Step-by-Step
Promotion
Part I - Determining
Keyword Phrases
The first part is the determination of keyword
phrases. The importance of thinking this through and coming up with viable phrases cannot
be over stressed. Fortunately, by using our system you will not have to come up with a
long list of keywords all at once. You can create a new gateway page each time you come up
with a new key phrase.
Part II - Creating and
Submitting Gateway Pages
Creating your gateway pages will take only a
few minutes and is a very simple procedure. Submitting them is also fast. Part II will
give you some extra information on creating your pages and walk you through the options
available to you in submitting them. Also included in this section is information on how
the banner exchange interfaces with your gateway pages.
Part III - Tracking
your efforts
Once you have begun to get traffic from the
search engines you will want to be able to see which of your promotion efforts has been
the most successful at generating them. Part III gives you the tools to do this. You will
not need to do this immediately.
Additional
Information
The final section in the Step-by-Step guide
gives you tips for building additional traffic using the Banner Exchange, Web Rings and
includes some tips for optimizing your web site to make the most of the traffic you've
built.
Part I
1. Begin by reading and considering the two
pages devoted to keywords:
The All
Important Keyword
Keyword Tips & Tricks
Even if you are sure that you are familiar
with keyword concepts it is highly recommended that you look over these two pages. They
are the foundation of all your future promotion work.
Part II
Before creating your gateway pages you should
view the information below on using the Banner
Exchange.
Create your Gateway Page
Creating your gateway pages is quite simple.
Simply fill out the form provided being sure to follow the brief instructions for each
field. Each gateway page is based upon a keyword phrase and minor variations of that
phrase. Before beginning your page you must know what keyword phrase you are planning to
target.
Submit Your Page
From our site you can automatically submit
your page to the 7 major search engines, 18 secondary engines and over 1200 links and
directory pages. You have a couple of choices to make in how to do this.
The first time you submit a page you should go
to the direct submit page and use the individual forms for each of the 7 major search
engines. After doing that use the "Submitter 18" which will submit your pages to
the 18 secondary search engines.
Note: If you are in a hurry you can use the
"Submitter 25" and do all 25 submissions but beware that some of the engines
fail when the web is busy. You will see which ones fail so that you can resubmit to them.
For subsequent submissions (which should be
done monthly) you may choose either of the methods listed above.
Submitting to the 1200+ links and directory
pages will not have as great an effect on your traffic as will the major and secondary
search engines. We only recommend submitting to these sites once, when you have first
created your page. You will gain more traffic by creating more gateway pages and
submitting them to the 25 engines than you will by submitting fewer pages to 1200+ links
and directory pages. Be sure to read the notes regarding your email address (on the
submission form) before submitting to the links and directory pages.
Keep in mind that all gateway pages residing
on our system will count towards your popularity rating.
Repeat the steps above for each keyword phrase
you wish to target.
Part III
For the first two months after your original
submission you are not likely to find yourself listed by many of the engines. (See the
table below) This is the time when it is hard to stay motivated to promote your site but
it is also the time that is crucial to do so!
You should create new gateway pages every
week, submit them, and resubmit any old ones that are due for re-submission.
After two months (or anytime before that) use
the Popularity Analyzer and the Search Engine Ranker to find your site's listings.
Sometimes the Popularity Analyzer will show listings of your site in engines that do not
show in the Search Engine Ranker. Be sure to enter your URL as http://www.yourdomain.com/whatever and as http://yourdomain.com/whatever You will often
find different listings under the two.
Do not be terribly discouraged if your pages
do not come up in either the Ranker or the Analyzer. Although these are the best tools of
their type they do not always pick up every listing for every keyword. Sometimes your site
will be listed under a different keyword entirely.
One way to check -if you have no luck with our
tools - is to go the the actual engines and enter your main URL or your business name.
Additional
Information
Using
the Banner Exchange
You'll note that we have put banner code at
the bottom of each gateway page. If you do not choose to join the banner exchange, it will
display the default banner which will not hurt your listing since it is the last thing on
the page. However, there are good reasons to use the banners. Eventually you will find
that the majority of your traffic is coming to your site through your gateway pages. Being
part of the banner exchange will increase that traffic further.
A banner exchange cannot compare with the
traffic that will be brought to your site by high placement in the search engines but
everything you do in promoting your site will make a little difference. It is the total of
how many little differences you make that will determine the success of your site in the
end.
You should sign up for the banner exchange
before making any gateway pages or you will have to edit the pages to insert your banner
exchange username. You will need a banner ad 468 x 60 pixels. Our banner exchange section
includes links to some sites where banners can be automatically created online.
Using Web Rings
Web Rings can be a very useful way to bring traffic to your
site. Most professional site owners cringe at the thought of allowing a web ring to be
seen on their site and in fact it is not very professional to have one seen there. One of
the secrets to successful sites is to increase the number of entrances to the site and
decrease the number of exits. Professionally built sites use this theory which is one
reason you will not see any web rings on them. Why provide exits to your competitors
sites?
However, because of the way that web rings bring traffic to
your site - which is very different from the way that banner exchanges do - it is not
necessary to have a web ring be visible to anyone but those who got there via the web
ring.
Here's what you do:
Create a new page for your site using your standard headers
and footers and your menu. Create links to any part of your site that members of this web
ring (or its visitors) would be especially interested in. Join the web ring and put the
code for web ring (which the ring will provide for you) on the page.
Essentially you have created a new kind of gateway page.
The page is not linked anywhere from inside of your site so your visitors who got there by
finding you in a search engine or from any other promotion will not ever see that your
site belongs to a web ring. (Or a lot of web rings, none of which will never see each
other there.) The only people who will see that you are a member of a web ring are other
members of the ring, or people using the ring.
Create a different page for every web ring you join. Why?
Because you must allow an exit from your page to those who got there by the web ring but
why create more exits than necessary? Why let a web ring surfer find another ring to go to
when they can spend time on your pages instead?
Keeping Your Traffic
The goal of Net-Promotions is to get traffic
to your site. Not all of the traffic, not even the targeted traffic, will actually read,
sign up for, join or buy what you want them to. You need to do everything possible to make
it easy for your visitors to do what you want them to do. Although we will not go into
this in depth there are a few detrimental items that come up so often we must mention
them:
Understand that the only time you will get a
clear picture of how fast your page loads is the first time you see it. After that it will
be cached to make it load faster and to determine the real load time you will have to
clear your cache.
If you are using any Internet connection
faster than 56k, the average user will have a longer load time than you do. In this case
judge by the size of the files. The optimum web page is 40 kb including all the files that
make it up.
What you have to offer must be
visible "above the fold".
"Above the fold" is a newspaper term. On a newspaper above the fold is the top
half of the front page. On a website "above the fold" is the area that is seen
on your opening page before the visitor scrolls down. This area should let people clearly
know what your site is about, what it offers and where they can find the most important
details on these items. A beautiful "Flash" intro that takes even as little as 5
seconds to load will generally lose more traffic than it will impress. If you want to use
something like this use it in a "Tour" or "Overview" page.
No choices is your best choice
Do not give visitors options between Frames or No Frames pages or any other options that
are not strictly necessary. Every additional moust click will result in some lost traffic.
At this time (January, 2001) the great majority of browsers use frames. If you are afraid
to lose some of the traffic on old computers that cannot use frames then don't create your
pages with frames.
You decide what is most important for your users to see and then present it to them in the
way that most users will be able to utilize it.
More Entrances and Fewer Exits
Many sites contain "Links" pages. This is fine if you are running a
not-for-profit site. It is a very bad idea on a site that you want to sell anything from.
With all the work it takes to get people to your site why give them ways to leave that
give you nothing in return?
Trading links.
Many people ask about this as it seems like a very good idea and in theory it is. However,
it is rare that you will find sites to trade links with that will be worth the time they
take to find. Most of the people who will want to trade links with you will have less
traffic than you do (which is why they want to trade).
A much better idea and better use of your time is finding sites that offer links to your
type of site (as opposed to reciprocating links). For many categories there are
sites that offer nothing but directories of resources for particular topics. These usually
add the links free of charge (money or trade) and if you can get listed on them without
spending too much time doing so they can be an excellent source of traffic because they
are likely (by their nature) to have good search engine listings.
Navigation
This is one of the biggest problems on many sites. People just cannot find their way
around. If there is any doubt about how clear your navigation system is, create a
"SiteMap" page that lists all pages, what they are and links to them.
Good luck! |
