Promote your website

Steps

There are quite a few ways to promote your website. However, there's nothing like getting "natural hits" from search engines like google and yahoo. Your website must be search engine friendly.

In this lesson I'll discuss the vast topic of SEO- search engine optimizaion. When someone tells you to SEO your website they're telling you to make your website more search engine friendly.

Is your website search engine friendly? Make sure using the following list:

My website has good content and I update it regularly: Put the benefit of other people before your own benefit. Don't scam anyone. Make sure your content is fresh, lively, and up to date.

The title tag is maybe the most important part of your website. It should be between 5-8 characters and so try avoiding words like "the", "is", and "are". The title tag should be descriptive and relate to the content of your website.

The keywords that you want to appear on search engines should be contained in the meta tag (<meta name="description" content="..."> and <meta name="keywords" content="...">) of your website. Don't overstuff the meta tag: it's maximum 255 characters. Also don't include keywords that aren't in your website. The meta tag, like the title tag, should be on every page of your website.

The keywords that you want to appear on search engines should also be in the first paragraph of your index page. Don't overload the first paragraph. Keep it descriptive and write it as if search engines didn't exist. Trying to cheat the search engines will only result in your website being penalized.

Get your code validated by W3 validators. If you don't have much experience with making a website don't make a flash website or any other plug-in dependent website. Using CSS and HTML 4.01 to reduce all those unnecessary tags is an excellent idea.

The navigation on your website should be easy. Every page on your website should atleast be linked from one other page on the website.

Get links to your website from related, relevant, and reputable websites. This is very important. Ask websites with relevant content to link to your website (ofcourse they'll want something in return), submit your website to directories like DMOZ, paid inclusions etc.

Use a good hosting company and a good domain name. Always research these two. The domain name that you chose for your website might have been at some time someon else's domain name. They might have tried to cheat search engines and thus the domain name got penalized. That domain name is useless now. Don't waste your time and money on it. As for the hosting company, you don't want one with a bad reputation because google doesn't like them.

Have a sitemap on your website that gives a detailed description of every other page on your website.

And I'll repeat this one again: Have good content. Don't spam anyone.

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• This page was last modified 17:00, 4 August 2008.