Website promotion starts with the proper design, proper URL submissions and incoming links. Josiesque Designs will provide you with a website that is attractive, professional, and easy to navigate, and will be seen on the Internet and show up in search engine indexing!

SEO - Search Engine Optimization is the beginning of your website promotion. This NEEDS to be incorporated into your design if you want your website to be seen once it is online. View our SEO services here.

Having an amateur web designer create a website that is not found on search engines, because of improper design, is a poor investment. Click here to view some of the popular online marketing programs available.

Read below the details of website promotion that we take care of for you!

The Web has become a popular mainstream medium, forcing businesses of all kinds to get involved to stay competitive. Having a website for your business is like having a salesperson that never sleeps! On call 24/7 promoting your business non-stop! With your competitors already online, what business cannot afford not to have a website? If you're in business sooner or later, you'll need to know the basics of how websites work, and how they are built and maintained. If you don't want to learn all the aspects yourself, or you just don't have the time, you need someone reliable on staff or dependable web design company to take care of it for you.

Promoting your website-

Once you have your website online you need to actively promote it, just like any other aspect of your business. "Build it and they will come" is a big misnomer when it comes to having an online presence. How do your promote you website? There are many different ways available; how the site is designed (content, alt tags, title pages, etc.), URL submissions, getting listed on directories, advertising on other websites, articles, and incoming links from other websites are some of the most popular and efficient ways to drive traffic to your site. You may find companies that offer website promotion services for a fee. However, you still need to know the basics of site promotion for two basic reasons.

Understanding the terms-

Traffic - The number of people who visit your site. The more the better! . Whether you're selling something online, or putting out information about your company, more traffic means more potential sales. Promoting your website is absolutely essential to increase your traffic.

Promotion - Anything you do to increase your site traffic. This includes site submission, advertising, sending out press releases, etc.

Submission - The process of notifying the various search engines and related sites about your website.

Search Engines - Sites that people use to search for information on the Web. This is the primary way that people find websites, so a website owner needs to know as much as possible about search engines and how they work. Although some popular sites such as Yahoo are more accurately described as "directories," the term "search engines" is often used to include all sites that act as tools for people to find other sites.

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First step in promotion begins with design -

Your site should be designed with promotion and marketing in mind. There are millions of websites out there today. Most people find what they are looking for by using search engines and directories. Some people type in URLs they got from a TV or magazine ad or find sites by following links from other sites. But the majority of Web surfers find stuff using one of the most popular search engines: Google, Yahoo, Excite, AltaVista, Info seek, and Lycos. Each of the search engines is slightly different, and people have their favorites, but they all work in basically the same way. The user types in a word or a phrase, hits "search," and is rewarded with a list of links (the "search results") that hopefully have something to do with what's being looked for. The words the user typed in are called "keywords," and the search engine finds links by matching these keywords to ones found in its database.

As a website owner, you want search engines to send you as many visitors as possible. Therefore, you want to make sure that you are in the databases of as many search engines as possible. All the major search engines allow you to register your site free. You can simply go to each major search site, click on "Add Your Site," "Submit URL," or something similarly worded, and fill in your site information. There are several tools available that will automatically submit your information to several search engines at a time. Instead of visiting all the sites and copying and pasting in the same info a dozen times, you simply enter it once, and the "auto-submitter" sends it to the search engines. Auto-submitters include Submit It (submitit.com) and Add It (addit.com).

This is a good start, but isn't enough to make sure your site gets noticed. Think about what happens when you search for something with a search engine. Unless your search term is something really unusual, the engine will come back with dozens, if not thousands, of links that matched the search term. Of course, they aren't all displayed on one page. Only the top 10 or 20 results will be displayed, with a link at the bottom to click on to see the next 10 or 20 (most search engines allow the user to specify how many results will be displayed on a page). Most people seldom or never click on the link to see the second page of results, much less the third page or the thirty-third. If your site doesn't come up near the top of a particular search, then it almost might as well not be in the database at all. When someone searches for something that has to do with your site, you want your site to come up as near the top of the list as possible. In other words, you want to optimize your ranking with the search engine. Making changes regularly on your surface pages will also help keep your rankings higher. Back to top

Key words determine search engines rankings -

Search engines use the number and relative importance of keywords to determine how a page will rank in a particular search. For example, if someone searches on "pancakes," then a page which is titled "The Pancake House" and has the word "pancake" on it in a dozen places is likely to rank near the top of the list. A site that has the word "pancake" on it once or twice will rank somewhat lower. A site that has the word "pan or cake" on it will rank near the bottom, and the sites that have no pancakes, pan, or cakes, will not make it into the search results at all. The basic idea is that the more instances of a certain keyword a page has, the higher it will rank in the results of a search for that keyword. Also, greater weight is given to keywords that appear in things like page titles and section headings.

In the past, every sneaky trick in the book has been used; invisible text, keywords hidden within HTML tags, etc., in the mad rush for higher rankings. Search engines have become very savvy to these sneaky ways and sooner or later, it will hurt you. If they suspect you're trying to abuse the system, they can and will bar your site. As just one example, many search engines will disqualify any site that uses invisible text.

Basically, what you need to do is to think of all the words that someone might type into a search engine if they were looking for a site like yours. Visitors who aren't looking for pancakes (or whatever it is you have) do you no good, so pick only keywords that relate to what your site is about. Normally, most or all of these keywords will be found in the text of your site. Once you have a list of keywords, you want to craft a site description that uses some of the keywords. This should be a brief (many search engines have a limit of 25 words), readable sentence that sums up what your site has to offer. For example, if you're selling pancakes, and you've come up with the following list of keywords:

• Pancakes
• Cakes
• Syrup
• Southern cooking

Then a good description might look like this:

"We sell blueberry pancakes, strawberry pancakes, and every other type of pancakes you can think of! We also have a pancake cook book you can purchase!"

Notice how we worked in all the most important keywords (in reality, your list of keywords should probably be longer, perhaps 10 to 20 words or phrases), and we even managed to mention the most important one, "pancakes," four times. However, the description reads like a normal sentence, not just a list of keywords. Craft your site description carefully, because it will be used in several places. When you submit your site to the search engines, you'll be asked for a description.

The TITLE tag appears in the HEAD section of your HTML page. When a surfer views a webpage, it is the TITLE that appears in the top bar of the browser. If someone selects your site to be a "bookmark" (Netscape) or "favorite" (MS Explorer) in their browser, the TITLE will appear as the name of the "bookmark" or "favorite." Also, some search engines assign greater weight to keywords that appear in the TITLE tag. Your TITLE tag should begin with the official name of your website. It should also include a very brief description of the site. For example: <TITLE>The Pancake House-"We sell every type of pancakes you can think of! !" </TITLE>

There are two other tags that appear in the HEAD section which are important to site promotion: the META DESCRIPTION and META KEYWORDS tags. Some, but not all, search engines use these tags to determine your ranking. The rules for the META DESCRIPTION tag are basically the same as those for the TITLE tag, although it's fine for the two to be slightly different. The META KEYWORDS tag is basically a list of keywords. There's nothing to be gained by packing this tag with an endless list of words - most experts believe that the search engines don't index more than a certain number. Pick the ones that you really think people are going to use to search for sites like yours. Most of the gurus agree that these keywords should be all in lowercase, separated by commas or spaces.
The most important place to include keywords is in the body text of your pages. Again, don't go wild - write in a normal, readable style. But be sure that your most important keywords are mentioned at least once or twice, and consider using some of them in page headings and subheadings. Back to top

Is your site ready for submission?

You may think that a little blinking "under construction" sign is cute, but it's an absolute traffic-killer. Most directories will reject sites that have sections "under construction", and what little traffic you get will consist of one-time visitors. If a section isn't ready, either wait until it is ready, or omit all links to it. The same goes for bad links and other site errors. Check your site thoroughly and make sure that every t is crossed and every i dotted. If you have Java, JavaScript, or other scripting technology on your site, make sure it's all been tested with a wide range of browsers.

Unlike search engines, a directory does not use an automated spider to find sites to index. Instead,
real human beings comb through the trillions of sites submitted to choose which ones are worthy of being listed. For the searcher, this is good, as it means that Yahoo includes far less flotsam and jetsam than search engines do. For the website owner, it's not so promising, because Yahoo is very hard to get into. If you do get in, you'll see your traffic climb immediately, so it's well worth putting some time in to try to get listed.

Another directory that's very important is the Open Directory (http://directory.netscape.com/). It's far easier to get into than Yahoo, and unlike Yahoo, it's pretty easy to get listed in multiple categories, or to have several pages from your site listed (assuming that they really have different types of content). You shouldn't use an auto submitter to submit to Yahoo and Open Directory. Take your time and craft your submissions carefully to these two important sites.

Getting listed can take anywhere from a few days to a few months. Sometimes a search engine just won't list your site at all, for reasons which elude even the most expert Web promotion gurus. For this reason it's absolutely essential that you check all the search engines a month or so after you submit.

If you're not in there, submit again. Some search engines may drop your site from their database for reasons unknown, and some place older listings lower in their rankings. Also, if anything changes on your site (as it should), then the search engines should be instructed to reindex your site. For these reasons, it's a good idea to re-submit to the major search engines at least every six months or so, or any time you make a major site revision.

Valuable Incoming Links

Link exchanges are very valuable for new and/or smaller sites. These outfits let you submit a banner ad to them in return for placing their ad on your site. Every time someone sees the banner on your site, you earn credit towards displays of your banner on other member sites. The largest of these is the Internet Link Exchange, but there is also the Hyper banner and several others.

A time-honored and effective way to build traffic is to exchange links with related sites. Approach your suppliers, customers and other companies that you work with to provide you with incoming links to your website. Content sites that cover topics related to your site, and sites of companies that make related products, are the best candidates for reciprocal links. Most folks will expect you to respond in kind by adding a link to their site. If you like, you can put all these links on a special "links page" so they don't clutter up your home page. If you have lots of useful links, your links page may even become a valuable resource in its own right, building even more traffic for your site. In the search engine's eyes, you have a lot of fingers pointing to you, making you look more important on the Web.

It is important to remember you are competing with thousands of other competitors and everyone wants to be on the top of the first page. Proper SEO and design will always help your search engine ranking, but it does not guarantee you first page placement. There are millions of websites on the Internet, therefore it pays to invest some of your advertising budget into a pay per click program,
and some valuable business directories. Click here to view some of the popular online marketing programs available.

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