Let me get this out of the way, a gizzard refers to the modified muscular pouch behind the stomach in the alimentary canal of birds. So, I figured it worked out well with the title since it's part of...what, guts? Well whatever, let's dive into the wonderful world of free web site promotion.
Introduction
Whatever your excuse for making a web site is, we all want one thing (well, besides money), and that is hits, major hits. I love to get off topic, so let me explain what a hit is, opposed to a unique session. A hit counts every single page that each of your viewers load. So, the number of hits does NOT equate to the number of visitors, since most visitors will visit more than one page of your site. A unique session, however, does refer to the actual number of visitors viewing your site, regardless of how many pages they visit.
It's really neat to download a 10 meg log file filled with bunches of IP addresses from your happy web site viewers. The Internet is jam packed with 10 gazillion web surfers, so the chances of your little floating web site being seen periodically is fairly good. But, establishing a repetitive 'audience', if you will, can be quite a daunting task. There are a few promotion techniques you may wish to explore to boost your hits up to the level you expect (well, at least closer to it).
Search engines
Search engines do not employ a bunch of lazy web design geeks to surf the net for 8 hours a day looking for web sites to index. Webmasters submit them. Yes, that's right, a free and simple way to promote your site is as easy as submitting your site to search engines.
There are a couple different ways of submitting your site to search engines. Sticking with the theme of this article, I shall address the free ways of submitting sites, as pay services often submit your site to such small search engines no one visits anyway. Go ahead and submit to every search engine you know of by following these simple instructions:
- Visit the search engine.
- Look for a link like "Add your site", or "Submit your site". Click it if available.
- If you can't find that link, as many will not include it, move on to the next site.
- Simply follow the instructions and fill out the form on the page.
Example: Head off to excite.com, a popular search engine, and scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the "Submit a site" link. On the next page, Excite will dangle some nice juicy chicken in front of your face, hoping you'll bite on the pay services, but you don't have to. Again, scroll down to the bottom of that page and click on the "Submit" link to submit your site to their "continually refreshed database" of web sites.
Now you get to actually submit your site. Use the simple form, fill out your web site url, e-mail address, language, geographical location and category and press the submit button. I'd recommend you don't provide your actual e-mail address to save yourself some spam (unsolicited e-mail, like advertisements and "special" offers). Please note, that a submission at all search engines does not necessarily mean you will be indexed in a timely fashion, or indexed at all. However, usually within a couple weeks, you will find your site within their database.
Good coding and research practices
There are a couple things you may want to keep in mind when coding your site and researching your site's effectiveness.
- Keep your title clear and attractive to everyone else. For example, "Welcome to Joe Blow's web site" does not exactly attract me. How about you? If your site is about automotives, keep your title specific to that subject.
- Be sure to keep to the subject of your site. If your site is about sports, don't include news or links about that really cool MP3 player you saw advertised on TV a couple days ago. Remember, your visitors are visiting your site for one reason: specific information.
- Don't get too keyword happy. Include as many keywords as you can about your site's subject, but do not include completely irrelevant keywords, as it can actually decrease your search engine positioning.
- Go ahead and visit search engines often. See which sites are listed first under the same keywords your site offers, and visit those sites. Look at that site's meta tags. What have they got that you don't? Keep in mind that some search engines will accept payment for higher result placement, so you may not be doing anything wrong except refusing to shell out dough.
- Whip up business cards with your web site address printed on them, and don't be afraid to hand them out to those you come in contact with.
- Create a signature within your e-mail program that will automatically write your name and web address at the bottom of every one of your e-mail messages. Versions of Microsoft Outlook and also Eudora can do this very easily. You may be surprised at how many folks will click on your link when they read your message.
Keeping to these coding techniques and practices can increase your web site's effectiveness. In addition, if you are running a business, you likely have a sense of the employee-customer relationship. With other sites (like this one), put yourself in the position of a businessman or woman wooing your customers. Get your name out there. Keep it out there. Be very benevolent in your correspondence with others on the Internet.
The link exchange plan
For those who are good with words and are skilled in convincing, a link exchange program may work very nicely for you. We are all familiar with the Link exchange program, but I am referring to something different, something initiated by you.
Visit other sites similar to yours in subject matter and add a link from your site to his/hers. Then, go ahead and e-mail the webmaster and say something like "Hey, I liked your site very much and added a link to it from my site. If you like mine, a reciprocal link would be really great." This will yield some extra hits for you, especially if that site is fairly popular.
Be sure to inquire with the right kind of site. If your site is about semiconductors, asking for your site to be added, or linking to, a site on "NYPD Blue" just doesn't make any logic sense, now does it? Don't waste your time and theirs. Utilize it effectively.
The essence of meta tags
Okay enough with the words...let's get down to some actual meta tag coding. Meta tags are what search engines use to display your site when a web surfer types in the search query. As listed above, proper keyword choices are very important and shouldn't be taken lightly. Here are a couple examples of common meta tags, placed within the <head> and </head> portions of your HTML document:
<META NAME="Title" CONTENT="Your title here">
<META NAME="Description" CONTENT="Web site description here">
<META NAME="Keywords" CONTENT="Web site keywords, separated by commas">
<META NAME="Author" CONTENT="Author's name here">
<META NAME="Language" CONTENT="Language here">
<META NAME="Rating" CONTENT="Rating here">
There are more meta tags, but these are the most common. In fact, none of these are required, but most web sites are at least equipped with title, description and keyword meta tags. Let's take this site as an example. Below is actual coding from the meta tags from this site, as of November, 2001:
<html>
<head>
<title>Stevesdomain.net : The web architect</title>
<META NAME="Title" CONTENT="Stevesdomain.net - Web design, electronics, computer programming and technological writing">
<META NAME="Description" CONTENT="Stevesdomain.net provides informative and useful articles on web design, electronics, computer programming, like C++, and other general technological writing.">
<META NAME="Keywords" CONTENT="web, design, c++, computer, programming, technological, html, php, asp, microsoft, linux, cold fusion, science, zend, redhat, slackware, corel, adobe, photoshop, illustrator, developer, development, web development, design, javascript, code, geek, warez, free, new, latest, news, tools, info, tutorials, how-to, e-commerce, builder, web builder">
<META NAME="Author" CONTENT="Steve">
<META NAME="Language" CONTENT="English">
<META NAME="Rating" CONTENT="General">
<!-- Stevesdomain.net provides informative and useful articles on web design, electronics, computer programming, like C++, and other general technological writing. -->
This is a portion of the top of my index file. Notice I've written both an HTML title and a meta tag title, then dove into more meta tags like description, keywords, author, language and rating. After that, just to give the search engine more words to index for my site, I've included a comment, which contains the same text as my description meta tag. This is perfectly okay to do and is encouraged to make sure your site receives the most hits from the search engine.
Taking a few of these promotion tips to heart can yield greater visibility to your sites. If these tips somehow get you rich and famous, remember me. :)
Introduction
Whatever your excuse for making a web site is, we all want one thing (well, besides money), and that is hits, major hits. I love to get off topic, so let me explain what a hit is, opposed to a unique session. A hit counts every single page that each of your viewers load. So, the number of hits does NOT equate to the number of visitors, since most visitors will visit more than one page of your site. A unique session, however, does refer to the actual number of visitors viewing your site, regardless of how many pages they visit.
It's really neat to download a 10 meg log file filled with bunches of IP addresses from your happy web site viewers. The Internet is jam packed with 10 gazillion web surfers, so the chances of your little floating web site being seen periodically is fairly good. But, establishing a repetitive 'audience', if you will, can be quite a daunting task. There are a few promotion techniques you may wish to explore to boost your hits up to the level you expect (well, at least closer to it).
Search engines
Search engines do not employ a bunch of lazy web design geeks to surf the net for 8 hours a day looking for web sites to index. Webmasters submit them. Yes, that's right, a free and simple way to promote your site is as easy as submitting your site to search engines.
There are a couple different ways of submitting your site to search engines. Sticking with the theme of this article, I shall address the free ways of submitting sites, as pay services often submit your site to such small search engines no one visits anyway. Go ahead and submit to every search engine you know of by following these simple instructions:
- Visit the search engine.
- Look for a link like "Add your site", or "Submit your site". Click it if available.
- If you can't find that link, as many will not include it, move on to the next site.
- Simply follow the instructions and fill out the form on the page.
Example: Head off to excite.com, a popular search engine, and scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the "Submit a site" link. On the next page, Excite will dangle some nice juicy chicken in front of your face, hoping you'll bite on the pay services, but you don't have to. Again, scroll down to the bottom of that page and click on the "Submit" link to submit your site to their "continually refreshed database" of web sites.
Now you get to actually submit your site. Use the simple form, fill out your web site url, e-mail address, language, geographical location and category and press the submit button. I'd recommend you don't provide your actual e-mail address to save yourself some spam (unsolicited e-mail, like advertisements and "special" offers). Please note, that a submission at all search engines does not necessarily mean you will be indexed in a timely fashion, or indexed at all. However, usually within a couple weeks, you will find your site within their database.
Good coding and research practices
There are a couple things you may want to keep in mind when coding your site and researching your site's effectiveness.
- Keep your title clear and attractive to everyone else. For example, "Welcome to Joe Blow's web site" does not exactly attract me. How about you? If your site is about automotives, keep your title specific to that subject.
- Be sure to keep to the subject of your site. If your site is about sports, don't include news or links about that really cool MP3 player you saw advertised on TV a couple days ago. Remember, your visitors are visiting your site for one reason: specific information.
- Don't get too keyword happy. Include as many keywords as you can about your site's subject, but do not include completely irrelevant keywords, as it can actually decrease your search engine positioning.
- Go ahead and visit search engines often. See which sites are listed first under the same keywords your site offers, and visit those sites. Look at that site's meta tags. What have they got that you don't? Keep in mind that some search engines will accept payment for higher result placement, so you may not be doing anything wrong except refusing to shell out dough.
- Whip up business cards with your web site address printed on them, and don't be afraid to hand them out to those you come in contact with.
- Create a signature within your e-mail program that will automatically write your name and web address at the bottom of every one of your e-mail messages. Versions of Microsoft Outlook and also Eudora can do this very easily. You may be surprised at how many folks will click on your link when they read your message.
Keeping to these coding techniques and practices can increase your web site's effectiveness. In addition, if you are running a business, you likely have a sense of the employee-customer relationship. With other sites (like this one), put yourself in the position of a businessman or woman wooing your customers. Get your name out there. Keep it out there. Be very benevolent in your correspondence with others on the Internet.
The link exchange plan
For those who are good with words and are skilled in convincing, a link exchange program may work very nicely for you. We are all familiar with the Link exchange program, but I am referring to something different, something initiated by you.
Visit other sites similar to yours in subject matter and add a link from your site to his/hers. Then, go ahead and e-mail the webmaster and say something like "Hey, I liked your site very much and added a link to it from my site. If you like mine, a reciprocal link would be really great." This will yield some extra hits for you, especially if that site is fairly popular.
Be sure to inquire with the right kind of site. If your site is about semiconductors, asking for your site to be added, or linking to, a site on "NYPD Blue" just doesn't make any logic sense, now does it? Don't waste your time and theirs. Utilize it effectively.
The essence of meta tags
Okay enough with the words...let's get down to some actual meta tag coding. Meta tags are what search engines use to display your site when a web surfer types in the search query. As listed above, proper keyword choices are very important and shouldn't be taken lightly. Here are a couple examples of common meta tags, placed within the <head> and </head> portions of your HTML document:
<META NAME="Title" CONTENT="Your title here">
<META NAME="Description" CONTENT="Web site description here">
<META NAME="Keywords" CONTENT="Web site keywords, separated by commas">
<META NAME="Author" CONTENT="Author's name here">
<META NAME="Language" CONTENT="Language here">
<META NAME="Rating" CONTENT="Rating here">
There are more meta tags, but these are the most common. In fact, none of these are required, but most web sites are at least equipped with title, description and keyword meta tags. Let's take this site as an example. Below is actual coding from the meta tags from this site, as of November, 2001:
<html>
<head>
<title>Stevesdomain.net : The web architect</title>
<META NAME="Title" CONTENT="Stevesdomain.net - Web design, electronics, computer programming and technological writing">
<META NAME="Description" CONTENT="Stevesdomain.net provides informative and useful articles on web design, electronics, computer programming, like C++, and other general technological writing.">
<META NAME="Keywords" CONTENT="web, design, c++, computer, programming, technological, html, php, asp, microsoft, linux, cold fusion, science, zend, redhat, slackware, corel, adobe, photoshop, illustrator, developer, development, web development, design, javascript, code, geek, warez, free, new, latest, news, tools, info, tutorials, how-to, e-commerce, builder, web builder">
<META NAME="Author" CONTENT="Steve">
<META NAME="Language" CONTENT="English">
<META NAME="Rating" CONTENT="General">
<!-- Stevesdomain.net provides informative and useful articles on web design, electronics, computer programming, like C++, and other general technological writing. -->
This is a portion of the top of my index file. Notice I've written both an HTML title and a meta tag title, then dove into more meta tags like description, keywords, author, language and rating. After that, just to give the search engine more words to index for my site, I've included a comment, which contains the same text as my description meta tag. This is perfectly okay to do and is encouraged to make sure your site receives the most hits from the search engine.
Taking a few of these promotion tips to heart can yield greater visibility to your sites. If these tips somehow get you rich and famous, remember me. :)