Ready to start promoting, but where do I start?

[Adam P.]

Hey everyone!

For my first few months of web design I have concentrated on the "build" part of it with designing my sites.

Well, now I have a site, www.help4newbies.com , that I want to promote. I want to start by getting it on some search engines. So, how do I do that?

I've heard of meta tags, submitting to search engines, but I really don't have any idea of how to do any of it. Aren't there sites that automatically keyword your site or something?

Anyways, that's what I need help with. I appreciate and and all answers.

Thanks in advance!

BTW, right now I'm looking at this site for help. does it look good?:
http://sitepoint.selfpromotion.com/pageprep.t

[Saz]

When I first got into webdesign, a friend of mine directed me to Add Me. They offer a free search engine submission service. That should get you listed with the top 25 search engines - though some may take a few weeks to actually get round to crawling your site. That said, it's free which can't be bad can it? Just means you have to put their button on your site that links back to their homepage.

In the mean time, another thing you could do is track down some tutorial directories and try to get listed with them. I don't know any off hand, but I'm sure there must be sites out there that work as a directory for on-line tutorials.

Good luck.

[crashZ]

Optimization for search engines:

While meta tags should be used on sites still, some spiders like to see them and even still use them but most just ignore them, you should take care as to how you form them.

Your <title>page title</title> and <h1>header tags</h1> are more important than your meta tags. Your content is 3rd most important. When it comes to Themes think of your site as a whole - but when optimizing your pages look at them individually. They need to stand alone in the engines.

<title>Help! 4 Newbies - to web design: CSS</title>
that is your title from your css page, consider something a bit more useful:
<title>CSS for newbies | Help 4 new web designers | how to use css style sheets</title>

Now - this is not perfect, just off the top of my head, but its using keywords specific to that page - css, newbies, web designers, help, how use css. This will count highly when spiders rate your page. Then go on to use them in your header text <Hx> and your actual content. (alt img tags wont hurt either). Do this on every page!


Free submissions:

I recommend hand submitting to the major engines (Google and AltaVista leave you no choice, Google bans autosubmitters and AV has a graphic you have to translate specifically to stop autosubmitters). You can find their Add Url link on their home pages.

Autosubmitters are ok from minor engines - but these are not that necessary either. The bulk of your traffic comes from the more major ones. Keep in mind that Yahoo submission is to their paid directory - but when you search on Yahoo, they provide directory listings first and then their own version of Google.

Inktomi feeds many SE's (av, msn etc) so it is one of the more important databases to get into. I believe they still have their free add url, but have heard that they will discontinue it. You do get a penalty for using the free version, but it will drop off as soon as the spider finds your page on its own - submit a 'crawl' page instead of your main url - like a site map - to lead it to your other pages.

Depending on what you want this site to do, look into services like GoTo and FindWhat - a top 1 to 3 spot on go to gets feed to other engines that partner with them.

If you search for 'search engine optimization' in your favorite engine you will find Many resources. Stick to the ones that are not blatently trying to sell you something. Ones that offer free information.

** disclaimer ** i am associated with Spider-Food.net as a forum evangelist. But it really is a great, free, strictly seo resource.

[mjames]

Meta tags are worth having if you want to be listed in a lot of the popular search engines.

You want something like:

<TITLE>Site Title - Including a good range of keywords helps</TITLE>
  <META NAME="KEYWORDS" content="keyword 1, keyword 2, keyword 3">
  <META NAME="DESCRIPTION" content="One or two sentence site description.">

Of course, there are other meta tags, but these are basics. You insert the meta tags into your HEADER part of your page.

Contrary to Saz's recommendation of AddMe, I don't think those services work very well. What you should do is submit your site (after implementing meta tags) to each major search engine separately. Google, Altavista, Lycos, Excite, Webcrawler, Dogpile, Hotbot, etc. You'll find a link at the bottom of each engine in most cases.

Besides search engines, reciprocal link trading is a big help. Find sites that are similar to yours or accompany your site's theme and politely e-mail them. Explain what your site is about and what you would like to do. You can choose to have a links page and add all the links with sites you have exchanged with, or you can select a few quality sites and setup more high profile partner deals. Good luck!

[aspen]

the #1 tip I can give you is to join the newsletter at trafficology.com

The second is to get links to your website. Submitting to search engines is easy, but you need other people linking to you. This includes directories like yahoo and dmoz. As well as smaller directories you may not even know about.

As example, wannalearn.com, small education directory.

(by the way, if you don't have the google toolbar, get it)

you'll notice in your google toolbar that most wannalearn pages have high page ranks, this lets you know that google values their links as pretty important so it'll help you to get a link from them to you.

Another thing you can do is search on google for the search term you'd like people to use to find your site. Visit the first few sites that come up and use the toolbar to see what pages link to them. If they are link pages or specialized directories then you visit those sites and try to get them to link to your site as well.

[moospot]

Hand Submit to Search Engines !

Everyone has given good advice. Start with the free stuff and if you can spend money, get in the paid directories (Yahoo and LookSmart) and paid inclusion search engines (AV and Inktomi). I believe these are well worth the cost!

In order of effectiveness (My personal exeprience):

[list=1][*]GoTo - Cost - variable - immediate results, but can be very expensive. I would so this last or not at all if you are not making any money on your site. Immediate Listing[*]Inktomi - Cost $39 for 12 months. Listed in 48 hours[*]Yahoo - $199 Business / FREE standard (try this first). 7 days or 4-6 weeks[*]Google - Free. Listings on Yahoo. Updates monthly. What else could you ask for?[*]DMOZ - Great Free place to list your site. Can generate a lot of traffic if you have a good listing. Can take 3 weeks or more to get listed.[*]LookSmart - $199, but they offer specials all the time. Keep your eyes open! Listed in 2-3 days[*]Altavista - $39/6 months. This is okay, but ranking depends heavily on age of pages. Listed in 7 days[/list=1]

Don't do FFA sites. They are a waste of your time. Optimize your pages for the search engines (keyword density, meta tags, titles, etc.) and hand submit them on a monthly basis.

Get links to your site. Set up a page for advertising and swapping links.

Theming - The content on your site should remain focused. This goes for link swapping, too. Good links from sites of similar content will boost your rankings.

[crashZ]

just a note:

Looksmart raised their rates as of 8/1/01

express listing is now $299
slow listing is $199
modifications are $149 (?)

express and slow i am sure about - mod i am not - but its all listed on their Add Url page..

if they are worth it is up to you - if you have the budget and the desire to throw it away personally, ls is a dying db and this rate hike is not going to help them

[RKuhle]

As mentioned, don't use a mass search engine submission site or software. Instead, manually had your website to all the big shooters.

About the Add Me! recommendation, they have a periodical (weekly?) newsletter that I have subscribed to. It's a pretty good read. You'll find articles and tips on several forms of promotion techniques. There are also several other free search engine newsletters, as well as search engine courses. I signed up for a free 5-day search engine course yesterday, when the 5-days are up I'll post a rating.

Some other links:
http://www.internetday.com
http://www.webpromote.com
http://jimworld.com
http://searchenginewatch.com

[Adam P.]

Wow, thanks everyone for the great input!

I haven't got to reading the replies yet; I was out of town for a week. But they all look great.

Thanks!