|
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.
|
