What do you Mean, PROMOTE MY SITE?

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.

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.

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://www.promote2succeed.com/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: 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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Gail Hornback and Mike Smith are experienced site designers and internet marketers offering help to anyone wanting to put their business on the internet.

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