WEBSITE PROMOTION DIY GUIDE
OverviewCheck your own rankings
Check your competitors rankings
What makes a good site to promote
What makes a bad site to promote
Promoting difficult websites
Meta Tags
Copy
File Names
Keywords and Keywords Phrases
Description
Hyperlinks
Important Search Engines and Directories
Registration Fees
Other Tips
What Not To Do
Promoting difficult websites
Wesites that have an opening Flash Graphic may look very pretty but besides annoying most people nearly all search engines are not equipped to recognise Flash and consequently they cannot see anything at all. If your index page is entirely constructed of Flash the search engine Spider (an automated robot that searches an indexes your site) will see no more than a one page website with no, or almost no content. It will probably assume your website is still under construction and it is extremely unlikely your website will ever achieve good rankings. There are several ways to overcome Flash pages and menus. The favoured way is to construct identical "Mirror" pages or menus replacing the flash animation or menus with gif animation or rollover effects. With a basic graphics package this can be performed by taking screen capture, which normally does the trick. The pages created can either be promoted in their own right or can often replace the entire site pages and can be promoted using the index page. By making gif, text, and image pages you are creating a navigation structure, images that can have image alt tags, and text that can all be read and Spidered by the search engines. For the first time they can get past the first page and make a report on your site. We then have to fix it so that report results in your website coming top in the rankings. An alternative to creating mirror pages on the site is to create a mirror website altogether and promote that. This is also a good idea because it normally allows the new "mirror" website to have the keyword phrase in the title, which always helps when promoting. Gif animation is only practical for small animations and Flash sub-menus are also difficult to re-create. Search engine spiders, or robots, also know as "Bots", work by indexing your website. They need to find a navigation structure, they also need to find copy (text) and lots of it. it helps if your site has images and that their file name and Alt tag both have your keyword phrase in them.
Meta Tags
Some major search engines give less importance to what is on actually on the page, simply verifying that your website has all the "qualities" listed above. Instead, they gather all the information they need from the "Meta Tags". What your site called, the description, what the important keywords are, etc. So if you want to promote your site effectively, Meta Tags are very important.
Copy
The most recent "essential" element a website must have in order to ensure page one rankings is Copy (Text). Some search engines insist that your index page must have at least 200 words on it. These words must include your keywords at regular intervals but not too often. Repeating keywords too often can result in your website being classed as spamming and may result in it being banned.
File Names
Most websites have a folder called "images". In that folder are images called things like "Title_Bar", "Button_Left", "Image_4", "Spacer" and similar.
Anything on your site that can be named should be named to include your keywords. Images, Pages, Downloads, Stylesheets, Folders, everything. The more files you have that are named with your keywords, the more chance you have of increasing your rankings. So rename the folder to "Your_Keyword_Phrase_Images" and rename you images "Your_Keyword_Phrase_title_bar", "Your_Keyword_Phrase_Button_Left" etc.
Keywords and Keyword Phrases
A "Keyword Phrase" is what customers enter into search engines to find businesses like yours. it could be something like "Structural Engineers in the UK". Keywords are other important words which you may want to list, too many to include in your keyword phrase but potentially customers may use sometimes in their search. An example could be: "underpinning, surveyor, foundation, subsidence, building, party wall, civil engineering, structural engineers, england, uk, engineering, analysis, design, consulting, building, construction, architect, refurbishment, reports, warehouses, bridges, offices, contractors.
Description
Some search engines copy exactly what your description says, others take what you write about your own site as a guide to what they will say. A well written description that mentions your keyword phrase twice in 20 to 30 words can result in a high ranking. The trick to success is that your description should look and sound normal without obviously hyping the keywords. Get this right and your work will reap rewards. If a search engine or directory provides guidelines for your description then it is best to stick to them.
If your keyword phrase is "Structural Engineers in the UK" your description could be something like "Structural engineers in the UK specializing in underpinning, architectural and structural analysis, bridge engineers, plus refurbishment consultants based in the UK near Reading and Newcastle". This sentence of 25 words mentions the keyword phrase twice without being too obvious. Unfortunately some search engines have recently introduced rules for their editors that the Title of the web-site may not be used in the description.