Promoting Your Site

Site Is Designed. Now What?

Promoting your site to directories and search engines should be the last item on your site’s to-do list. After the site is completely designed and tested and then retested, review your keywords and description Meta tags. Make sure these tags are specific to each page. Promoting your site can be as easy as submitting to one or two directories and search engines or as complicated as submitting to hundreds of engines. For the best results, submit your site to the smaller directories and search engines - not just the major players. It is often easier to get listed in the smaller search sites and because of the constantly changing face of the Internet, smaller site are being bought by the bigger sites.

Promoting your site can be farmed out to companies that specialize in site submissions. If you don’t have the time or experience, this can be the most efficient route because it will take a lot of time and effort to submit a site to some of the directories and engines. However, before farming this work out, do some checking on the company or individual doing the work because it can be done shoddily or proficiently and cost may not be the best barometer. Also, make sure what the company or individual will do and for how much. (Tricks can be done that will improve your site ranking but may also get you removed from some engines once the tricks are detected.) I don’t recommend letting them have complete access to you site unless you have had pervious dealings with them or you know you can trust their integrity. Of course, if you have the time or no budget, you can do your own submitting. While your effort may not be as productive as someone who has promoting experience, it may be sufficient to get your site listed in a couple of the major search sites.

For Do-It-Yourselfes:
There are several web site that help you submit your site to some of the smaller search engines and directories. INEEDHITS.COM allows you to submit to about 25 small engines - for free. A couple of the engines are very specific in the category of site they accept (such as travel or contractors only) but free is not a bad deal.

Now, if you want the best self-promotion site it is selfpromotion.com. You can use the site for free and Self Promotion will even save your submit data for about 4 month. If you are willing to pay a very low fee of at least $10.00, he will keep your data for a year. Self Promotion keeps the site information for each engine and directory up to date. Also, storing your submit data for a year is a good ides so you can return to the site and resubmit if you make major changes or additions.

Self Promotion also provides little tit-bits of information on each engine and directory. This information is not influenced by self-interest as far as I can tell. Using Self Promotion is less expensive than buying any of the offered site submitting software packages. I wish Self Promotion offered a home version, but that’s just me.

If you want to promote more than one site, Self Promotion will allow you to create multiple accounts under your primary account. Because the site is fairly complex, be sure to thoroughly read the instructions before starting on your site promotion. The program is well done and does some stupid-entry checking to protect you from mistakes.

NOTE:
No, I don’t have any investment in Self Promotion (Do not place an "s" on the end of promotion or you will get another site.) other than what I paid to use the site. Also, I do not derive any income from Self Promotion; however, I do wonder why he offers such great software for almost nothing - especially when I see much worse offered for so much more.

Of course, if you have more money than time use a professional site promoter. The results may be better and then again maybe not. If anyone promises you a #1 ranking in any area or for any keyword, they had better be using paid inclusion and even that’s not a sure thing.