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Why Promote your Website ?

To get visitors to your website you need to promote it. If you don't, how can anybody know your website exists? Of course, I suppose you have some content on your site that you want to share with others. When promoting your website your goal is in fact to generate value traffic to your website. Visitors coming to your site by mistake are of no value whatsoever.

There are two ways to promote your website:

First you have to inform new visitors. Second you want as many visitors as possible to return to your website. A returning visitor is most probably a happy one, which means he/she will tell all friends about the new wonderful website (= your website). "Word of mouth" is the most efficient promotional tool that exists. See below: blogging.

Why do visitors come back ?

Easy use and simple menu Fast Download and display Organization of content 74 % 65 % 40 % Regularly updated Quality of content Quantity of content 58 % 57 % 30 %

The statistics above are from www.webpronews.com/. There are some more reasons - all below 30% - and not included here. You can note I have divided the reasons into two groups:
- Organization of website and webpage content. See Don Pedro's How to Write Internet Webpages.
- Website maintenance: How to Maintain my Website.

The main tool internet surfers use to find and then to explore your website is an Internet web browser. It's a tool over which you have absolutely no control. Still you must take into account the different browsers your visitors use when you plan your website promotion strategy.

Banners

A regular banner is a simple advertisement on some other website(s). Few experienced surfers pay more than a fleeting glance to all those banners floating around on the net. It is a not very cost effective advertisement.

If, however, you are selling something on your website and a certain percentage of your visitors are buying your product or service, then you could as an alternative promotional tool think of "pay-per-click" (PPC) inclusions. It means you pay a very small amount (hopefully) for every visitor that comes from a certain source.

List of pay-per-click resources:

PPC Asia Pay per Click - UK (Europe)

Pay per click Analyst  (US) Te Respondo Brazil "pt-br, es"

Search engines

It is estimated that in the US most commercial sites get about 85% of their customers from search engines. That percentage depends, of course, on the kind of website we are talking about. Only about 20-25 % of all searches made, are by people wanting to buy something, i.e. "commercial searches". The rest, close to 80% of all searches, are by people who are looking for information because they have a problem they want to solve, i.e. "non-commercial searches".

My Shipping Job Links site has a completely different distribution of visitor sources ( 2006 to 2009) :

Please note; these data are for my website only, all Internet statistics are website specific. The Google ranking for most of the webpages of that site has come up, so the search engine traffic has risen compared to incoming links and returning visitors.

From the website traffic data ( "visitor statistics" ) for the websites I'm running, I can see indications Google has increased the importance of external ( in-coming ) links, while internal links are getting less importance.

Much of website promotion involves your webpage optimization for search engine spiders. The spiders are a lot like text browsers. They like plenty text (like "book worms") and ignore graphics completely. The only thing about images the spiders "see" is the "alt" tags text - don't rely on graphics to convey information.

When a website is new almost all new visitors will come from search engines. This is, in other words, the most important promotional tool you have in the beginning. Don't start submitting your site to search engines before it's ready. See Don Pedro's Webpage Optimization.

When you start a new website or add a new webpage, you can use a XML Site Map to inform Google and other search engines. You get a very fast update of your website or webpages in their data banks. You decide yourself about page priority and how often you want the search engines to up-date certain pages.

The XML sitemap doesn't guarantee a new website will be registered, but as a new website cannot have many incoming links, through the site map the search engines may find your webpages faster than if you have to wait for incoming links first. See Don Pedro's Google's Sandbox.

Basically it's true that what is good for the search engines is also good for human visitors.

Most surfers are looking for specific detailed information or may be for a solution to a specific problem (incl. step-by-step instructions). The more specific sub-subjects - one subject per webpage - the easier it is for your visitor to find what he/she is searching for. AND what is easy for your visitors is also easy for the search engines.

To get started with submitting your website to the search engines, use the sources below. You don't have to start with the big (and difficult) ones. The BIG ones often "buy or borrow" their data from the small ones, which in fact offers a "back door entrance" to the big ones!

Also, most of the small search engines are "hungry" for new pages, because small wants to grow bigger. Keep a look out for new search engines, while they are still new it's usually easy to get your website listed.

List of search engine submit resources:

- Add Me - Aquarium City (UK) - Free Web Submission - I Need Hits - Self Promotion - Submit Express - Submit Plus

If you use two or more resources, keep track of which search engines you have already submitted to. Don't submit twice or re-submit to same search engine within 2-3 months time. Don't expect results very fast. Use automated submission only to get started, just when you have put your new website "on-the-air". Many search engine operators do not like automated submissions. "Is the webmaster lazy, or what?" Some prefer to find new websites by themselves.

Fore more search engine info see Don Pedro's Search Engine Marketing and List of Search Engines.

Outgoing Links

Your outgoing links are also a promotional tool, because the search engines are reading these. These links do not affect your webpage ranking in the search result, but serve to confirm search engine classification of your website, as long as the outgoing links go to websites in your own sector.

Therefore you should link only to non-competing websites in the same sector as your own website. As you don't want to chase your visitors away, you try to make links to such websites that offer additional (in depth) information relevant to the text where you put each outgoing link. The other website should "add value" to your own website.

Don't put up out-going links just to get incoming links or because other websites have out-going links. Make links that are useful and beneficial for your visitors. Point your links to content that enhances and enlarges your own content

It's better to link directly to a relevant webpage instead of that website's homepage. The relevancy is important for the search engines and you make it easier for your visitor. End of year 2006 Live Search started to penalize websites for exchanging unrelated reciprocal links, i.e. links with link farms or through links exchanges.

To help monitoring your outgoing links go to: free link scan. With this online scan you can check 10 pages per hour or 50 pages per day for free. The link scan gives code line numbers, which makes it easy to correct your code when you use a HTML editor that also gives the line numbers.

You can also download Xenu's Link Sleuth for free, a links checking program [0.8 MB] (also available in German). This program can check all your outgoing links every day if you want, as well as any other website's links page. Together with the "wine program" Xenu works also on Linux.

Xenu checks max 999 links on any website. If you are using some banners and/or traffic data collectors ( visitor statistics ) on every webpage the number of "real" links checked can easily drop down to 600-700 for a medium size website - 20-30 webpages. When you have more links than that you can use Backlink Watch - online links checking. I haven't found any limit to the number of out-going links this program checks. Because it's an automated program you should, however, manually check each reported error before you delete a link. This checking tools also reports links with "nofollow" tags.

You cannot control the content of those webpages you are linking to. That content can suddenly change and may be turn non-relevant. Therefore you need to check the content on those webpages you have linked to at least once per year. Google 2006 seems to pay stronger weight to relevant links.

If the website you are planning to link to have a links page, check it first with "free link scan". The internet average for number of broken links on a webpage is 6-7%. If the webpage you are thinking of have 15% or more broken links - don't link to that website. Such a high percentage means the website isn't maintained at all.

When a link to a certain webpage on another website breaks, go first to the "Home" page of that website. If the "Home" page is up and running, check the new URL for the webpage you are concerned with. When you put the mouse arrow on the link, the URL for that page is displayed in the lower left corner of your monitor. Some websites force all visitors to the "index" page first. In such a case you have to make your link to that webpage too.

Even if the "Home" page is down, do not immediately cancel that link. There can be temporary server problems at the other end. Instead go back to that website 2-3 times during the next week. If the website is still down after 10 days - better cancel the link! If there was some important information on the other webpage before, check that homepage again after 3 and 6 months, in case that website has been reorganized.

Whether you up-date weekly, monthly, or every 3 months depends on the number of links you have and kind of content on your webpage(s). If you have to do a lot of changes or additions ( up-dates ) every time you check your webpages the interval between your up-dates is too long. One to three months is usually a suitable period, depending on the subject.

With each outgoing link you can use target="..." to make the link open in a new window. Once your visitor has checked out the webpage where your link goes and closes the window he/she will be back on your webpage again. The standard expressions with target are: "_self", "_parent", and "_top"; with these the link will open in the same window - using target with these is therefore unnecessary. Target="_blank" will open the link in a new window same as any other word, except for the standard ones already mentioned.

Incoming Links

Incoming links means increased visibility (exposure) and credibility for the website the links point to. Links from other websites are at least as an important promotional tool as an inclusion in the search engines. In fact, incoming links are extremely important. The traffic from links tends to be continuous, while search engine traffic is changeable and unreliable.

When a search engine finds an incoming link to your website from an other website already in that search engine's data bank it will rise your ranking. Obviously your website, in this case, must be in the same sector as the website that has given a link to you. Additionally the link also means that somebody in the same sector has judged the content on your website or webpage as good enough or even "very good".

Before you can even start looking for websites to give you incoming links you must produce good interesting content. When you think your content is good enough, go to back links checker. Use a website with a high Google PR number that doesn't have any outgoing links. You will get a very good list of those sites that link to the website you chose to check. These are then websites, that have already given outgoing link without receiving any link in return.

There are many webmasters looking for websites with good content, to which they can link. To give a link back to you they require good content on your website. If you suddenly get a spontaneous link without asking for it - be happy! Obviously you have a very good website!. Additionally this kind of one-way incoming links are the very best ones.

One very big problem is: what is good content ? It is not the stuff you write for the search engines. It is something your visitors will "salivate over", because at last he/she found exactly what he/she was searching for.

Do not link to a competing website. Try to put yourself in the mind of that other site owner or webmaster. Will your website "add value" to that other website without "stealing" visitors away? If the answer is "Yes", then probably you will get a link. Often you have to provide a link back, a so called "courtesy link", so that other website should add value to your site too. If you get no answer after asking for a link from 3-4 different websites, may be your content is not good enough. Or may be you have chosen the wrong kind of websites!

When asking for an incoming link, always include a suggestion for preferred description of your site. Even if the other site doesn't use any site descriptions, it will (hopefully) wake up the other webmaster enough so that he checks out your site. If the other website uses link descriptions, the chances are good your description will be adopted as such. In such a case you keep a small control of how your website is described on other websites. Make the description short and accurate (to the point) and avoid marketing slogans.

Many design "advisers" say you should enclose the code, when you ask for a link. I think that is to underestimate the webmaster. Anyway, many web masters prefer to write the code their own way. The most you can hope for is, that some will use your description. There are, however, websites using your logo + a short text on their links pages. In this case it's reasonable if you include a short code with URL for your small size logo.

How to get those incoming links ? I would say the best way is to build a website or webpage people will "salivate over" and absolutely want to link to, whether you give permission or not.

The "perfect link partner" would be:
- a well designed website with a lot of traffic,
- in same sector but no competitor,
- somebody with high ranking (1^st results page) in at least one big search engine, and
- with content adding value to your own site.

Search engines have started devaluing incoming links that are obvious reciprocal links, especially non-relevant links. Once you have had a link to another website 6 months or more, may be that other webmaster will put up a backlink to you without you even asking for it. If not, you can ask for a link (after 6 months) with a description that is adapted to the context on that other website or page. This makes a links exchange look less obvious. In other words, be generous with your outgoing links, and keep them relevant.

Beware of "Affiliated links programs". These are based on the idea that every member uploads one or several links pages to their websites. These are link pages with links to all members of the same program. All bigger search engines recognize these in their search paradigms and weed them out! Because they are duplicates, even if the copies are on different websites. These programs have been partly replaced by "automated link programs" (like "Link Metro"). Don't use these either.

When the "copies" are thrown out it's possible the rest of your webpages go too. Your content must be unique = original, not a copy of what somebody else already have on his/her website. Your subject doesn't have to be unique but the way you present it.

"Traffic Exchange" programs are like cousins of the affiliate programs. They just produce traffic to your site, while the program webmaster is the only one who earns some money on it. You get traffic (= hits on your counter) without any further result for yourself.

Is Branding Important ?

There are many opinions about that. Before I made my first website and started doing some SEO I had got some marketing background. Without checking what opinion others had, I started with branding my websites with "Don Pedro's" from the very beginning already in 2001.

The discussion among webmasters has been rolling back and forth, for and against. However, when I look at my server logs and my traffic collectors' data I see many search engine queries for donpedro's "this and that". These are called "navigational queries".

A good brand name is easier for people to remember than a website's URL. So I know these are returning visitors - how would they otherwise know to look for "donpedro's" ? And the search engines have started to take notice. I wouldn't be surprised if the ranking algorithms for most search engines give a few extra ranking points to websites with this kind of queries. It's another way to show popularity.

In 2009 Google finally officially included branding as an important factor in their algorithm. My answer to the question is therefore: Branding is very important.

It's really a question of exposure and progresses like this: A surfer sees your company name / brand name many times at several places / websites until finally gets curious and decides to investigate. The surfer visits your website. It wasn't because the last advertisement he/she saw was especially effective. It happened because the visitor previously had seen the name so many times that he/she got "familiar" with it. Compare what AdWords reports on keywords and impression ( exposure ) behaviour.

Linking Guide-lines

If your website is brand new, then you need incoming links so that the search engines can find you. The more incoming links you get the faster they find you. But don't overdo it. It's not natural if a brand new website gets 1.000 or more incoming links in one or two months time - be moderate.

To get incoming links to a brand new website is BTW a real challenge. So how to do ? Get this long list of suggestions on how to get links to a new website.

With an already existing website you can adopt a slightly different procedure. If you find an URL to an interesting website or webpage, check out that website first so you are sure it exists. Then you answer the following questions:

1. Does the website or page have content my visitors would be interested in? Without "stealing" them away from my site?
   
2. Is the website well designed?
   
3. Does the website have outgoing links? If not - don't even ask for a link.
   
4. Are there many dead links on that webpage or website? The internet average is about 6-7% broken links per webpage. If the webpage you are looking at has 15% or more broken links don't link to that one. You can check any webpage for broken links at "free link scan".
   
5. Is the content up-to-date? If not - don't link to that one even if broken links are less than 15%.
   
6. Dr. Watson checks the HTML code for you - if many coding and/or spelling errors it indicates sloppy website design and careless maintenance. Don't link to such a website.
   
7. What's Google's ranking number (Google toolbar)? Is it 02/10 or 07/10? The higher number is, of course, better, but don't cut out a website only because it has just 02/10. If it's well designed and continually up-dated and maintained the number will come up in a few years time.

If your answer is "Yes" to those questions you regard as important - do link to that website.

Try to figure out where your target group is getting their information, because that's where you need to get your incoming links. Give both visitors and search engines many different ways ( paths ) to reach your website's content.

For your own site to achieve even a ranking number of 03/10 with Google requires a lot of incoming quality links. One way to check the "Internet neighbourhood" of a certain website ( including your own ) could be with TouchGraph, which gives a graphical view of connections between related websites. See picture below.


TouchGraph view of this Website September 2007
(Click on picture to get a full screen version, 45.6 KB)
The three overlapping circles just above the centre of the picture represent different parts of this website. Each one with slightly different, but related content. Some other parts are spread around as well, with different connections. See Pandia for additional info and suggestions.

Outgoing Email

Most email systems allow you to write a standardized "signature" that is added to every outgoing email message. Below your regular greeting you should add the URL (internet address) of your website. When you write it including http:// most email systems will directly turn it to a link. It's then very easy for the receiver of your email message to check out your site.

Together with your website URL you can make a short "slogan", which then turns every outgoing email message into an advertisement.

When your website has been "on-the-air" for a while you will probably start getting inquiries about something in your content. Remember the chances are better than 70% that the person asking you something is a non-native English speaker. He/she may very well be a poet in his/her own language, while the phrasing in English may be is not so fluent. Only about 8% of the world population have English as their native tongue.

Still you should answer every email inquiry in a friendly way - as soon as possible, regardless of how faulty the phrasing of the question(s). This together with your content is the only tool you have for influencing the "by the word of mouth" rumour. And you will influence it, either positively or negatively - the choice is yours.

Content, content, content

A clear logical structure is a prerequisite for a good content.

The content is the most important website promotional "tool" you can fully control yourself. Do not bother too much about your style - as long as you avoid peculiar slang and offensive language.

Stay away from "highfalutin" language only some experts will understand (and may be realize is nonsense). If you have to use some terms not in "normal" use, check with an International Dictionary, like: Oxford Advanced Learner's, you have got the absolutely correct meaning. Use the exact term for what you want to say. See also Don Pedro's How to Write Internet Webpages.

More than 75% of Internet users are non-native English speakers (2006) and the percentage is increasing all the time. Last but not least: never underestimate your visitors.

Regularly up-dated quality content and an increasing number of incoming links gives better ranking with most search engines. The page content should be visitor-focused in a straight forward easy to understand language. Good website design and content takes time to show results, but those results are long-lasting.

Website promotion is really about building your reputation. It's true everywhere in the world that "a bad word" travels very fast, while something good takes a long time to get around. In the end honesty pays. Do not try to cheat search engines or others. Once you (= your website) gets a good reliable reputation the word will get around. It's slow but the effects are firm.

"Visitor Statistics"

The term "Visitor Statistics" is completely wrong. You can never get any information on the visitors. What you get is mostly technical data on the computer your visitor used. Therefore the correct term is: "Website Traffic Data".

With these data you will get a picture of how your website traffic is developing and from where your visitors are coming. Probably you want to target a certain region of the world. The traffic data will provide you with information for that as well as info + ideas on how to develop your website.

There is an old marketing rule that says:
1. Know your customers (visitors).
2. Know what they want.
3. Give them what they want.
It has been valid for hundreds of years and it is still very much valid today. It's also valid for search engine marketing, when your "customers" are the search engines.

More about traffic data, see Don Pedro's What is "Visitor Statistics" ?.

What is Blogging ?

There is an American "fad" called blogging. Some people insist a webpage is static. But that is not so - a webpage is what you make it to be. Blogging is thought to be like "every man's" dynamic tool. There are special blogging servers and blogging search engines. A blog is in fact a small notice, may be just one paragraph only, containing some kind of "new" information. When this notice has a link to a webpage it is thought it is "dynamic", may be because you can put up a new note every hour it you want.

The "Blog" of today evolved from on-line diaries. The entries are written in chronological order and displayed in reverse order. "Last come, first served". The word "webblog" was first used by Jorn Barger in 1977, while the shortened version was first used by Peter Merholz by changing it to "wee blog" in 1999. The "wee" soon was dropped and since then it was just a blog or to blog.

Strictly speaking "Dynamic" or "Static" has nothing to do with updating. See Don Pedro's Dynamically Generated Websites.

One should also consider the fact that the US Internet infrastructure in 2004 covered the whole country (USA) and the user's market was getting saturated. To generate increased use of internet services and more income for the service providers new services were needed. This is where "blogging" has come in.

At the top of this page I noted: "word of mouth" is the strongest website marketing tool you have. On the Internet this could be paraphrased to say "by word of blogs" i.e. marketing a new website by spreading a rumour. For this purpose blogging is suitable. In US it has even got a new name: Buzz Marketing.

According to a report only 16 out of the Fortune 500 companies are using "blogging". Those 16 were the low performers, none of those doing well used "blogging" (12/2005). In 2006 only 9% of the top executives in these 1000 Fortune companies agreed that blogging was "growing" (05/2006), but they were not monitoring blogs about their own company.

Since end of 2005 the big search engines have been picking up too many blogs, so the importance of blogs as a promotional tool is diminishing in some sectors. Learn how to use blogs, they are not suitable for everyone.

There are some questions you should ask yourself before you start a blog:

• Do you need it ? i.e. why do this?
  
• Who are the people in your target group? Are they search engine users? Are they reading blogs or are they "bloggers"?
  
• How much money and time are you ready to spend? A successful blog requires more and continuous time and energy than a website.
  
• What platform shall you use? Where are my targets blogging themselves?
  
• How are you going to promote your blog? You need different tools compared with a website.
  
• How are you going to measure the success of your blog? How you are measuring will influence the design as well as your choice of blogging tools.

The links to your own website that you include in your blogs (or press releases) do not have much effect in themselves. It's the links other people give to your website that count. Therefore the blogs (or press releases) must contain interesting information that is valuable and useful to many people.

Long term customer relationships are not served by blogs - does your customers read or publish blogs themselves? Blogs are most suitable for websites selling cheap products. The average company would earn more from improving their product pages than from running a blog.

RSS - What is this?

RSS is something so new so that even the meaning of the letters "RSS" isn't very clear yet. It could be = "Really Simple Syndication" or it could also be = "Rich Site Summary" and of course, neither description says very much. Why it's called "Rich" I don't know - may be the supplier hopes it will make him rich?

RSS is a blogging technique, and a RSS "feed" is a XML file. (See RSS 2.0 Specification.) Mainly RSS itself is used as a method for syndication of content and blogging as such does not depend on RSS. To "syndicate" means to make an article available to a central point/organization, which distributes it to many different users (newspapers/magazines/websites etc.).

A postcard "newsletter" would probably be more efficient than RSS promotion wise in the long run. If you produce a postcard on your own computer or download it from the Net, check with your postal authorities it conforms with requirements in your country before sending it.

The above was what I said in early 2004. Now (2006) the effectiveness of e-mail marketing is declining due to virus fear and improved spam filters. Some Internet marketers have started using RSS instead, may be that will also be abused and soon go down the drain.