Web Site Advertising and Promotion

Almost anything can be promoted on the Internet. To be successful, whether success is measured in sales, increased awareness, attendance, etc., you must get people to your web site and provide them the information they want and need.

Search engines index sites using different criteria. Review the top search engine's guidelines to help optimize your site for indexing.

• Google: http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl (used by AOL, Netscape, HotBot)
• Bing! (MSN): http://www.bing.com/docs/submit.aspx
• Yahoo!: http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html

Custom Domain Name

A custom domain name helps users remember your site. It also gets users to your site if they guess the URL. For example, kittitascountyfair.com may be found directly from a guessed name and is easy to remember than somepig.org.

Link Exchanges

Exchanging links with related sites is a way to channel target audiences to your site. Google uses site popularity--the number of links to your site--as a factor in returning search results. Search Google using your keywords and then contact the top sites to exchange links.

Encourage Bookmarks

Remind visitors to bookmark your web site to encourage repeat visits.

Publicize your URL

Publicize your site in all of your communications, advertisements and marketing materials:

Unacceptable Promotions

Using these techniques can result in URL blocking, i.e., being banned from search engines, or will turn users against your site.

• Do not SPAM with unsolicited email; it is illegal.
• Do not SPAM search engines with redundant URL submissions or overloading keywords on pages.
• Do not flood newsgroups or forums with redundant or irrelevant announcements.

Make Your Site Useful and Easy-to-Use

• If your site provides useful information, people will return.
• Make your site usable and avoid usability don’ts.
• Consider the questions or requests for information you receive most and make sure those are addressed on your site; maybe answer questions in FAQs.
• Keep your content current.
• Consider offering language translations or use a free translation service such as http://babelfish.altavista.com/.
• Contests and games may entertain users, but remember the reason users return to sites is because it is useful to them.
• Use of fluff such as animated images, advertisements, and other non-relevant content should be kept to a minimum. Flying pigs may catch the user's attention the first time they see it, but it will soon bother users and make their visit less enjoyable.

Registering Users

Offer an opt-in/opt-out email subscription to users so you can send notifications of events, promotions, and news. Make sure you let them know they receive email because they registered and allow them the to opt-out of future email.

Usability Dont's

• Don't make it complicated. If users have to think about it too much, they'll leave your site.
• Don't use frames; pages can't be bookmarked and linked to, and cause problems for search engines.
• Don't change your design or navigation from page to page.
• Don't make users click through many pages to find information.
• Don't use Flash to provide information; it can't be searched and requires bandwidth.
• Don't use too many images; search engines index text, images require bandwidth, and usually don't provide information people need.
• Don't use long blocks of text; people scan pages and want to quickly find information.
• Don't allow a horizontal scroll.
• Don't use under construction pages.
• Don't use sound unless the user can turn it off.
• Don't over do it. Too many colors, images, font faces, etc. distract users.
• Don't nest tables. The more nesting the longer it takes the browser to display.
• Don't make pages (html and images) over 100KB. If the user would be uncomfortable holding their breath while a page downloads, they won't like it.
• Don't forget to provide a print version of a page if it contains information the user may want to print for later reference.
• Don't forget to perform a usability study.
• Don't build a site that requires special instructions, like best view with, download this plug-in, or you must have Java.
• Don't forget to TEST TEST TEST! Broken links, missing images, misspelled words, scrambled pages in other browsers, etc. make for poor usability.