Your website is just one of the billion sites parked
on the World Wide Web. Chances are, you don’t
think yours will ever get noticed. We hear your cries
for cyber attention. Here are five ways to get people
clicking on to your site.
1.) Make sure it’s professional looking.
No one likes looking at website that reminds them of
a book report they wrote back in school. Invest in learning
a good web design program (Dreamweaver MX and Microsoft
Frontpage are good picks), and let your creative juices
flow. Make sure it’s compelling, well-designed,
and organized. People don’t exactly find it fun
to weed through haystacks of cyberfiles to get the information
that they want.
On that note, don’t make it a heavy site. Putting
up some flash intros may be great eye candy, but the
average internet surfer only waits 10 seconds for a
page to load, and then they’re off to the next.
2.) Put your URL on every search engine possible.
Putting your URL on business cards and bugging your
family and friends to check out your site won’t
exactly increase traffic. Submitting it to search
engines will make it easier for people to find you,
provided that your webpage carries the topics they’re
looking for. To understand how a search engine works,
think of it as a “spider”: it crawls through
your website, picking up words and information which
would later be indexed in the search engine’s
database. So make sure you pepper your site with keywords
you think are relevant to what people are looking
for. Web directories, like Yahoo!, are operated by
humans who actually categorize the websites themselves.
If you don’t feel like submitting your website
to numerous directories, consider subscribing to sites
like www.submit-it.com, who, for a fee, will automatically
submit your site to search engines and directories
for you.
3.) Link everywhere.
Find other sites that carry similar content as yours
and ask to exchange links. Create banners to be placed
on other peoples’ websites, and offer to the
same for them on your site. Add your URL on your e-mail
signature. Join webrings if you must—there’s
nothing like strength in numbers.
4.) Advertise offline.
The world of cyberspace isn’t enough to get
you noticed. Write up press releases and send them
to local newspapers and magazines. Print out fliers
to be distributed. Just make sure that your site is
already up and running to avoid giving people a bad
impression (no one likes getting pumped up for something
only to get disappointed).
5.) Interact with your readers.
Put up forums or message boards for your visitors
to interact with each other. Chat rooms are often
time-consuming for some, while message boards allows
them to check back every so often for replies. Create
an e-mail list so you can update your visitors about
new developments, and always be open to feedback—that’s
what will make your site even better.
About the author:
For comments and inquiries about the article visit
http://www.ucreative.com
