Putting up a website is very much akin to putting a listing in the world's largest yellow pages - you're out there, but there's no guarantee anyone will find you. I usually tell clients that putting up a website, in and of itself, is unlikely to generate business or create new leads, any more than a yellow page listing would be. There are a number of things you can do to stack the deck in your favor and which I'll be covering. Still, I've found the best use of a website is in conjunction with (and not in lieu of) other marketing efforts.
Following are nine things you can do to improve the odds of getting your site noticed:
1. On line searching research
2. Reviewing other sites
3. Using Meta Tags
4. Multi-browser testing
5. Using drhtml.com
6. Using Submit-it
7. Cross-linking to other sites
8. Site Maintenance & updates
9. Other marketing (on/offline)
The best first step, even before you build your site, is to use available search engines to find other sites that are similar to your projected website. Here are a few popular search engines:
http://www.google.com/
http://www.lycos.com/
http://www.altavista.com/
http://www.yahoo.com/
http://www.hotbot.com/
There are many more, of course. You should, in essence, search for yourself. Use a variety of different key words and phrases, search in different categories, and try different search engines in an attempt to find listings. The goal is to determine what words and phrases produce listings and groups of listings in which you'd like to see your own site. Note what words and phrases work best; note what category(s) your peers appear in and where you'd therefore like to appear. You should try to find three things: 1) sites that list other sites that you would like to also list you; 2) key words and phrases that you could use in meta tags, and in your site content; and 3) peers that you could link to on your site, and who could link to you.
Part of this research leads naturally to step two - reviewing peer sites that you find. Peer sites and competitor sites can help you find good material for meta tags (more on this below), and can also provide great ideas for pages and categories you'll want on your own site. Note words and phrases on peer and competitor sites appear frequently, or that are unique and appear on highly ranked sites. Look for what works, and what's impressive (to you). You may also find sites that have HTML that you can use; simply use File : Save As to copy the HTML, and then edit that HTML in your site creation program to insert your own content. This is an extremely easy way to create a site, and can be very effective. I've heard it said that "amateurs imitate, professionals steal" - use what works. Note that sometimes you'll find that you cannot use someone else's HTML for any number of technical reasons, but it can never hurt to try. Also, using someone else's HTML is not the same as plagiarizing someone else's content; the former is essentially an open book, but the latter is copyrighted material by definition.
Meta Tags are "invisible" HTML tags that appear in the source file (under View:Page Source or sometimes View:Frame Source). They are typically near the top of a page in the HEAD section, which will also contain the page title that appears in the top frame bar of your browser. There are many kinds of Meta tags, but the two you will initially use are "description" and "keywords." Examples of both follow:
< meta name="description" content="Dovetail specializes in information design, technical consulting and corporate websites. We'll help you effectively identify your assets, needs and expectations, and map them onto the constantly evolving possibilities of the web.">
< meta name="keywords" content="Dovetail Web Design, Internet Strategy, Website, Web Technology, Java, Interaction Design, Site Design">
As you can probably see, the "description" tag describes the page or site, what its purpose is. Frequently, the description tag will appear in a search engine listing, so it should be a concise description of what your site or page is about. Although there's no limit to the size of the meta tag itself, because it may be used by search engines, you should keep it fairly short, about 25 words.
The "keywords" tag is likewise fairly obvious - words and phrases that help categorize your content. Keywords need to strike a balance between being unique (thus setting you apart and not bringing your site up under every internet search possible), and paralleling what works for you peers and your competition. "writing" or "editing" are fairly vague, "corporate marketing copy editor" would be more effective. Keywords are comma-separated, and are more or less "weighted" from left to right. Again, there's no limit to the number of keywords you can list, but a short and direct list will probably be more effective than a long list of words that are collectively broad in scope. Your website editing software should let you create and insert meta tags; if you're using Word or a text editor, you'll have to insert the HTML itself into the source. Copying Meta tags from another site is a quick way to get the HTML correct.
The above 3 steps can help you position your site relative to others in a search listing, and are extremely important steps toward getting your site listed effectively. They also can impact your site creation. Using your research, you can tailor your page content, site structure, and your meta tags before your site is ever on the web. It is important that you complete the above before moving on to the next steps, because once your site is "in the system" and search engines have categorized your site, it's much harder to change your site's context.
A final note on meta tags: some sites use different meta tags for every page, helping a search engine categorize your site in different places and increasing the number of places a page of your site can appear. Other sites use the same tags throughout their site, placing all their pages into one category, and increasing the likelihood that many of your pages will appear grouped together in a search. I prefer the latter technique, especially for smaller sites where all the pages are more or less about the same subject, but it's a matter of personal choice.
Once you've built your website, and initially posted it on line, you may want to test it. Dreamweaver and Frontpage, among others, will verify that the HTML used is correct according to the current HTML specifications, and for small sites, this is probably fine. You should also test your site in a number of browsers - just because it looks okay on your screen does not mean it will look OK to everyone else. You can be as thorough as you want to, but I recommend viewing your site in the latest versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer, Netscape and AOL, ideally on both Windows and Macintosh platforms. Usually you'll find there are differences, but it's best to make certain that the majority of web users can at least see your site before you put it "out there" in front of the world.
If you'd like, you can also use:
This site will test *your* website, verify the HTML and identify problems, as well as test links on your site and make sure there are no missing images, broken or dead links. If you do use drhtml (there's a simplified free version, and a pay-to-play), note that it may well identify "bad" HTML that you "can't see." That is, it may tell you that you have HTML errors, but you already know that Dreamweaver or Frontpage told you the site was OK, and you've reviewed it in other browsers and it checks out. Drhtml is likely to be more stringent in its tests, and you *do not* need to make your site "perfect." Drhtml is just another way to vet your code against a known set of standards.
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At this stage, you should consider your site to be final and live - done, for all intents and purposes. This doesn't mean it can't or won't change, but you're now ready to announce your site to the world. The best, easiest way to do this is to use submit-it:
For a fee ($49 and up), submit-it will submit your site to search engines. Two things to note: 1) search engines will eventually find you anyway; and 2) you can submit your site to search-engines yourself for nothing. However, submit-it makes the process extremely easy. It collects all your information in one fell swoop (so you don't have to re-submit the same thing over and over), and it also helps you correctly tailor your information (counting word limits for you, collecting descriptions and keywords, etc.). Also, submit-it of course knows exactly where to submit your information, so you don't have to search out the page on each site and search engine. Finally, submit-it knows about 1000's of search sites and indexes, more than you'll ever find on your own. If you can afford it, I highly recommend the service.
This brings us to cross-linking your site. At least one search engine (google) uses the number of links going to your site to weight its search results. In other words, if many other sites link to your site, you'll improve your listing with google. Identifying peers and web indexes that you like and asking to be linked to will help improve your visibility on the web. Also, any other site you find through a web search is already listed of course, and search engines find new sites by looking for new links on old sites - getting linked to helps guarantee that search engines will find you.
Another technique for improving your search engine listing is to update your site on a regular basis. As I mentioned, search engines look at older sites to find new things to list - changing your site on an ongoing basis will increase how often a search engine looks at your site, and usually helps improve your site ranking over time. Obviously, this involves ongoing effort on your part, but it can be an effective tool.
Perhaps more importantly, making certain your site is current will help improve how new users perceive your website. Badly out of date sites do not make a good first impression. Further, if your site is current, users will know that you're paying attention to your site, and this increases the likelihood that a user will return.
However. *All* these things will at best improve the likelihood that someone will essentially stumble upon your site. Returning to my yellow pages analogy, the best you can do is to be "in there" - to appear amid your peers and competitors. My experience is that direct marketing on your part, in conjunction with your website, is the most effective tool you can use to get noticed. You're far more likely to get new business and make new contacts through networking, referrals, and traditional advertising and marketing efforts. The reason is simple - if someone knows who you are and what you do, then your website becomes a portfolio - a tool to evaluate you and your work. Such a person is coming to your site because they've probably already made the decision to hire or contract someone, and have in some sense already decided you're in the running, and now they're trying to decide if you're that person. The website becomes one piece of the marketing and sales cycle, rather than the entire thing.
This is not to dissuade you from pursuing site rankings and search engines, but to put the effort in context. A personal contact, combined with a business card and a site review has better odds of generating new business. But being listed and widely available still puts your name and your business on the web. People will find you, and it will produce new contacts at the very least.
One final note: it's possible that you *don't* want your site to appear on search engines, or that you don't want part of your site to be widely listed. Perhaps you want the professional area to be well know, but would prefer the personal area to be invisible. Taking this is an example, there are two things you could do to "hide" a site or part of site. The first is not to link to that area of the site from anywhere on your "main" or professional site. Instead, you would personally hand out the URL for that part of your site to individuals whom you wanted to see your personal site. By not linking to this area, it's very difficult for search engines to find this part of your site. Note that linking *from* this site is quite OK (that is, having links on the private area to other websites, including most probably your own professional site). So, people coming to your personal site can readily access your professional site, but not vice versa.
The second thing you can do is to exclude robots from your site. There are a number of sites that deal with this topic (search for "robot exclusion standards"), here is a good first start:
http://www.wdvl.com/Location/Search/Robots.html
You should also check with your web hosting ISP - they'll probably have a help page that describes how to exclude the search engines from part of your site. Basically, there are two things you need to do: 1) the excluded part of the site must be in its own folder, a sub-folder of the overall site itself; and 2) you need to put a text file in this folder. This folder can also have sub-folders of course. The naming and structure of this text file are covered in the above article, and again you should check with your ISP for anything specific to their hosting facility.
With the posting of your website and its submission to search engines, you are now officially on the world wide web. Welcome!