Take Charge of Your Web Site. Lesson 3 -- Publicity

Take Charge of Your Web Site

by Richard Seltzer , seltzer@samizdat.com, www.samizdat.com

Lesson Three: How to publicize your Web site over the Internet for free or at very low cost

The following chapter is from the ebook Take Charge of Your Web Site, originally published by MightyWords. Permission is granted to make and distribute complete verbatim electronic copies of this item for non-commercial purposes provided the copyright information and this permission notice are preserved on all copies. All other rights reserved.

Now that the rights have reverted to the author, he is free to update and revise this online version. Please send email him your feedback/comments at seltzer@samizdat.com

Please visit our online store at http://store.yahoo.com/samizdat

As a beginner at making Web pages you will undoubtedly make mistakes. Don't worry. You can always take a page down and post a new version. Think of what you are doing as drawing on a sidewalk with chalk. You can easily erase it and start over. Dare to try new things. You might want to experiment with a new identity -- using a Web-based pen name, and referring people to a free email account (that you can get at sites like Hotmail and Yahoo), rather than to your personal or business email address. These pages are yours -- not subject to corporate rules or social constraints. Experiment freely, until you feel well grounded in what is possible not only in terms of creating pages, but also in publicizing them.

Then focus on a topic that you are truly interested in and committed to; and, as a long-term project, make a site devoted to that. Then your focus should gradually shift from your own creativity to building relationships with the visitors to your site and finding new ways to help them and meet their needs, and what you learn should be directly applicable to your online business.

Free online publicity falls into two categories: mechanical and personal. Mechanical includes directories and search engines, which typically should bring a site more than half of its traffic. Personal includes participation in email discussion groups, newsgroups, forums, chats, and expert sites.

Directories

Directories are hand-constructed categorized lists of sites, sometimes including brief descriptions. Some focus on very narrow subject areas. Others -- like Yahoo and the Open Directory -- cover just about everything on the Internet.

Yahoo has a paid staff of editors who review submissions from Web site owners. The Open Directory has thousands of volunteers doing the same work. Both now include over a million sites each.

While Yahoo is a well-known brand, few people have heard of Open Directory. But the Open Directory is embedded in the directory results of many popular search sites. Both are very important, and you can submit your information to both of them for free. Go http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest and http://dmoz.org In both cases, you'll be asked to scan through the available categories (which are amazingly detailed), pick where you think you belong, and write a description a few sentences long. Keep in mind that that description will apply for your entire site, whether it consists of one page or ten thousand pages -- so choose your words carefully and with an eye on the direction you want your site to evolve in.

Don't expect immediate results. Recently, the Open Directory has been taking 2-4 weeks to add new sites; and Yahoo typically takes 2-4 months. You can pay Yahoo to get your site considered sooner, but without any guarantee that you'll wind up in the directory. Also, LookSmart, a much smaller competitor, with ties to some major search engines, now charges $199 for site submissions.

Search engines

Search engines typically index the full text of every page that they find -- and some include hundreds of millions of pages.

People using directories go straight to your home page and then have to hunt to find the specific information that they want. But people using search engines may come to any public page at your site -- whatever page has the words that match the query. Only words on Web pages matter -- not submitted descriptions.

If you follow the guidelines in Lesson Two, you should be in good shape -- with pages designed in such a way that search engines can see the text, with HTML titles that clearly indicate what each page is about, with large pages rather than small ones, and with a sitemap page that has links to every page at your site. You should also pay attention to the first couple lines of text on your pages -- making sure that they too are clear and to the point. Search engines will use those lines as the default for the description to appear with a listing of that page in their match lists.

If you talk to technical experts they will probably tell you to create keyword and description "metatags". Don't. There's no need for that (no need to learn what a metatag is). They serve as crutches for Web pages with designs that are ill-suited for search engines. Having built your pages right, you don't need them.

You also probably have been bombarded with spam from search engine optimization services. Once again, you don't need that kind of help. They tend to focus on "keywords", but search engines don't use "keywords" -- they index every word on every page.

You could also pay for "sponsored" positioning at a handful of search sites like GoTo and their partners, which "auction" top placement on searches for particular "key words".

But once you get going and check your site statistics with a good program like WebTrends Log Analyzer, you'll clearly see that the people coming to your site are entering multi-word queries. People looking for single, general "key words" like network or education or sports are likely to be clueless surfers, rather than people with a serious interest in what you have to offer. And, any case, they will never find you among the many millions of Web pages that mention those words.

Instead of paying a search engine optimization service or for sponsored positioning, and instead of reading up on all the latest ways to try to trick search engines, you should devote your energy to creating and posting more and more useful text. Text is what really fuels search engines.

Getting traffic on the Web is a random game, like rolling dice. You can try to load the dice by paying for advertising or paying for positioning at sites that allow that. Or you can roll more dice, which is what you do by adding more text content. You have a lot better chance of rolling a 6, if you are throwing dozens of dice than if you are throwing just one.

Search engine submissions

You should submit your sitemap page, not your home page to the major search engines: AltaVista, Google, Alltheweb (AKA Fast Search), Northernlight, Excite, Hotbot (which also gets you in a number of other, smaller search sites all of which use the same Inktomi index), Lycos, and DirectHit.

Others are either too small to matter or charge for submission, or both.

Don't waste your money on a search engine submission service. You can submit your site to the top eight in less than a quarter of an hour. For convenience, you can start at www.samizdat.com/submit.html where I have links right to the submission pages of all those sites (so you don't have to click your way through a maze of Web pages to find them).

Email discussion groups

Many people build email distribution lists (for groups of friends and associates) and send messages to all of them as a group, rather than individually. Special software makes it easy to build public email lists -- allowing people to add themselves (subscribe). In some cases, the software also gives all subscribers the right to send messages to all other subscribers. In other cases, messages go to the list owner who then decides whether to forward particular items, or perhaps to edit and combine messages in digest form before forwarding them over the list.

Go to Liszt www.liszt.com (Yes, that isn't a typo -- it's spelled like the name of the Hungarian composer. They list tens of thousands of email discussion groups. You can search through their database, or click your way through their cascading categories. Look for groups that relate to the main topic of your Web site, subscribe (for free), and carefully read the rules/procedures for that group. You'll start getting email from other members. If what you see seems useless, unsubscribe and try others. If the discussion is on target and catches your interest, join in. And every time you send a message to the list include at the end a brief "signature" which tells people who you are and also points them to your site.

Some of these groups are wide open. Others have moderators. Actively participating in or even running such a discussion is a great way to become known as an expert or enthusiast in your main area of interest, and also a way to make friends and build relationships with others who have similar interests.
You could start an email discussion group from scratch, building your own email distribution list (including only people who ask to be included), and periodically sending out a newsletter or compendium of the email you receive from members. You could use one of the free services like Topica www.topica.com or eGroups (which was just bought by Yahoo!) http://groups.yahoo.com/local/news.html

Newsgroups

Newsgroups are collections of messages (postings) addressed to a group of people with common interests. There is no distribution list (as we email). Messages are sent to particular groups, and anyone with the appropriate software can go to any group, see what's there, and participate.

Go to Deja www.deja.com (formerly known as Dejanews). There you can search through tens of thousands of news groups, each of which probably have thousands of postings. These are the candid comments of individuals on every subject imaginable. You can register at Deja and participate in the discussions from there; or, if your ISP gives you access to newsgroups, you can also read and post from your Web browser, from OutLook Express, and a variety of other programs.

A few newsgroups allow and even encourage you to talk about and promote your products and services. But most do not. Before posting to any group, read lots of recent postings to get a feel for what is appropriate. And try to make your first postings responses to other postings -- get involved in the existing dialogue, begin to act and feel like a member of the newsgroup community.

Once again, you can and should include a "signature" that briefly points interested folks to your site.

Forums

Forums (AKA Web boards or bulletin boards) are Web pages where you can post your opinions and comments about a selected subject. The site owner sets the topics, and typically moderates the discussion (deleting off-topic items; and sometimes blocking access to the rare folks who seriously misbehave). Go to ForumOne www.forumone.com, to search among thousands of forums for ones that match your needs.

These discussions tend to be less active and more focused than email distribution and newsgroups. But if the topic is right on target for you, or involves the leaders in your field, you want to be there both to learn from what's said and also to become better known. Once again, use a signature file to unobtrusively let the others know about your Web site. If this form of online community suits you particularly well, you might want to start one of your own, for instance using the free facilities available at Delphi www.delphi.com

I run a forum called "Web business bootcamp" at www.webworkzone.com/bootcamp

Chat

Chat -- real-time live discussion over the Internet -- can be either spontaneous or planned. If you are online a lot, you might want to add HumanClick to one or more of your Web pages. This free app from www.humanclick.com makes it easy for visitors to your site to talk to you, on the spur of the moment. That's a great way to turn a casual visitor into a customer or partner, or simply to have an interesting discussion. Or you might want to plan and promote discussions on particular topics with particular guests to take place at scheduled times -- either using free chat room facilities at major portal sites (like Yahoo), or special software that you could run at your Web site (and that your web-hosting ISP might make available to you). I've been running weekly chat sessions about Business on the Web since June 1996, and post the transcripts at my site, where they provide valuable content, attracting lots of visitors (see www.samizdat.com/chat.html).

Expert sites

Some Web sites act as go-betweens connecting people with questions with experts who have answers. Some of these sites cover narrow topic areas; and others, like AllExperts (where I'm signed up) and Abuzz, try to cover the world. These experts volunteer their services, for the benefit of becoming known as "experts", making contact with potential customers, and pointing more traffic to their sites. Give them a try.

Content syndication

If you find that you are regularly writing new article-style material for your site each week, you should contact iSyndicate and apply to have your "column" added to the broad collection of material that they offer to other Web sites on a syndicated basis. At their base level ("Express"), they provide links to your articles for their subscribers, which boosts your traffic. They also offer some material in full-text form, to be posted on subscriber sites for a fee, which they share with you.

Tips for monitoring progress

As your site and its audience grow, go back to AltaVista periodically and search (as explained in Lesson One) to see how many of your pages are in the index and to see which sites have linked to your pages. You can also go to TracerLock www.peacefire.org/tracerlock and sign up for free for email alerts when there are new results at particular search engines for queries which you preset -- such as, at AltaVista:
+link:yourdomain.com - host:yourdomain.com

And do whatever you can to get access to a good Web site statistical program, so you can keep a close eye on how many people are coming to your site, where they are coming from, and what pages they are looking at.

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