Promoting your site

Eight tips for driving traffic to your pages

Tip #1: Get an easy-to-remember Web address
Tip #2: Put your site's address everywhere
Tip #3: Register your address with search engines
Tip #4: Tag your site's pages
Tip #5: Get your site linked
Tip #6: Buy advertising space
Tip #7: Join a banner exchange
Tip #8: Build a better site
Tip #9: Guidelines when you register a domain name

Tip #1: Get an easy-to-remember Web address

Registering a custom domain name for your site is a great first step in promoting it. It gives you an online identity that your customers, friends, and family can remember easily. It can also give people a hint at what they're going to find when they visit your site. When people see an address like "bestplumberintown.com" or "thejohnsonfamily.org," they have some idea what they're in for. A custom name also brings with it a sense of professionalism. A ".com," ".net," ".org," or ".info" name tells customers that you're serious about using the Web to communicate. For some suggestions on what Web address might be best for you,

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Tip #2: Put your site's address everywhere

OK, you've built your killer Web site. Maybe you've even registered a custom Web address. Now it's time to make your efforts pay off by letting the world know about your site. Include your site's address on your business cards and stationery. Put it after the mailing address on all your company's promotional literature. Put it in the signature of all of your e-mail messages. Paint it on the side of your car. Tattoo it on your forehead. There's no such thing as having your Web site address in too many places.

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Tip #3: Register your address with search engines

When people look for information on the Web, they usually start with a search engine. If you want to attract traffic, it's important to register your Web site with search engines. Usually, you can register with a search engine by entering your site's home page address in an online form. Here are links to "Add Your Site" forms for the most popular search engines:

You can also register with many search engines all at once at Search.com.

Remember that it usually takes a few weeks after you've registered your site for it to start showing up in search results.

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Tip #4: Tag your site's pages

How do search engines decide what words and phrases on your site are important? Most of them zero in on certain parts of your page, giving that information greater weight. By making sure the right information is in these areas, you can increase the chances that your site will rank high for the search terms that are most important to you.

One important area is a page's title. Make sure the titles for your pages are descriptive and include critical keywords. A Web page's title code looks like this:

<TITLE>Mike's Roadside Porcelain Emporium: Specializing in dust-catching curios from yesteryear!</TITLE>

Another important area is a page's META tags. These optional HTML tags let you include a description and a list of keywords for a particular Web page. Here's some sample META tag code:

<META name="keywords" content="figurines, curios, miniatures, lawn gnomes, lawn, gnome">
<META name="description" content="Mike's Roadside Porcelain Emporium specializes in dust-catching curios from yesteryear. Come see our extensive collection of lawn gnomes. Free shipping!">

For more information on META tags, check out these sites:
META Tag Tutorial (WebDeveloper.com)
What can <meta> do for you? (Webmonkey)

You can also get an idea of how search engines see your pages at this Search Engine Simulator.

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Tip #5: Get your site linked

Getting registered with search engines is one way to promote your site. But an even better way to generate quality traffic is to get linked by sites in the same business or that have a complementary focus. This will get you visitors that are most likely to be interested in the information on your site.

An informal way to get your site linked is through reciprocal linking. First, create a links page on your site where you link to other sites that you think are useful. (If you're a real estate agent, you might create a page with links to contractors, home inspectors, and mortgage brokers.) Then contact the sites that you've linked and encourage them to do the same. Reciprocal links can boost traffic for everyone involved.

A more systematic way to get links is by joining a Web ring. Web rings are collections of similar sites that are arranged in a hyperlinked circle. Each site in the ring links to two other sites -- the site behind it and the site in front of it.

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Tip #6: Buy advertising space

If you have money to spend, you can promote your site by buying advertising space on other Web sites. Advertising graphics on the Web are known as banners, and plenty of sites make their money from selling banner display space. The cost of ads depends on how lucrative the audience at a particular site is. (For instance, ads on a site that attracts lots of shoppers tend to be more expensive than ads on a site that attracts students researching term papers.) You'll want to figure out what sites attract the type of audience that you want to reach.

Striking deals with sites directly is one way to arrange for ad placement. You can also go through an advertising broker. Brokers work with many buyers and sellers and can help match you up with the right types of sites. You can find links to a variety of online brokers at Adbility. Large advertising brokers on the Web include Burst Media, 24/7 Media, and DoubleClick.

Creating ads that are successful -- i.e., make people want to click on them -- is a science unto itself. BannerTips includes lots of information on this subject.

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Tip #7: Join a banner exchange

A no-cost way of getting into the Web advertising business is to join online advertising pools called banner exchanges. When you join an exchange, you submit advertising banners to a common pool. Then you add HTML code to your site to pull other ads from the pool. The more ads that you display on your site, the more often your ads are displayed on other sites. Here are some banner exchange sites:

LinkExchange at Bcentral
BannerExpress
Hit Exchange

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Tip #8: Build a better site

Putting up ad banners and registering with search engines are good ways to bring people to your site, but once they're there you want them to stay awhile and bookmark your site. Make sure your site is well-organized, loads quickly, and displays nicely for everyone in your audience (no matter what operating system or Web browser they use). And be sure to make it easy for your visitors to send you feedback. The best way to find out how to improve your site is to let your audience tell you. For some great Web design tips, check out our Designing your site section.

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Tip #9: Guidelines When You Register Domain Names

A domain name (Web address) can have a maximum of 63 characters before the ".com," ".net," ".org," ".info," or ".biz" suffix. The name you choose may contain letters, numbers, and hyphens, but may not contain spaces or other punctuation. You may not begin or end the name with a hyphen.