Publicizing your website
Now that you've used everything you've learned in this class to create a stunning site, you need to get the word out, and let others know that your site exists.
Banner advertising/Link banner exchanges ?
The early approach to advertising on the web was to purchase banner ads on sites, based on the demographics of those sites.
A 'shareware' approach to banner advertising is the "link exchange" service, which is often free, but with little or no demographic specificity. When you register with a link exchange service, you display an advertising banner (pulled from another server), with the knowledge that your own advertisement will be occasionally displayed on the pages of other members of the exchange. This might contribute some 'google value' to your site.
Jakob Nielsen points out that banner advertising "click through rates" are dropping**, and that Net users are paying less and less attention to banner advertisements in particular, and--as a result of exposure to banner advertisements--are pretty much ignoring just about anything animated.
Search-engine based keyword advertising has proven much more effective.
Search engines and Web directories
Remember what moves your site higher on search engine results:
- distinctive key words
- location of the key words in the url, title, headlines
- the number of pages linking to yours
The major robots won't stumble across your site if noone (yet) has a link to it. You can get the ball rolling by registering your site with them. This is usually free.
Search engine 'keywords' advertising
A new way of advertising that search engines such as Google and others offer is 'keyword' advertising. Search msn.com, for example, for 'Christian College'. Nielsen points out that "Displaying an ad for something that the user immediately wants is much more powerful than targeting ads [e.g. banner ads] based on general user profiling and demographics". With this type of ad campaign, you can also pull your ad, and change it based on "click through rates"--something you just can't do with print advertising.
Use your website address in your e-mail signature
Take part in e-mail 'listserv' discussions, or newsgroup discussions related to the topic of your website. It is considered very bad netiquette to post promotional messages to listservs or newsgroups. However it's fine to include your URL in your e-mail signature. People impressed with your discussion contributions will know where to find out more.
Offer an "e-mail to a friend form" on your site.
The resulting e-mail which actually arrives in the name of a particular person is much more likely to be read because of the personal connection, than 1000 e-mails from unfamiliar web addresses.
Fish food
David Siegel used this term to describe giving something away free on your website, as a means of attracting visitors. This can be
- your own expert advice on some topic--Siegel does this on his own latest, management consulting site, by putting up several mini-management lessons.
- a limited edition of your product (see the search engine registration sites above, or ws-ftp-le)
- With the bandwidth-friendly, and fairly widely supported MP3 format for music, bands are giving away a track here and there.
- Opt-in newsletters on your topic (but please, hold the spam!)
Changing content
Constantly adding new, and timely content to your site will create a reason for people to return to your site.
Building community
The term "building community" is a buzzword you'll hear around the internet a lot. Siegel refers to it as creating a place where people want to hang out. This term often comes down to setting up a system whereby visitors to your site can contribute to its content.
See
Traditional means of advertising
Don't overlook traditional advertising, as a means of getting out the word. Many organizations promote their URL in their traditional advertisement programs.
It's important to have a simple, easy to remember URL (another reason that the home page of your site should be some variant of 'index.html').