Assuming you already have a web site that has a stunning design and is extremely user friendly, then there are many ways to let the world know your web site exists, many of them cost nothing more than a bit of time and effort.

However, relying on one method alone is not enough. To drive visitors to your web site requires continued effort and the use of multiple tools. Remember that each visitor to your web site is unique and will hear about you and find you in many different ways.

You may have the best web site, product and service in the world but only you are going to know that if you do not do enough to promote your web site.

So don’t just simply sit back and wait for visitors to come. Below are a number of internet must do’s to ensure your web site is set up for success;

1. Register your web site properly with the Search Engines.
   Don’t wait for the search engines spiders to happen across your web site, this could take months, especially the big boys such as Google. Speed up the process and go to them and invite them to visit your web site as soon as possible. This is best done manually by visiting each search engine individually or you can employ the services of an internet web resource that will do it automatically for you, this is not ideal as some search engines don’t like automated programs using their system. If you don’t have time to do it yourself then get a professional to do it for you.
2. Optimise your web site to make it search engine friendly.
   Now you’ve invited the search engines to visit your web site, then it is important to make it easy for the spiders to surf your web site. The more help you give the spider and the shorter amount of time it spends on your web site the more ranking points you earn. Ranking points are the key to high listing, the more of these you can earn the higher up the listings your web site will come. Ways of optimizing your web site are;
   • Set up key phrases in the Meta tag of each page. This used to be known as key words but is no longer appropriate. A single word is no longer enough information to give to a search engine. For more detailed information then see my own web site www.specnet.co.uk/search_engine_marketing_what_is_it.asp. Again you can do this yourself or get a professional in.
   • Make use of the alt parameter in the <img> tag. Every picture can tell a story, and that is true for Search Engines. Although the spider doesn’t look at the image it can read the alt information. For example if your image is of your cat then put this information in the alt command alt=”My cat freckles” this not only gives the spiders more to work with it also helps the disabled community.
   • Use the html header tags <h1> to <h6>. Spiders often look at the text held in these tags to give relevance to your key phrases.
   • Informative text. Although pictures sell this is also true of text. Put the right copy together and it is more useful to the spiders than any image. As an added bonus it is also very useful to the web sites visitors. Good copy can answer many of the visitors question and alleviate any doubts they may have about a product or service.
   • NEVER use FRAMES. If you use a professional web designer then they should already know this. If you are writing your own code then stay away from frames. Although nice for the visitor search engine spiders can’t follow them. This means they will never get past your home page and will never visit any other page on your web site. So don’t use them.
   • Make use of a sitemap.htm file. This tells the spider in an instant which files are the important ones to visit and where they are located.
   • Make use of a robots.txt file. This tells the spider in an instant which files not to bother looking at. This can tell the spider not to bother visiting folders or files. Therefore saving time. It is always good practice to not waste the spiders time looking at image files that it can’t do anything with. So put them all in one folder and direct the spider away from that folder.
   • Make use of the robots Meta tag, again this tells the spider in an instant which files not to bother looking at.
   • Reciprocal links are a good way to increase ranking points. A reciprocal link is a link that goes out from your web site to another web site of similar context. That web site should then also have a link back to your website. It’s easy to have outbound links and the search engines know this and ignore them. It’s a lot harder to find an inbound link but the more you get the more the popularity of your web site will increase both in reality and in the eyes of search engines, who approve of popular websites and will list them highly.
   • Update your web site regularly. Spiders visit web sites on the search engine’s database periodically. If it is noted that your pages aren’t changing then you will find that your ranking points start to drop along with your listing. This is now the case because there are so many web sites out there that don’t change and are no longer used, so the search engines assume that if you can’t be bothered to keep your information up to date then why should they?
3. Do some Search Engine Marketing on your website.
   This as with everything can be done by you or a professional. Some well known methods are;
   • PPC – pay per click campaigns
   • Google AD words
   • Write blogs (weblogs)
   • Write newsletters
   • Free directory listings
   • Chargeable directory listings
   • Use chat rooms of relevance to your web site
   • Use bulletin boards of relevance to your web site.
   • Email marketing.
   • Email signature.

Publishing a web site is far from the end of the job. It is imperative that you keep promoting it to the world to ensure that it is found and used regularly. It’s hard work and it is time consuming but it needs to be done. If you can’t find the time then find a professional to do it for you, it will pay off in the long run. How many times have you heard “I had a web site but it was a waste of time”? Next time ask the question “why it was a waste of time and what did they do to promote it?” Don’t be surprised to hear “I didn’t do anything it was the web sites job to advertise me”. Yes, this is true but not in the way you would expect. A web site cannot do its job if you don’t let people know it’s there. You get the visitors to your web site and then the web site can then go to work and sell you and your services to your visitors.

Set your web site up to succeed. Do the above and see what difference it makes to your search engine ranking and the number of visitors you have. Don’t forget to let me know of your success and pass the methods on to others.

If you need help getting your website to work hard for you then please contact me at robert@specnet.co.uk I’m always happy to give a FREE consultation.

Posted 15th September 2008