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So, tens of millions of Web viewers, millions of Web sites, and little ol' you just waiting for someone to happen along. Well, wait you shall, unless you take action to draw some of those viewers in. Just being online is not enough, you've got to tell
folks where you are.
"Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door." "If you want someone to listen, whisper." Ever heard these before? Ever believe them? If you think that you can just sit and wait, and that the world will seek
you out, you're going to be sitting a long, long time. The fact of the matter is that you need to make yourself available.
Luckily, there are several ways that you can promote your site and business online, and they are often the most effective and inexpensive promotions possible. To put things bluntly, you should consider online promotion as an integral part of your Web
site implementation—there's just no way to avoid it.
When you perform a search of the Web with a search service (such as Yahoo, Lycos, Excite), the engine responds by returning a list of sites (see Figure 21.1). These Web sites didn't just pop out of nowhere[—their administrators had to register
them. This registration process is the most popular and simplest way to market your site online.
Figure 21.1. The results of a search for "commercial web site development" using Lycos.
Search engines are very widely used on the Web. When a viewer is looking for a specific piece of information, his/her first step will most likely be to use a search engine. If you hope to attract a large number of viewers to your site, you will need to
register with these services.
While there have been some attempts to start search and indexing services that charge either the person requesting the search or the companies being indexed, the largest, most powerful and most widely recognized and used services are paid for through
display ads and are free to both the listed and the viewer.
There are many popular search engines on the Web, using many different methods for their searches. Some (like EINet Galaxy) work mainly by categorizing the site into different topics (not actually a search engine), and returning a viewer's query based
on the category and the description the company gave when it originally registered (using an indexer). Yahoo (see Figure 21.2) adds a search engine, which enables viewers to find what they are looking for quickly (which may explain their popularity).
Figure 21.2. Registering a site with Yahoo.
Others work by actually roaming through the Web using a "robot" or "spider" (like WebCrawler, Lycos, and Alta Vista), searching for new or updated pages. When these search engines find a page, they search even more closely to see if
that document is connected to any others. They will then roam those linked documents as well, indexing all they find in their search database. Now, in theory, these search engines will find your Web site whether or not you register with them. But in
practice, it could take weeks or months for them to find you (if at all), so you're really better off submitting your site (usually by just entering your URL) and inviting their robot to take a look (see Figure 21.3).
Figure 21.3. Inviting WebCrawler to take a look.
You can assist these types of engines by providing meta-information (which we talk about later in the section called "Keywords and How to Use Them"), by making your page title descriptive, and by including as many keywords as possible.
Note
Most of the major search engines are set up to enable quick and easy submission of URLs.
Here is a list of the submission pages for the major search engines:
Alta Vista: http://www.altavista.digital.com
EINet Galaxy: http://galaxy.einet.net/cgi-bin/annotate?Other
Excite: http://www.excite.com/Search/add_url.html
Infoseek:http://www.infoseek.com:80/doc/FAQ/_How_do_I_get_my_Web_page_inde.html
Inktomi: http://inktomi.berkeley.edu/addurl.html
Lycos: http://www.lycos.com/lycos-register.html
NCSA's What's New page:http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/SDG/Software/Mosaic/Docs/whats-new.html
Open Text: http://www.opentext.com:8080/omw/f-omw-submit.html
Open Market: http://www.directory.net
Point: http://www.pointcom.com
WebCrawler: http://www.webcrawler.com/WebCrawler/SubmitURLS.html
World Wide Web Yellow Pages: http://www.mcp.com/newriders/wwwyp/submit.html
WWW Worm: http://wwwmcb.cs.colorado.edu/home/mcbryan/WWWWadd.html
Yahoo: http://www.yahoo.com/bin/top1?424,11
Simply go to these sites, follow the instructions, and submit your pages.
When registering with most of the search engines, you will need to decide the category your site should be listed under. (See Figure 21.4.) The category you choose should depend not only on the main focus of your business, but on your target audience
as well. For instance, say your site is for an animation company that provides Web services for business. You could register your site under Web animation, but this category would be viewed mostly by people interested in creating Web animations. A better
choice would be to list you site under a category like business or Web services, which is more likely to be viewed by your target audience. Makes sense, right?
Figure 21.4. Choosing your category for EINet Galaxy.
Different search engines categorize differently, so sketch out some ideas of good categories, and when registering, look for categories that fit your objective most closely.
Many search engine submission forms ask for a company description. The search engines use these descriptions in different ways, but almost all will access it for keyword searches. When writing yours, you should be aware of this and should attempt to
include as many likely keywords as possible. (For example, if keywords such as clothing, designer, and discount are likely to be used for your clothing business, be sure to include these words in your description).
This company description is also often used as a synopsis of your company and site (following your URL in the listing). For this reason, it is also important to make your company description appealing. Convince people to visit your site, and not the
one listed beneath you. (See Figure 21.5.)
Figure 21.5. How the company description appears in Yahoo.
You can aid a "webcrawler" type search engine by giving it a clue to your Web page contents. This is done by providing meta-information, which specifies keywords or a description. (If this is not done, most often the description or
keywords will be taken from the first 200 or so characters of your page.)
When choosing keywords, ask yourself, "What search string would viewers use if they were looking for my product or service?"
You can provide this meta-information by making use of the <META> tag in the <HEAD> element of your page. It should be provided like this:
<META Name="description" Content="Your description goes here"> <META Name="keywords" Content="Your keywords go here">
Since the keywords and description are generally indexed in the same way as the rest of the text on your page, you should keep words which you want indexed together as a phrase close to each other. For example
<HEAD> <TITLE>The Widget Home Page</TITLE> <META Name="description" Content="Home page for the Widget Corporation, providers of widgets and widget-related products, discount widgets"> <META Name="keywords" Content="Widget Corporation, widgets, retail widget products, search widget site, find widget information, find widget retailers, browse widget products, Joe Doe Average president of widget corporation, get widget information, widget suppliers, widget distributors, widget headquarters Alabama, locate widget information"> </HEAD>
Note
Taking advantage of another site's high hit count can be very effective, if you have the budget for it. Many companies (Yahoo, Lycos, Playboy, and so on) offer paid links, banner advertising (see Figure 21.6), or special directory listings. Beware,
though—costs can reach into the millions for these ads, and the effectiveness is often difficult to measure.
Figure 21.6. Banner advertising on the Playboy Web site.
How do you determine how much you should pay for advertising on a Web site? This is quite a difficult question, since the market hasn't been around long enough to develop a good set of standards. You'll probably just have to wing it and use your own
judgment.
The first question you'll want to ask yourself when considering buying a Web display ad is this: "What, exactly, am I paying for?" As with any advertising, you are paying to get your message out. Unfortunately, the measurements for Web
advertising aren't as cut-and-dried as they are for, say, magazine ads.
The first issue is that of the reliability of the site and the server it resides on. Your ad won't do much good if the server is offline or under-powered. Think of this as the delivery of your message; slow or unreliable servers won't do a very good
job of getting your message out (though they may be able to provide good-looking data, which we'll address shortly).
The next issue is the number of people who will be viewing your ad, the quality of those people, and the way in which this data is collected. If you are selling business equipment, for example, it won't matter a hill of beans how many hits there are on
a page containing your ad if all of those hits are from 14-year-olds. Unfortunately, there aren't many good ways to assess this, and it's not yet in the seller's best interest to provide accurate information to its advertisers.
Most companies that provide paid links are using Web traffic analyses—based on the number of hits received by either the server itself, or by particular pages—in order to determine the amount of people viewing each ad. There are many problems
in using these hit counts:
Some companies are now improving their tracking of viewers by using means other than hit counts. One of the ways is to require a registration and log-in sequence to access the site. This is a good option in that it identifies the viewer as an actual
human being and can also provide demographic information (based on what is requested during the registration process), which some companies make available to their advertisers. While this does require another step for the viewer (which they may find
annoying), it can be indispensable to you in assessing and justifying costs.
Another fairly new trend is to charge the advertiser on a "per forward" basis. This method only charges for viewers who actually follow the paid link in order to arrive at your page. If you can find a company that charges in this way (and you
can afford it), this may be the best way to test the waters.
A method many people use to gain publicity for their site is to create link partnerships. It works like this: "Hey Joe, how about I put a link to your site on my page, and you put a link to mine on yours?" You should only create link
partnerships with companies that your viewers would be interested in (such as a service related to your product), and should always be aware of the possibility that they may actually go to that site, never to return to yours again. In other words, be
careful.
Link partnerships have become so popular, companies have actually jumped in to facilitate the process, one of them being the Internet Link Exchange at http://www.linkexchange.com/. (See Figure 21.7.)
Figure 21.7. The Internet Link Exchange.
The problem with trading links broadly is that you are often giving more than you are getting. Someone who came to your site specifically is more valuable than someone who is just surfing around and skipped over from another site. In most cases, you
are looking for customers, not surfers.
If you do decide to trade links, you should proceed with the same caution as you would in networking personally. You wouldn't trade leads with someone who doesn't share a client base in the real world, and you shouldn't do it in cyberspace. If you're
selling Bibles, you probably wouldn't get much business from a link on a XXX adult site (but they might get quite a few clients from you!) Remember, your resources are limited. You don't want a bunch of looky-loos slowing things down for real prospects.
It may be beneficial to also post an announcement of your site on appropriate Usenet groups. This is a very sticky issue and may cause you to get some harsh responses if not handled responsibly. You should make your announcement as short as
possible, and only post it to groups you feel would truly benefit and appreciate this information.
You can browse through a listing of Usenet newsgroups at http://miso.wwa.com/~boba/news.html. (See Figure 21.8.)
Figure 21.8. Searching through a listing of Usenet newsgroups.
Some people try to trick Usenet users by holding mock conversations. They'll start a discussion string about a "cool new site," and create different users to carry on the conversation. Usenet folks are notorious for exposing this type of
scheme and rewarding the schemer with all kinds of not-so-fun prizes, like flames, mail bombs, and even viruses.
E-mailings can be a good way to jump-start the traffic to your site. But how do you get an e-mail mailing list if you haven't had any visitors yet?
Enter PostMaster Direct (http://www.netcreations.com/postdirect/), which keeps a mailing list database of more than 400 targeted topical lists containing a total of more than 1.7 million names, all
voluntary. They offer a quick, affordable (e-mail addresses can be rented for 10 cents a name, and even less if over a certain volume), and PC (Politically Correct) way to distribute commercial messages to prospective customers via e-mail. Unlike other
services or techniques that "spam" users with junk e-mail that they don't want or need, PostMaster Direct sends messages to only those users who have specifically requested information about certain selected topics. Now, Internet marketers can
harness the power of e-mail without fear of a recipient backlash (see Figure 21.9).
Figure 21.9. The PostMaster's subject area list (this list goes on and on).
Let's go through this process step-by-step with Submit It, so you can get it done quickly.
Submit It! (Free)
Includes 16 search engines and directories, for companies and individuals submitting URL(s).
Submit It! Gold ($59.95)
Includes up to 200 search engines and directories, provides access to the service for a year, organizes search engines and directories by category, saves your submission information, prints reports by URL with time/date stamp for each directory
submitted, recalls information by URL to make changes and updates, submits to new search engines added to the service, and provides support via the Web for companies and individuals submitting URL(s).
Submit It! Pro (10 companies for $199.95; 20 companies for $299.95)
This service is for Internet service providers submitting URL(s) on behalf of their clients. It provides access to the service for one year, includes the same features as Submit It! Gold, and enables you to manage multiple customer URLs from one
password protected area.
PostMaster http://www.netcreations.com/postmaster
SubmitAll http://www.hometeam.com/addurl/
Pointers to Pointers http://www.homecom.com/global/pointers.html
Figure 21.12. The PostMaster submission service.
In this chapter we have discussed how to market your site online using the following:
Now everyone knows where to find you, everyone in the world! Which leads us to our next subject: International Markets.
