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Guide 4. Is the Internet for my business?
Promoting your website (screen 8 of 10)
How can someone easily find out about your website?
If you develop a website you need to make sure that people know about it. There's a range of ways to make that happen. You can do it yourself - or assign someone in your organisation to do it, or you can hire a website promoter to do it for you.
Website promotion is still a bit of a new art, so make sure the person you employ has the requisite experience.
Cross-promote using your printed materials
If you create a website or use email, you should include your URL and email addresses on any conventional printed promotional literature you create. Put them on your letterhead, business cards, promotional materials, pamphlets, brochures, newsletters, television and radio advertisements, or anything you publish. Most people are used to looking for these addresses and recognise them when they see them.
Look at where other organisations put their Web addresses. They pop up with surprising frequency in all sorts of places.
This type of cross-promotion is one of the best ways to start directing people to your site.
List your URL with search engines
Many people use search engines in order to find an organisation's website. It is essential to submit your URL to each of the major ones. You can do this online. Below we have linked directly to the 'add URL' or 'add site' sections of some major search engines.
For most search engines you will need a short description of what your website and organisation does. Have a couple of versions available as search engines differ in their requirements and limitations. Have a short sentence which sums up your core business - and a short paragraph as well - so you can choose between them depending on the search engine.
Remember too, that you want people to visit your site so make this description tempting for a potential user. Also have between five and ten keywords thought out. Some search engines will ask you for all this information when you submit a URL, others will want nothing more than your URL. You may also need to supply a contact name, telephone number and email address so you will need to identify the appropriate person in the organisation for this.
Using metatags and titles
Metatags(4) and title tags are used by some search engines as a way of cataloguing your Web screens. Make sure your title tags are descriptive - so that someone searching for that information would come up with your screen. Use metatags as best you can to get better results from search engines.
You can get more information on metatags from 
WebDeveloper(5),
and SelfPromotion.com(6),
and it's worth reading tips on using metatags at Echo Echo(7).
Telling people electronically
If you have an email list of friends and colleagues - send them an email letting them know your organisation is online. Add your URL to your electronic signature when you send posts to newsgroups and discussion lists.
Telling people by traditional methods
Use a media release to tell the world you're now online. Submit information about your site to computer magazines, Internet magazines and the technology sections of the daily papers.
Telling people internationally
Another aspect of Web screen design is to keep the international browser in mind.
Anything that is too parochial may deter a person from interacting further with your site.
Remember to express dates in a way that is unambiguous (such as 7 December 1998) to those who write dates differently, such as the American format of month/day/year. Any times should also be unambiguous (such as 1.30pm) for those used to a 24 hour clock rather than a 12 hour clock.
Addresses should make it clear that you are in Australia. Telephone numbers should have the Australian international prefix (+61). And if you are advertising a summer exhibition, remember that summer in Australia occurs at a different time of year to summer in the Northern Hemisphere.
Web promotion Internet resources
You may also like to read further about website promotion and search engine optimisation at the Site Wizard(8), or sign up for a free Promote Newsletter(9) for more tips and ideas.
| 8 of 10 |
References
- Google http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl
- MSN Search http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx?FORM=WSDD2
- Yahoo! Search http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html
- Guide 9 screen 4 http://culture.gov.au/resources/guides/g9/s4.htm
- WebDeveloper http://www.webdeveloper.com/html/html_metatags.html
- SelfPromotion.com http://www.selfpromotion.com/pageprep.t
- Echo Echo http://www.echoecho.com/htmlmetatags.htm
- Site Wizard http://www.howipromotemywebsite.com/
- Promote Newsletter http://www.howipromotemywebsite.com/newsletter.html
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