Slacker's Guide to HTML: Website Promotion Guide

You spent a ton of time making your site absolutely awesome. You have great content. You update often. You have a smart design.

But no one ever goes to your website. So what do you do? Here's some ideas...

Basics of Website Promotion

If you're not rich or incredibly savvy then website promotion is a never-ending uphill battle. You really need two things to get to the top of those search engine rankings: quality of content and an intelligent marketing strategy. Depending on your goals your strategy can vary from simply getting some links from similiar sites to attaracting 10,000 unique visitors per week. Before working on your strategy you should define your goals.

Is your goal to have lots of readers or lots of revenue? Is it to promote your off-line business? Or is it just attention for you or your band or a showcase for your writing or art? Whatever it is you want out of your website you should tailor your strategy to meet those goals.

Submit to Search Engines

If you want to get listed then you shouldn't just sit around and wait for them to list you. Go to them. Go to a couple search engines right now and enter your URL for submission. If you can't figure out how to submit your site then just go to that search engine and search for "Add URL along with the search engine name and you should be able to find the place you need to be.

When submitting you site make sure you don't use ALL CAPS and you don't make stupid statements like "The Best Site Ever!" or something like that. Also, make sure you get the address right or else you will be a big damn idiot. If they ask for a descriotion or keywords then be honest, be concise, and be clear.

After you submit you must then wait. They won't tell you when you are "officially" listed. Just search for your site via URL and then via some choice keywords one day and see if you show up.

Reciprical Links

"You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours..."

That's the idea behind reciprical linking.

Reciprical links come in different forms. Bloggers often have lists of suggested links on their sites, and they tend to refer to these lists as "blogrolls". Sometimes a group of webmasters with content focused on the same topic will form alliances called "webrings" in which they will display a banner or link system so that visitors can access other members in the ring easily. And many others just simply link to people.

To get in one of these webrings or on a blogroll you need to contact the person in charge of the site.

In a blog's case you should contact the blogger. In the webring's case you should contact the, uh, the lord of the ring.

And in another site's case you should just contact whomever is in charge. Word your request politely. Link to them so that you're not going there empty-handed. make sure you have good content so they will want to link to you.

And be tenacious but not annoying.

Smart Meta Tags

Meta tags, as noted in the meta tags guide, are your site's means of communication with search engines. And if you're not speaking the right language then the search engines aren't going to bother listening to you. So let's review the language:

<meta name="keywords" content="Armenian, hip hop"></meta>

The keyword element states that the page concerns Armenian hip hop, and if someone does a search for those words then your page should come up as a search result. You can list as many keywords as you please. Keep in mind, though, that repeating keywords will likely have your page removed from a search engine's listings (or discounted). In addition to that, if you are trying to get visitors without actually earning them, then they won't stick around and will likely never return.

<meta name="description" content="A page about 
Armenian rap music, it's history and culture, and 
the role Jesus Christ has played as one of Armenian 
hip hop's recurring themes."></meta>

This tag tells search engines the description of your page. This can be as long as you wish, but it is doubtful that a search engine will list the entire description if it's too long. It's wise to use some keywords in the description, as search engines also rely on this data to rank pages. As always, though, don't go overboard because a good search engine knows the difference between quantity and quality. So don't be an asshole.

<meta name="revisit-after" content="30 days"></meta>

This meta tag tells the search engine to visit your site again in 30 days. Obviously, you can change the interval length between revisits. This is good if your site's description, keywords, or material changes often and you would like your site to be listed differently often.

<meta name="distribution" content="Global"<>/meta>

Tells the search engine that your site is meant for everyone, and that it can be distributed globally. You can also specify "local" and "IU". IU means Internal Use, which means that it's basically not meant for the public and should not be indexed by search engines.

There are some other meta tags, also. Check out these "robot" tags that tell search engines whether or no to index the page, and whether or not to index pages that are linked to from yours. There are many combinations of the robot tag.

<meta name="robots" content="index,follow"></meta>
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow"></meta>
<meta name="robots" content="index,nofollow"></meta>
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow"></meta>

And you can put all these together by just lining them up like so:

<meta name="keywords" content="Armenian, hip hop"></meta>
<meta name="expires" content="September 30 2008"></meta>
<meta name="description" content="A page about Armenian rap music"></meta>
<meta name="author" content="John Smith"></meta>

Google Adwords