Web Promotion Tutorial - Free - Okanagan Web Design.com

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Web Site Promotion Tutorial

First, we should cover what website promotion is not - - unlike the movie field of dreams the saying "build it and they will come"
does not apply to web promotion. A lot of website owners believe that as soon as their site is on the web, the search engines and directories
will automatically add their site and people will start visiting right away, this is simply not true.

Now with that out of the way we can get down to the nitty gritty of web promotion.

Welcome to Okanagan Web Promotions Tutorial my name is Ginger and I will guide you through this introductory lesson on website promotion.


	Optimizing Webpages Metatags Link Popularity Directories Search Engines Banner Exchange Newsgroups Message Boards Free-For-All Link Exchange Email Marketing Autoresponders Pay-Per-Click Newsletter Web Stats

OPTIMIZED PAGES

Optimizing Web pages - "Optimizing Webpages" - what that buzz word means is simply that we set up our web pages according to how search engines index(add)websites.

First things first, try to make the design of your site as search engine friendly as possible. You need to have a site that is full of content, relevant information and links.

Now its time to do some keyword optimization. Another buzz word but it simply means, choosing the correct words for your pages. Using the wrong (key) words is one of the most common reasons why people don't get results from their search engine optimization work.

One of the first things we suggest you do is to write out a list of key words that are relevant to your site / product. The Keywords you choose should be placed in your links and content as well as in your Metatags. Speaking of Metatags please read on.

META TAGS

Metatags - Whats a Meta Tag? - The <META> tag is an important HTML tag that can be a great help in ensuring that meaningful information about your site when it's indexed by the Search Engines (like Google, WebCrawler, etc).

It doesn't display anything, but many of the search sites use the contents of the META tag as the summary description of your site and its contents instead of just the first few words that are on your page. Meta Tags look like the following:

<META name="description" content="A description of your site and services would be here.">
<META name="keywords" content="keywords from above, seperated, by, commas, would, go here.">

Simply copy the meta tag output into your html somewhere between your <head > tags. Also try to incorporate some of your key words into your website title.

Use all of the above information to optimize your pages for the search engines.

More and more search engines rank your web pages based on the number of external links that point to your web site. Google uses link popularity as one of their most important factors in ranking sites and now HotBot, AltaVista, MSN, Inktomi, and others also use link popularity in their formulas. If you want to have a successful, well promoted web site, you must have high link popularity.

Use the tools below to check your sites popularity.

http://www.marketleap.com/publinkpop/ - A great online checker

http://www.checkyourlinkpopularity.com/ - A free download - awesome free tool.

DIRECTORIES

Directories - - Major
This is an important step in promoting your site, the reason being that Directories can send you lots of traffic and can affect your ranking in other search engines. It is really important that your site be listed in the major Directories. We would suggest getting listed in the directories even before submitting to the search engines.

Submitting to directories is easy, should be done by hand and is pretty easy to do.

ODP - Open Directory Project - DMOZ the running lizard. Open Directory Project is probably the best place to start. Submitting to DMOZ is free and easy to do. One of the most important steps is making sure that you are submitting your site under the category that most relates to your site. Take your time to go through the listings and find sites that are close to what your site offers and submit under that category.

Check Out DMOZ

Yahoo Once listed at ODP, you should get Yahoo to notice that your site exists and should be included in their directory. This might cost you a bit of money if you are running a commercial site, but it is well worth it.

Check out the Yahoo guidelines and hints

Submit your site

Looksmart
If you still have some money to spend then Looksmart may be in your promotional plans it is right behind DMOZ and Yahoo in terms of importance. A good listing in it can send a lot of traffic your way.

Try to submit for free at first, if your site is not indexed then consider a paid inclusion.

Submit to Looksmart

Directories - - Minor
You should also do a search of small directories where you can add your url for free. Having your site listed with these smaller directories will direct some traffic your way as well as increase your link popularity. Look for sites like our web directory Search Net and while your checking out this example be sure to add your URL.

SEARCH ENGINES

Search engine - search me
If you followed the directions above then your site is now adequately prepared to be submitted into search engines. There are lots of thoughts and ideas about why and how search engines index websites, lets just say thats beyond the scope of this online tutorial but if your interested check out Search Engine Algorithms in any search Engine.

You can submit your sites manually to each Search Engine or type in free search Engine Submissions on any Search Engine to find a site like http://tools.addme.com/servlet/s0new or for a fee have your site submitted monthly by a service like Submit Fire - a great service for the do it yourself promoter.

You can find a lot of info on search engine submission and tricks regarding SE submission, things like CSS, doorway pages and cloaking. Be sure to read up on things you should avoid doing.

BANNER ADS / EXCHANGE

Some banner exchanges and ad campaigns work, a lot don't. One of the most important and most overlooked issue with banner ads is having a banner that works and encourages users to click. Our advice is to do your homework, spend a lot of time designing your banner ad campaign and shop wisely.

NEWSGROUPS

Posting to newsgroups can have some benefits but you have to be very careful and in our opinion unless you are a newsgroup veteran you should stay away from this as its easy to upset users of a newsgroup, which can be bad for business, very bad.

MESSAGEBOARDS

Again, posting to message boards may bring you some traffic but it is time consuming and you have to be careful again not to upset users.

FREE FOR ALL LINK EXCHANGE

STAY AWAY FROM THESE..... The only thing they are good for is increasing the flow of spam to your E-mail.

EMAIL MARKETING

Email Marketing is an important step in promoting your site. If you are looking at reaching a large audience you will probably have to purchase a safe list - and again do your homework, the last thing you want to do as a business is be accused of email spamming.

Start using E-mail signatures. They are easy to set up and very effective without being intrusive.

AUTORESPONDERS

Setting up an autoresponder for you email and forms is easy and a must. It keeps contact with web visitors and allows you to follow up. There are many free and low priced autoresponder packages we suggest you do your homework on this as well. A well set up auto responder can make a great impression on a first time visitor to your site.

PAY PER CLICK

You can read all about PPC at Google Advertising as well as by typing in Pay Per Click Campaigns in any Search Engine. Having a paid sponsor site under a certain group of keywords will certainly increase traffic to your site the question is what is the ROI for each click - again do your homework and really monitor your results.

You Can also pay for keywords / sponsor positions in various search engines like google and yahoo.

NEWSLETTER

Writing newsletter articles often works well and can send you large amounts of targeted traffic in a short period of time, for free. You will have to work at it and lots of places are looking for content for their newsletters. It's also a great idea to have a weekly or monthly newsletter that you get people to subscribe to from your site.

A newsletter allows you to gather emails and stay in touch with your subscribers. It also gives you a resource to exchange ads with other sites that offer a comparable service or product.

WEB STATS

One of the most important and sometimes most overlooked areas of promotion are the web stats, knowing how and why your visitors got to your site makes promoting it even easier. When looking for a stats program you should look for one that is easy to set up and tracks what the visitor typed in and how they arrived at your site.

We offer a basic stats program that is web based and super easy to set up for the low price of 1.00 a month or 10.00 month for sponsored package at PDP WEBSTATS this program is hosted on our server and requires no real set up on your server. We also sell a program called Tollbooth which we sell for a one time cost of 9.99.

I hope that you have gotten a little bit out of our tutorial be sure to book mark this site and when you come back look for me as I appear on several pages here at Purpose Driven.


	Cheers Ginger

* Okanagan Web Design runs many portal sites featuring products and services we use these sites to promote and build link popularity to our clients sites we also do Search Engine Submission , Keyword building and meta tag creation all for the single purpose of driving purpose driven traffic to your site.

Let us help you to be found online.....

Web Promotion Packages > >

For more info or a custom quote be sure to go to our contact us page.

Thanks from the Staff at Okanagan Web Design

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Our mission is to provide quality, fast loading search engine friendly web design at a reasonable price.

Web site design is almost as important as promotion in that getting people to your site is great but getting them to stay on your site and
ultimately buy, sign-up or join your business is really what its all about. A website that takes long to load, is hard to navigate or hard to
read is left in an instant, leaving you with lots of one time visitors and not a lot to show for it. It can actually hurt your business in the long run.

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