Web Site Promotion Tips
Rental property owners click here to see our promotion page just for you. There are several key steps you can take to promote your Web site: -
Obtain a good domain name for your site
- Use meta tags to draw search engines
- Submit your site to search engines
- Take advantage of link exchanges
- Regularly analyze traffic to your site
- Advertise your web site "offline"
A domain name is the Web address that people will use to visit your site, such as www.mooncreek.com. The name should be easy to remember and should reflect the content or business name of the site. A domain name like www.yourserviceprovider.net / ~ yourbusinessname / index.html is ugly and is difficult to type. Unfortunately, the Web has been around long enough that many of the really good names are already taken, but if you're creative you may be able to come up with something that is unique, memorable, and (most importantly) available. If you need help registering a domain name, Moon Creek Studios can assist, or handle it for you. The very first thing
you should do before you start promoting your web site is to make sure that your web site is properly prepared for the search engines. It is a waste of time to tell all the search engines about your wonderful new site if, when they arrive to index it and add it to their database, it isn't search-engine friendly. If nobody can find you because your ranking is poor, being in the search engines won't help you! When designing your site, use meta tags to improve your chances of
being found in Web searches. Meta tags are lines of HTML that describe your site to search engines. Write a brief description of your site, and provide a list of keywords and key phrases that customers might use to search for your site. For example, if your business sells used sporting goods some good keywords would be, "sports, equipment, used, skis, skiing, basketball, football, hockey," and so on. When you write a description of your site, try to include as many of those keywords
as possible in the description. Another important step is to promote your site through search engines and directories such as AltaVista, Excite, Lycos, and Yahoo. Each search engine has a specific procedure you can follow to submit your site. Follow their instructions carefully for best results, and don't submit your site to a given search engine more than once per month. Search engines can improve your site's visibility, but submitting your site is time consuming. Some firms
can help get your site listed in popular search engines, but the services that actually guarantee success can cost upwards of $1,000 per month. Moon Creek Studios offers initial submission of your site to the major search engines and monthly follow up. We also submit your site to hundreds of smaller directories and engines which will help deliver traffic to your site, and increase your site’s ranking on the major search engines. Many people expect to instantly get a lot more
hits after registering their site. This will not happen, and anyone who promises such results is making false claims. Registering your site will get you more hits, but it will take weeks or months for the increased traffic to become noticeable. After you register your site with a particular search engine or index, it can take anything from 5 seconds to 5 months for them to actually list you, if in fact they actually do. Registering at a particular index doesn't guarantee that
you'll actually be listed; many indexes are very selective and only list a small percentage of the submissions they get. And the major search engines? Well, they're all taking months to add new listings. Furthermore, just because you are listed by a particular site doesn't mean that your listing will appear on any particular search. Even if you're selling something obscure, like, say, Polish Sausage, a search on AltaVista finds over 3500 web pages, only 10 of which get on the
coveted "first page." So registration by itself isn't enough; you have to have web-pages that "rank highly" with the search engines. A relatively simple way to increase site traffic is to use a link exchange service. A banner advertisement for your site is placed on other sites that may be of interest to your customers. Visitors can click on those banners to visit your site. Sometimes you pay a small fee for each "clickthrough," and sometimes you simply
agree to host someone else's banner on your site through a reciprocal agreement. Check Web sites related to your business for information about a link exchange service that may be relevant to your customers. Regular evaluation and monitoring of traffic to your site is important in order to maximize your traffic-building strategies. Moon Creek Studios offers access to precise usage statistics for your site, including graphs and trends. Finally, don't forget to
point "off line" customers to your web site as well. Include the web address on business cards, product packaging, brochures, and any other advertisements you may use. The following search engine optimization techniques employed by Moon Creek Studios are the most important ones to use for a long-term search engine strategy:
Unique titles
Place a unique title on every page of your web site using your top keywords. Keep it short and include those keywords you most value.
Meta tags
Use the meta-tag description and meta-tag keywords attribute on every page of your site that you want the search engines to index. If you don't want a page indexed, then try the robots exclusion tag. The robots.txt exclusion protocol has more support with spiders.
Content
Write great content using your most
important keywords prominently throughout your web site. Visitors who read great content will link to your web site and recommend it to others.
Link development
Develop a solid link development strategy obtaining listings in the top directories and industry-related sites. Search engines measure both link popularity and click-through popularity as part of their search engine algorithms.
Keyword planning
Always do keyword planning on both the search engines
and directories to determine the best set of keywords and keyword phrases your target audience is using. Look for "related searches" in search results for ideas.
Site statistics software
Use site statistics software to measure your results. If your statistics show that your site's visitors are typing in a set of keywords to find your site, readjust the HTML tags for them.
Alternative text
Put alternative text in your graphic images that
clearly describe the graphic image and using your keywords whenever possible. Do not put text in a graphic image that has nothing to do with your web page.
Spam
Do not spam the search engines because they can and will permanently delete your web pages from their indexes if you go too far. Examples of spam include keyword stacking and stuffing, refreshing your web pages too quickly, using invisible text or text that is too small. | 
