users. Update this content consistently to keep them checking back and maintaining their interest. This marks your site as a credible resource. Offer a monthly newsletter, news feed, Q&A, etc. In doing this, keep your goals and purpose in mind to center your site. Along with this make your site visually appealing by using high quality graphics and color schemes and fonts that work together. Use alt tags on your graphics to identify what is loading to maintain their attention. How long will you wait for a site to load? Make it fast loading in under 30 seconds. If it takes longer than that the potential user will move on. Make your site easy to navigate by providing uniform headers, footers and navigation bar on each page. Put yourself in the drivers seat. View your pages as a potential user may. Is this a site you would like to explore? Does your page load in different browsers and different versions of those browsers?
Links: Network, Network, Network to increase the quantity of relevant sites that link to your page. This tactic will increase your sites popularity. Search engines will judge sites that link to you on their prominence and relevance. For example. A software sales site that has a link from Microsoft. Along with this it is also important to link out to relevant site. Frequently check to make sure your links to other pages are working.
Free Registration: Search Engines. Most search engines offer this. Once you have submitted your site, check back frequently to see if your site is listed. If is isn't, resubmit the site. It can take months to get listed in many search engines. Submit-It! offers one form for submission to multiple each engines and directories.
Paid for positioning: Search Engines. Many search engines now offer you the option of purchasing services such as express listing services. This will often provide for higher relevance rankings. Prices and services vary and their are no guanantees.
Resource: Search Engine Watch is a site full of useful tools and tips to further assist you in developing and promoting your site. Along with this a list of search engines has been put together for your resource.
Communications Mediums: Put your web site out there! Make sure to place it on business cards, letterhead, brochures, newspaper and radio advertisements, press releases, tradeshows, newsgroups and more! There is no better way than to advertise, advertise! Stay in touch and respond immediately to e-mails and leads.

The WWW is a complex, intriguing and ever-changing marketing medium that will offer you a 24/7 store front with low overhead. However, it does take patience and creativity to get noticed. We wish you the best of luck on your endeavors and please feel free to e-mail us with any questions, comments or tips you have found useful that we could add to our site.