« Search Engine Promotion and web site promotion »

Introduction

June 2005
This section is a mess, I'll tidy up the pages in a week or so when I go through this directory again

PROMOTING YOUR SITE
I've LOADS of notes and advice to type up for this page I've a lot to do at the minute, but what I'm think of doing is enhancing this section in the coming months. Basically, I need to break it up into relevant topics, relating to search engine bots, links promotion and other methods... Meanwhile, I'll toss in a few random links I've found interesting: How To Improve Search Ranking With Content Update September 2003 Submitting to search engines and site promotion Using web-rings (were applicable) - DON'T! Apparently search engines take a REALLY dim view of these now and many will black your site for it! Putting your guest book to good use (to come) Other methods of promotion, ie local and regional press (to come) In the meantime, if you need advice, just ask and I'll get back to you ~ Paul One site with lots of interesting stuff and a fair decent forum is HighRankings.com They offer "Search Engine Optimization Site Analysis, Custom Reports and Phone Consultations" As well as this they have a great forum. Worth a good look, certainly. Don't be arachnophobic, help out little spidery friends! Here's a few important links on using robot scripts - robots.txt Search Engines excellent tutorial Validate your robots file Here's another little gem, which I've just added to Ackadia myself : Favicon.com Ever noticed that some sites have a custom logo in the url bar instead on the usual Explorer offering and wondered how they did it? Me too, but I never bothered looking until I moved to a far better host and kept getting error logs asking for favicon.ico... All thanks to you folk adding me to their favourites list. Explorer and perhaps all the others now look for this file and load it is it's there. If you want too your site to stand out from the rest, give it a try. As a generalisation: 16 pixels by 16 pixels in the ".ico" Win32 format named "favicon.ico" Placed in the root directory Only good by IE5 or later mind At Favicon.co.uk there's even a cool icon editor online. Use it and email the result to yourself.
Here's a few links, I'll add more as I go on. Most of these will be folk that want your money to submit you to search engines or will magically improve your meta's to send the world to your doorstep. Moi? Synical? My thoughts? "$80 and we will submit you to 1,500 search engines..." Fifteen hundred or fifty million, what does it matter. The vast majority will use the top six engines (Google et al) or perhaps esoteric special search engines. Incidentally, any "offers" I get as spam are automatically trashed. Meta's and keywords: If you know your business / subject do you really need to pay someone to tell you what's appropriate for your site? Well, if it works why not, but here's a few hints anyway. Make it appropriate. ie if you specialise in selling honey don't put in references to chickens. Don't put too many - or too few words in. What individual search engine prefer varies, but 10 to 20 is a good guide. Easy boost: Typo factor! I asked a number of folk to spell "College", I got college, collige, collidge, colledge... If your keyword can be misspelled it will be mispelled, so allowing for this can significantly raise your stakes in the search.. Wordtracker "Discover the right keywords, and you'll see your traffic skyrocket!" SevenTwentyFour.com They offer a number of services for a fee. These include boasting your rating with the search engines and, more importantly for the likes of myself, link validation. There is software that does this too, but that's not cheap either. I normally check links when I edit pages but give the size of Ackadia there's whole sections that never get dusted off! Around June I tend to do my annual revision and redesign the site, re-checking every page. I think we had over 3,000 broken links last time! When you look at it like that, getting the heads up every day makes life easier for the price. Giving them a 30 day trial to see what I think.

PROMOTING YOUR SITE

I've LOADS of notes and advice to type up for this page

I've a lot to do at the minute, but what I'm think of doing is enhancing this section in the coming months.
Basically, I need to break it up into relevant topics, relating to search engine bots, links promotion and other methods...

Meanwhile, I'll toss in a few random links I've found interesting:

How To Improve Search Ranking With Content

Update September 2003

Submitting to search engines and site promotion
Using web-rings (were applicable) - DON'T!
Apparently search engines take a REALLY dim view of these now and many will black your site for it!
Putting your guest book to good use (to come)
Other methods of promotion, ie local and regional press (to come)

In the meantime, if you need advice, just ask and I'll get back to you ~ Paul

One site with lots of interesting stuff and a fair decent forum is HighRankings.com
They offer "Search Engine Optimization Site Analysis, Custom Reports and Phone Consultations"
As well as this they have a great forum. Worth a good look, certainly.

Don't be arachnophobic, help out little spidery friends!

Here's a few important links on using robot scripts - robots.txt

Search Engines excellent tutorial

Validate your robots file

Here's another little gem, which I've just added to Ackadia myself : Favicon.com
Ever noticed that some sites have a custom logo in the url bar instead on the usual Explorer offering and wondered how they did it? Me too, but I never bothered looking until I moved to a far better host and kept getting error logs asking for favicon.ico...

All thanks to you folk adding me to their favourites list. Explorer and perhaps all the others now look for this file and load it is it's there. If you want too your site to stand out from the rest, give it a try.

As a generalisation:

16 pixels by 16 pixels
in the ".ico" Win32 format
named "favicon.ico"
Placed in the root directory
Only good by IE5 or later mind

At Favicon.co.uk there's even a cool icon editor online. Use it and email the result to yourself.

Here's a few links, I'll add more as I go on. Most of these will be folk that want your money to submit you to search engines or will magically improve your meta's to send the world to your doorstep.

Moi? Synical? My thoughts?

"$80 and we will submit you to 1,500 search engines..."

Fifteen hundred or fifty million, what does it matter. The vast majority will use the top six engines (Google et al) or perhaps esoteric special search engines.

Incidentally, any "offers" I get as spam are automatically trashed.

Meta's and keywords: If you know your business / subject do you really need to pay someone to tell you what's appropriate for your site? Well, if it works why not, but here's a few hints anyway.

Make it appropriate. ie if you specialise in selling honey don't put in references to chickens.
Don't put too many - or too few words in. What individual search engine prefer varies, but 10 to 20 is a good guide.
Easy boost: Typo factor!
I asked a number of folk to spell "College", I got college, collige, collidge, colledge...
If your keyword can be misspelled it will be mispelled, so allowing for this can significantly raise your stakes in the search..

Wordtracker "Discover the right keywords, and you'll see your traffic skyrocket!"

SevenTwentyFour.com

They offer a number of services for a fee. These include boasting your rating with the search engines and, more importantly for the likes of myself, link validation. There is software that does this too, but that's not cheap either. I normally check links when I edit pages but give the size of Ackadia there's whole sections that never get dusted off!

Around June I tend to do my annual revision and redesign the site, re-checking every page. I think we had over 3,000 broken links last time! When you look at it like that, getting the heads up every day makes life easier for the price. Giving them a 30 day trial to see what I think.