5 Ways to get your Website Noticed
by: Maui Reyes
Your website is just one of the billion sites parked on the
World Wide Web. Chances are, you don’t think yours will ever get
noticed.
We hear your cries for cyber attention. Here are five ways to
get people clicking on to your site.
1. Make sure it’s professional looking.
No one likes looking at website that reminds them of a book
report they wrote back in school. Invest in learning a good web
design program (DreamWeaver MX and Microsoft FrontPage are good
picks), and let your creative juices flow. Make sure it’s
compelling, well-designed, and organized. People don’t exactly
find it fun to weed through haystacks of cyber files to get the
information that they want.
On that note, don’t make it a heavy site. Putting up some
flash intros may be great eye candy, but the average internet
surfer only waits 10 seconds for a page to load, and then
they’re off to the next.
2. Put your URL on every search engine possible.
Putting your URL on business cards and bugging your family and
friends to check out your site won’t exactly increase traffic.
Submitting it to search engines will make it easier for people
to find you, provided that your webpage carries the topics
they’re looking for. To understand how a search engine works,
think of it as a “spider”: it crawls through your website,
picking up words and information which would later be indexed in
the search engine’s database. So make sure you pepper your site
with keywords you think are relevant to what people are looking
for. Web directories, like Yahoo!, are operated by humans who
actually categorize the websites themselves.
If you don’t feel like submitting your website to numerous
directories, consider subscribing to sites like
www.submit-it.com, who, for a fee, will automatically submit
your site to search engines and directories for you.
3. Link everywhere.
Find other sites that carry similar content as yours and ask to
exchange links. Create banners to be placed on other peoples’
websites, and offer to the same for them on your site. Add your
URL on your e-mail signature. Join webrings if you must—there’s
nothing like strength in numbers.
4. Advertise offline.
The world of cyberspace isn’t enough to get you noticed. Write
up press releases and send them to local newspapers and
magazines. Print out fliers to be distributed. Just make sure
that your site is already up and running to avoid giving people
a bad impression (no one likes getting pumped up for something
only to get disappointed).
5. Interact with your readers.
Put up forums or message boards for your visitors to interact
with each other. Chat rooms are often time-consuming for some,
while message boards allows them to check back every so often
for replies. Create an e-mail list so you can update your
visitors about new developments, and always be open to
feedback—that’s what will make your site even better.
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