In this article we
will focus on marketing your website on the internet
through search engines and directories.
Marketing a successful
business or information site needs a targeted strategy. Many
people are under the misconception that if they build a website
they will immediately gain customers for their existing business.
Building an online presence should be used as part of an overall
marketing plan in conjunction with other means of advertising.
In large, the internet
is used for 2 purposes, Information and sales. If an
individual comes to your site for information they are researching,
or to purchase a product you are selling, they expect to find
it quickly and easily. This means, you as a designer or site
owner must have a clear and concise navigation system. The navigation
must be positioned in a familiar place on the page and not hidden
so the visitor has to hunt for it. The information must also
be relevant to the key words the visitor has typed into the
search engine. This is where seo or search
engine optimization comes in. In order for the search engine
to index your site correctly you must have a relivant title,
a key word meta tag in the head of the html document, and the
proper density of key words within the body copy of your page
that flows naturally.
Getting your site indexed
is a timely process. In the beginning it may take up
to 8 weeks for a search engine to initially crawl your site.
Submission to the major search engines such as Google,
Yahoo, MSN and directories such as dmoz, an open directory,
should take place only after you have properly optimized your
site. Because this initial crawl can take a long period
of time, you want the information contained in the page to be
relevant and listed correctly the first time. Directories such
as dmoz are not crawled. They are actually looked at and read
through by human beings that determine if the information contained
in the pages is relevant.
Adding information to
your site on a regular basis is also ctitical to your
visitors and the search engines. Fresh reliable information
will keep visitors and search engine crawlers (also called robots)
coming back. The lager the amount of relivant information contained
in the pages, the more likely it will be your site moves up
in the search engine listings.
In our next article we
will continue with this subject and explore other avenues of
marketing your website throgh a link exchange program.
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