Website Promotion

When your website goes live your target audience needs to know you are there.

Identifying the Keywords

The first stage is to research the best keyphrases to focus on. These may include successful keywords (for an existing website), competitors' websites and using keyword tools available online. The best keyphrases can be applied to the website file names and folders, page titles, meta description and keywords, headings, paragraph text and image alt tags.

Letting Search Engines Know

Google Webmaster Tools allow you to provide Google with a sitemap which lists all your web pages. Yahoo and ASK also use sitemaps. A robots text file can be used to tell other search engine crawlers where to find the sitemap.

Links and Visitors from Other Websites

Building incoming links can give instant traffic, and is an important factor in getting listed on Google. Google analyses incoming links and assigns your website a PageRank out of 10 which influences where your listing will appear for a particular search. Ways of building links include exchanging links with other websites, submitting to web directories, profiling on forums and submitting articles to online magazines.

Paying for Visitors

If you have the budget for it, paying for clicks can be a good way to gain immediate traffic. Google and Yahoo both have pay per click advertising.