Several times in the past I have talked about Search
Engines; the importance of ranking to generate traffic to
your site, how to set up your Meta Tags, how to organize
your Web Pages, how to submit your site and how to optimize
visits by search engine spider.
Promoting your site and generating traffic is a topic of
significant interest to every Web Manager and designer.
Getting a top ten ranking on the major search engines can go
a long way to accomplishing this objective. Simply set up
your Meta Tags properly, organize your web pages and submit
your site to the search engines and voila! your done right?
It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that if
100 web managers submit their site to the search engines
under specific keywords, at best only 10% of them will
succeed in getting a top ten ranking (maybe 1 will get all
10). Search Engine ranking can quickly become a game in
which you are constantly tweaking and changing your site in
order to maintain or improve your position. In fact, I have
only touched on this topic so far. There are many other
factors, gimmicks and games that can be employed in the quest
for the "holy top ten ranking". These include topics such as
Gateway pages, Word Density analysis and much more. I will
discuss some of these more advanced topics in future
newsletters.
Although achieving a high search engine ranking is a valid
and potentially profitable objective, it can also become
quite unproductive. It is a lot like trying to ride the
crest of a wave. It constantly moves and there is always
some one else that wants to be on top. There are many other
promotion techniques that can be equally or more productive
than search engine ranking depending on your business.
Working to improve your search engine ranking gets a lot of
attention and press because it appears to cost nothing and
can be learned by anyone that is willing to invest the time.
This is deceptive however. Time is money or in this case,
web site hits. At some point the time invested does not
generate a profitable return.
So how else can you promote your site?
Techniques for promoting your site can be divided into two
major categories. These are traditional promotion techniques
and Internet promotion strategies. Examples of the former
include 30 second Super-Bowl TV ads or World Soccer Cup
championship finals for those of you outside North America.
Examples of the latter are to purchase banner ads on all the
major Internet sites. Both these techniques are guaranteed
to generate some interest in your site if for no other
reason than to find out were you are getting that kind of
money. For the rest of us, the Internet still provides many
opportunities to promote our sites and attract visitors at
minimum expense.
A web site is a destination. Once you are successful at
attracting visitors, what are they going to find when they
get to yours? The content you provide your visitors will
determine how long they stay and how often they return. In
an effort to attract visitors, many of us easily overlook
the content on our site. As most of us have probably heard,
"Content is King".
Next week I will look at your Web Page content in more detail
from the perspective of promotion. In the mean time remember
that even though some of the techniques and methods may have
changed, the need to promote your business has not. All
basic marketing philosophies, gimmicks and concepts apply.
Streaking the Oscars with your URL on your butt will
probably work.
"IMS Web Tips" is a weekly news letter for all web site managers regardless of experience who are looking for detailed information on creating, maintaining and promoting their web sites.
