Website Promotion Tips Making your Website Work

Following these Website promotion tips will greatly improve your potential for being found on major search engines and directories, such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN Search.

1. SUBMIT ON A SCHEDULE: Submit your site once every five weeks to search engines.  Individual directories have their own criteria for how often to submit, but if your site is in the directory already, don't resubmit to it.  Multiple submissions or submitting too often may be seen by the directories as "spamming," and the result can be a lower ranking or omission from the search results.  If the administration section of your Website hosting and management package is so-equipped, use the Website Promotion tool to submit your site.  Be sure to include all of its links to search engines that require manual submission.  Always submit using the same domain name. Google and other search engines have strict rules on the submission of several domain names that all point to the same site, or even to identical content on another site (also called "mirroring"). Begin submitting your site as soon as you have a good home page and at least three other pages with content (no "under construction" wording).

2. PRIORITIZE AND PREPARE: Make sure your home page is the first one ready for the search engines -- and that it is friendly for visitors as well as search engine "spiders."  Disable or unlink pages that are under construction. Verbiage on a page such as "Coming soon" is permissible if you include suitable text describing the future content. Disable any type of  splash Intro page.  Although the multimedia effects are entertaining on such Intro pages, Flash pages are difficult to optimize for search engines.  They can also take a long time to load for your visitors with dialup connections.  Avoid putting anything onto your site's pages (especially the home page) that will cause them to load slowly, such as Java or huge images. Provide text links as well as buttons. Update your site often; visitors and search engines like fresh content.

3. PAGE TITLE: Give each page a unique title and description, reflecting the content of the page. The title should be between 50 and 70 characters long including all characters and spaces, and it should contain Keywords that people may use to find your business, products or services. Start with your most important search words. Capitalize the first letter of each major word, and minimize the use of commas or other symbols.  For sites equipped with e-commerce, use the same guidelines for the Item Names, Group Names, Packages, and Categories, as their labels act as titles.  Page Titles are often some of the most heavily weighted text criteria for ranking a page for Keyword relevance.

4. KEYWORD SELECTION: Assign each page and each item in your e-commerce catalog a unique set of Keywords (also called "Meta Words" or "Meta Data"), reflecting the nature of each. The keywords list can be long (even up to 1024 characters for some search engines) but don't add irrelevant words for the sake of longevity.  Search Engines use weighted criteria to evaluate your site, and use of excessive words can result in lower weighting for each word.  List your most important keywords first, including plural versions and variations such as hyphenations.  Also list any common misspellings (for example, "sanwich" in addition to "sandwich").  Avoid using the same keyword redundantly in your list, separating similar keywords by interspersing dissimilar words so it does not appear to the Search Engines as Keyword spamming on your site.  If the Search Engine spiders assess that you are trying to "stack the deck" with excessive use of the same words, your ranking may suffer or be omitted in the search results.  As a rule, avoid using the same word more than 3 times in the keywords list.

5. PAGE AND ITEM DESCRIPTIONS: Descriptions should be worded similar to Titles for consistency and relevance to the Keywords and content on the page. Assign each page and each item, category, etc., in your catalog a unique description meta tag, reflecting relevance to the page, item etc.  The description should be less than 250 characters without excessive use of commas or other symbols.  Like the Title meta data, list your most important search terms first.  Avoid unnecessary words such as adjectives, prepositions, and other promotional language so the description is more focused on the "meat" of the page content.  For credibility with your visitors who find you on the Search Engines, be sure to use correct grammar and spelling, since the description meta tag is displayed in some search results.

6. PAGE CONTENT:  Search engines examine the textual content of your page and compare it to the Keywords, Title, and Description for relevance.  Therefore, each page's content should include enough readable text (a few paragraphs at a minimum) to be effective.   Most Search engines are unable to determine Keyword relevance images or Flash content, and most will not index frames, or Javascripted links to other pages. To minimize the impact of images on Search Engine indexing, the use of ALT tags for pictures is helpful to give pictures  relevance to Keyword content.   Search Engines put more emphasis on where your relevant Keywords are found on a Web page, so list your most important search terms early on the page (in a larger font if possible). Include two or three occurrences of your most important search phrases in the page content, ideally as links to other related pages on your site. The words in text links are also important to major search engines such as Google.com.  Give each image a unique ALT tag using words that relate to the image plus a search term or two. Be careful about one point when it comes to the amount of text on your pages, however.  There is a tradeoff in regard to the lenght of text on the page from a usability standpoint to your visitors.  Too much text makes a Web page look intimidating or even boring.  People are visually oriented, so you must balance the SEO considerations with usability factors. 

7. NATIONAL VS. LOCAL SEO:  If your business is focused on a certain locality or region, then your content, title and other meta tags should include the appropriate geographical terms such as the city, region, and state(s) that you serve. Search Engines are now capable of doing local searches, tying into local phone company records and other community Website databases.  In terms of states, be sure to use both the two-letter abbreviation as well as the state name in your page content if possible.  Your site might also qualify for regional categories in directories such as DMOZ. Getting into regional categories can be faster than non-regional categories -- but check the rules for a particular category to ensure you qualify.

8. RECIPROCAL AND INTERNAL LINKS: Send requests to Webmasters of other sites to have them link to yours, and link your site to others with relevant content.  Avoid linking to your competitions' sites, but link to other sites that complement your own. (A real estate agent, for example, may want to establish reciprocal links to local school system and utility Websites). Search engines don't like "dead end" sites that lack external links, but be sure that your links are valid.  If your Web site's hosting and management package is so-equipped, use a site analysis tool to verify the integrity of external links.  Broken links can severely impair your own Website's Search Engine ranking.  Directories are a good source of links to your site as well.  DMOZ directory is the most prominent, but be sure to exploit special resources such as your local Chamber of Commerce site, local business directory sites, community sites, etc.  Get other sites to use your top priority search term as the text link to your site, and ensure that they link to you using the same domain name that you use when submitting your site to the Search Engines.  Internally, ensure that pages and text for your Website link to other relevant content within your own site.

9. HUB PAGES: Enhance your catalog's visibility to search engines by adding "hub pages" to your site. On each hub page, feature several related products and offer text links to related categories in your catalog. Name your hub page using important, relevant search terms.  A page for collectible figurines should be named something like  "collectible_figurines.html."  Words in URL's are detected by some search engines including Google, and search engines interpret the underscore ( _ ) in the URL page name as a space when comparing it to Content and Keywords on a page. On your home page, provide text links to these pages as described in the Internal Links discussion above.   The wording for each text link should include the hub page's most important search term.

And Most Importantly:

10.  BE ON THE UP & UP: For your rankings to be on the up & up, your ethics must be on the up & up.  Don't try to cheat, scheme or scam the Search Engines. A trick that works today could get you into trouble tomorrow, as search engine companies continue to thwart trickery and subversive behavior.  Here is a partial list of crafty techniques that have stopped working and can even get your site banned from search results or penalized in ranking: Redirects, Hidden Text, Keyword Stacking, Miniture Font, Multiple URL Submissions.  The best policy is a consistent submission schedule and strategy that allows your Website to elevate its position in the Natural Rankings on Search Engines and Directories.  In the end, Natural Ranking often yields better results than Subcribed Links for searches.  As the World Wide Web continues to evolve, Internet security software and Adware prevention software are beginning to filter out Subscribed Links as unsolicited advertisements, rendering your advertising dollar useless for such gimmicks.  Be on the up & up, and your Web site will follow!

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