Website Design that WORKS

"On behalf of Promark Promotions, I would like to take this opportunity of expressing my gratitude to you and Julie for the excellent work that FX Digital did in designing our website.

It took longer that it should to decide that a website would be appropriate for our business but once the decision was made and now we have the finished result, we are very pleased with the responses we are receiving.

At Promark Promotions, we place great emphasis on service to our clients; therefore we are very aware and take note of the service that we receive from our suppliers, etc.

FX Digital has been excellent in the follow-up technical support and service it provides following the completion of the website design.

Thank you again, we would have no hesitation in recommending your company."

Barry Watkins
Principle
Promark Promotions (Australia)

Promotion...

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Successful Website Promotion

When Emerson said, "Build a better mouse trap, and the world will beat a path to your door", he wasn't counting on the fact that in the world of cyberspace, a million or more other people would be claiming that theirs was the best, nor did he realize that search engine indexing would be worth so much to the process. That is why, when you do create an Internet presence, it's so important to not just stop at the creation, and hope that the hit counter will keep climbing up there by itself. Successful Web site promotion takes strategy and planning.

There are several ways to promote your Web site - some of them obvious and others not-so. When you mention Web promotion, the first thing people are going to think of is the standard, cut-and-dry search engine or Web directory. Examples of these are Excite and Yahoo!. Unfortunately, the capabilities of search engines are limited, and without a bit more work than just submitting your site to be indexed, your chances of success are right next to zero. When thinking in terms of search engines, you've got to have some pre-development planning laid out as well, which we'll cover shortly. In addition to search engines, you've got to have some secondary methods of promoting your site, that will reach other audiences, that are not actively seeking a site via a search engine.

So, what are your options for site promotion? Let's list a few of the most common, and uncommon methods:

• Search Engines & Directories

• Banner Exchanges

• E-mail & Newsgroup Trailers

• Newsgroup Postings

• Link Trades

• Non-Virtual Promotion

Probably more than a few on this list are quite evident, but even though they are obvious solutions, that is not a guarantee that Web site developers always choose the correct approach to the respective method. So, let's take a quick crash-course in all of the above mentioned methods, and see how you can get the best results from each one.

Search Engines & Directories

Web search engines and directories, or as they are more commonly starting to be called "portals" have been around since nearly the beginning of Web time. Well, at least as long as the Web has been consumer oriented. A few of the big names include: AltaVista, Excite, InfoSeek, HotBot, Yahoo!, and Lycos. Each one has its particular strong points, while also having a certain set of weaknesses. These must be kept in mind when dealing with any search engine, and exploited to their fullest when submitting a site for indexing. A good step to take before indexing your site, is to go over to the search engine, and read over the Help section for Webmasters who wish to submit URLs. You can find very useful information regarding the specific technology used by the search engine, as well as what things they look for when indexing a site. Probably the most informative search engine in this area is AltaVista, who offers very in-depth information regarding the indexing process, as well as how you can increase your chances of submitting a site that will return search results closer to the top sites.

A key to remember when developing your site is remember to use your <META> tags and keywords. If you've got Microsoft Word installed on your computer, or a similar word process that includes a thesaurus, create a new document, and type all of the keywords which you think describes your site. Now, check through each word with the thesaurus, and see what other synonyms you can find that can be added to your keyword list. Another trick here is to go to the major search engines, and do a search that you think would relate to you site. Now, choose the top five results from each search query. Open their page sources up, and see what they're using for keywords. If they're not using keywords at all, then take a look at the words contained on the page itself, and look for words that are frequently repeated. These should also be words that are included within your keyword list and document body, whenever possible. A word of warning: Don't use hidden text to repeat your keywords many times within the body of your document. Many search engines consider this spam, and will not index your site if they find you doing it, in-effect, banning your site from the search engine.

A few more notes on the content of your site, and the indexing of your page - Make sure that your ALT image tags, and your document titles are descriptive. Some search engines, such as AltaVista, look at these when indexing a page, as well.

Here's a little trick that almost no one knows about, but is actually a very effective way to get extra visitors to your site through the search engines: If in your keywords, you are including terms which are commonly misspelled (such as "mispelled"), include that misspelled term also. The next time a Web surfer does a search, and enters a typo in the search field, you can be sure that your page will be one of only a handful that are listed on the return results.

Next along - Make sure you update your search engine listings when you update your site, by resubmitting the pages for indexing. This is especially important if your previous site did not perform well with search engine queries. Anything that may have been lacking in the previous version, may have been corrected in the new one.

Finally... don't put all of your hope into search engines to bring visitors to your site. Statistics show that 70% of people using search engines will only browse through the first three pages of results returned, before moving on. If your site doesn't fall into this group, then you're going to have a hard time making an impression on searchers, and no matter what steps we may take to try to gain a higher level listing on searches, we won't always succeed. With search engines indexing well over 15 million Web pages annually, you've got a lot of competition vying for the top spot.

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