Getting Your Website Noticed

SEARCH ENGINES

Once your website is finished and on the web, you will want the search engines to add you to their databases. By far the most popular search engine is Google.com, so I am going to focus mainly on their criteria. To learn all about the other search engines and their criteria , go to: Search Engine Watch.

Google has “spiders” and “crawlers” that search the web to see what new sites are out there. Then they add them to their database, so you just have to wait to be added - submitting your site to them won’t speed things up. If your titles and text were prepared properly, they will find you.

The amount of time it takes to get added to the major search engines varies almost daily and depends on several factors. Expect it to take 4 to 7 weeks before your site will show up on any major search engine, and up to 3 months for the smaller search engines, sometimes sooner, sometimes longer. And even then, there are thousands, maybe millions of websites competing for the same positions on the search engines, so don’t expect to see your site come up on the first page of search results right away.

Once your site has been added to the Google index, it will move around. You may be listing #8 one week and then #11 the next. The more visitors to your site, the higher it will be listed. The more websites with links to your site, the higher it will be listed. The more times visitors click to your site from Google and then actually view other pages of your site, the better. If a visitor goes to your site from the Google index and then clicks their “back” button to go back to Google, that is not good for your ranking in their index. They see that your site did not have what that person was looking for so they will drop your site below other, more extensively viewed sites.

Some search engines will let you “bid” on positions: if yours is the highest bid, your site is listed first. If yours is the second highest bid, your site is listed second, and so on. You pay the amount of your bid every time someone goes to your site from that search engine.

PROMOTE YOUR SITE

Be patient, and don’t get discouraged. There are many things you can be doing while you are waiting for the search engines to list your site, and many other ways to get people to your site.

The best way to direct traffic to your site is through self-promotion:

Arrange for “reciprocal links” to your site from other websites (you put a link to their site on your site, and they put a link to your site on their site). Some of my clients have received most of their business from other sites, such as the local Chamber of Commerce site. Remember: the more reputable sites that link to your site, the higher in the search engines you'll be listed.
Put your website address on your business cards, stationery, product packaging, stickers, phone book ads, T-shirts, company cars, bumper stickers, magnets, bulletin boards, e-mails, and postcards… any place a potential customer might see it.
Take out ads in magazines and newspapers - include your web address!
Create a “Hyperlink” message (those blue links that come in e-mails, that you click on to go to a web site) to include in your e-mails to direct people to your site. To do this, just type the entire address in your e-mail, starting with the http://.

For example, for my site, I would type the following message:

Visit my website at: http://www.mozellestudio.com

When I send the e-mail, it will automatically be turned into a blue hyperlink that will look something like this:

Visit my website at: http://www.mozellestudio.com

Now the person who received my e-mail can just click on the blue hyperlink and go directly to my site. If I had just typed:

Visit my website at: mozellestudio.com

it would NOT turn into a hyperlink. Most e-mail programs won’t show the hyperlink when you type it. If you want to see what your hyperlink will look like when your recipient sees it, save the e-mail as a Draft and then open it in the Drafts folder.

If your program has a “Signatures” file, put your website address message in it, so you can easily add it at the bottom of your e-mails.

If you pay careful attention to your text, titles, and meta tags, and if your promotional materials look professional, people will find your website. If your website has what they want, they will do business with you. If they do business with you and are happy with your service, they will do more business with you and tell others about you.

NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE IMPORTANCE OF TREATING EVERY CUSTOMER LIKE THEY ARE YOUR MOST VALUABLE CUSTOMER. Ninety percent of my new clients are referred to me by a satisfied client who felt they got the respect, time, and attention they deserved, and the unique, professional website they paid for.