Promoting your web page and blog

Intro

Unless your page is among the top of search engine results, no one will know your page exists. The Internet consists of BILLIONS of individual web pagesand millions more appear every day. This page will help improve your search engine rankings and page quality using the secrets and tips we learned over the past twenty-years. Computer Hope currently averages over 340,000 unique page views a day and over nine million unique a month (around 50 million hits).

Secrets and tips

Below is a listing of quick links to get to a specific category on this page. If you have not yet read through this document we suggest simply reading this whole page so nothing is missed.

Content

Create new and original content

By far the most significant first step any site can do is create new and original content. Search engines use web robots (spider/crawler) designed to search a website and grab keywords and text from the website to be listed on their search engine. If your site does not have a lot of content, your chances of being found are significantly decreased. For example, if your web page has ten pages and your competitor has 100 pages, it is a lot more likely that your competitor's website will be found first.

Update content frequently

Update and add new content frequently. If your site contains frequently updated content, visitors have yet another reason to return and bookmarkyour site, search engines will also visit your site more often. We recommend creating at least 2-3 pages of new content weekly or even better a new page every day. Sites that have not been updated in over a month are generally considered abandoned pages by most visitors.

Scripts and other tools can also post new content as it happens, hourly, or daily. For example, the Computer Hope home page has a computer related history event posted daily, monthly computer tips, daily computer word, and new forum posts and pages posted as they occur. This gives a visitor several different reasons to visit again.

Add content even if your site only sells products

Most users do not visit a website only to purchase a product. If your site is trying to sell something it should have complete information about the products such as how to setup the product, how it can be used, reviews, and comments from other users about your products. Not only will this bring more visitors to your web page, it is also likely they will convert into visitors that buy what is being sold.

Format the content

Format your pages content in an easy to read and scan format. This can be done by creating easy to read, short, and catchy headings as shown on this page. Doing this will make your web page more enjoyable to read and help reduce your pages bounce rate. For the heading of each page, we also suggest surrounding it with the HTML <h1></h1> tags. The heading tags help match keywords and can improve your search engine rankings.

Make sure each page has enough content

Individual web pages that only contain only a few dozen words do not help your page or your visitors. Make sure that at least every page has 200 words. Adding one or more pictures with those words can also help grab the visitors eyes.

Free

Most people on the Internet expect information to be free. If your site contains free information, be sure to mention it, for example, "free computer help" is much more catchy than "computer help". Do not abuse the word free though, visitors who follow a link with the impression it is free and find the page is not free, requires registration, or has some other scheme will immediately leave the page.

Domain, titles and URL

Domain

If you plan on doing anything with your web page, a domain name is a must. When registering a domain name make sure the name is a short, simple, and easy to spell and remember. For example, computerhope is a much easier name to remember and type than computerhopesfreetechnicalhelp. Many of the common domain names have already been taken, so try to think of as many names as possible. Doing a whois lookup is an easy way to determine what domains are available, the GoDaddy whois is an example of such a lookup.

Page title

Most search engines use the title of your web page when displaying your site in their search results. Therefore, it is always a smart idea to put keywords into the title of each of your pages. However, keep the title short (at most 5 or 6 words), use words that a potential visitor may be searching for, and make the title understandable. For example, this pages title is "Secrets of promoting your web page", this title is not only descriptive but also has often used keywords such as secrets, web page and promoting.

URL Keywords

Add keywords into your URL by adding subdirectories that are your keywords. For example, the Computer Hope CD-ROM help section is: http://www.computerhope.com/help/cdrom.htm. As you can see, this URL has three keywords: computer, help and cdrom. Use this to your advantage, search engines today convert your URL to text and use it as a method of indexing your web page.

Caution: Do not get carried away with using keywords in your URL. Having a short URL is also a good method of making sure your link is shared. Nothing worse than trying to send someone a link to a web page in an e-mail or chat only to find the link is four-lines long.

Navigation and Layout

A visitor will leave immediately if they are unable to navigate your website. Studies have shown the typical view time when first visiting a page is two to four seconds, visitors who do not immediately understand how to navigate the site or see what they are trying to find will leave. Internet users know that if your page does not have what they are trying to find there is plenty of others that will.

Link to all sub pages from the main page

Your main page should link to all of your sub pages; if this is not possible it should at least link to your main sections. When designing your website, make sure visitors can find what they are looking for within a few clicks. This can be accomplished by making lists of sub pages or categories, adding your own search engine, or making a site map.

Sub pages should link back to main page

All your sub pages should link back to your home page or other main sections of your main page. Many of your visitors will not visit your page through the home page, make it easy for visitors to go there from all sub pages. For example, a company logo or name should link to the main page, a navigation bar it should have a link that says "home", and the bottom of the page should also link to the home page for visitors looking for more information.

Have a search engine

If your page does not have a search engine, consider using a third-party custom search engine. These custom search engine scripts can often be implemented into your site in less than a few minutes.

Keep it simple, clean, and fast

Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS)

Follow the KISS principle, if your website is too busy or over complicated your visitors will become frustrated and leave.

Do not make the visitor scroll

When first visiting a web page, most visitors do not scroll down. Keep the important and eye-catching information on the first viewable page. If your page has a lot of information, create bookmark links in the first section so visitors can jump to what interests them. Finally, do not make a visitor scroll horizontal, a web page that scrolls left-to-right causes frustration and most visitors will not even realize they need to scroll and leave.

Keep your headers small

The top headers of all your pages should be small, at most one to two inches in height. A large header will make the visitor scroll down on every page and is often distracting for users who visit the site frequently.

Test with other monitors and browser

Not all users have the same browser, monitor, or computer. Make sure your web page looks good on all computers and monitors. A page displayed on a 17" monitor will look different when displayed on a smaller 15" monitor orlaptop display. Consider using online tests to see how your web page looks with different browsers.

Avoid large images and Flash files

Avoid large images or flash animations that take a long time to load. Not everyone has a broadband connection, visitors with a modem or in other parts of the world may become impatient with slow load times. As we mentioned earlier, the average view time on a website is a few seconds, grab the visitors attention immediately with a fast-loading page. If your page needs large images consider loading those in a separate page.

Test your load times

Make sure the overall load time of a web page is at or around four seconds. Fast load times keep visitors on your site and search engines like Google use a web pages load time as part of their algorithm for ranking your page in the search results. Run portions of your web page through online tests to help determine the slow portions of your page.

Meta Tags and robots.txt

Meta tags

Meta tags are hidden text found in the source of a web page queried by search engines and browsers. Below are two examples of Meta Tags to add into your HTML code.

Description and keywords example

The description of a web page is by far the most important meta tag to have on every page. The description describes what your web page is about and is often used as the description shown in search engine results.

Today, the keywords meta tag is not as valuable as the description, but can still be used to list keywords that relate to your page.

General Rules of Meta Tags

Like all other HTML code, any website's Meta Tags can be easily displayed. View the source of some of your competitors' web pages to get ideas.
Search engines use no more than the first four lines of the description and keywords meta tags. Do not enter more than four lines of text, it is not used and could cause your site to be delisted.
Post the description and keywords of information that is actually on the page. Visitors tricked into visiting your page will not stay and this form of deceit can cause your entire site to be blocked by search engines.
Because of abuse, search engines like Google, no longer look at the keywords meta tags.

Today, most search engines no longer only rely off Meta Tags, some do not even look at them. Some people recommend skipping meta tags, however, there are still plenty of search engines that use these tags, we strongly recommend at the very least to have a description.

See the meta tags definition for further information and other possible options with meta tags.

Robots.txt

Search engines use robots (spider/crawler) to crawl and index your web page automatically. These robots often rely on the robots.txt to tell them what they can and cannot index on your website. If this file is missing from your web site, your website may not be indexed or indexed properly. Make sure to at least have a basic robots.txt in your root directory.

Further information about this file can be found on the robots.txt dictionary definition page.

E-mail

Respond as quickly as possible

If your page accepts e-mail, reply to every e-mail as quick as possible. If your page experience large volumes of e-mail, make sure to let your visitors know that replies may take a while.

Top 10 tips for keeping your e-mail inbox clean.

Mention your web address in your e-mails

When replying or sending out any e-mail, always make sure to have a signature with your companies name, web address, and your e-mail address. This helps remind users of your website's address and is an excellent free method of free advertising. However, keep the signature small, it should be no more than three-lines of text.

Do not send SPAM

Most users ignore SPAM, sending out unsolicited e-mails can get your e-mail address or domain added to lists that prohibit you from e-mailing servers that check these lists.

Let others know about your site

Links

Link to other popular related pages and see if they participate in link exchanges. One of the ways Google ranks pages is by who else links to your site and how popular their site is. The more inbound links to your page the more likely visitors will find it and the higher it will appear in search results.

Friends and family

Let your friends, family, coworkers know about your website. Not only is this a good way of getting the word out, it may also provide additional feedback about your website.

Social network

Participate in online forums, newsgroups,, or other community driven sites that relate to your websites topic while letting others know about your website through a signature or a link. However, do not visit only to promote, provide constructive feedback and suggestions; otherwise its likely the post will be deleted or you will be banned.

Remind users of your site

Keeping your past customers and visitors reminded of your web page is a crucial step in getting them to return. Below are some helpful tips in keeping recent visitors reminded of your web page.

Facebook fan pages and Twitter

Creating a company Facebook fan page and Twitter page can be an excellent way to keep your community up-to-date and a terrific way to post promotions.

Top 10 Twitter tricks.

RSS feeds

Creating RSS feeds is an easy way to keep users up-to-date on all website updates and new content. For example, Computer Hope's RSS feeds use the free Feedburner service, which allows easy control over RSS feeds, the ability to subscribe to an RSS feed over e-mail, and the ability of posting RSS posts to Twitter.

Newsletter and mailing list

E-mail newsletters and mailing lists can be another fantastic method of keeping users up-to-date. Sending monthly newsletters and your latest deals are both excellent examples of how to remind past visitors and customers of your site.

Birthday reminders

If your company logs birthdays send your visitors or customers happy birthday notices. Most users appreciate the personal touch, even if automated.

Watch the traffic and logs

Analyze web page visitors

Many web hosts today offer their users with charts that show traffic information. Try to view this information and determine what pages are popular or where people are leaving.

Use Google Analytics

The basic web host statistics are a reasonable first start, however, nothing compares to the free Google's Analytics service. Google Analytics reports provide a better idea of how users are using your website and is better than anything any web host could provide.

Act on the information

Examine how people are entering your site and where they are exiting andbouncing. If a page is popular, link that page to other related pages in your site. If a page has a high exiting or bouncing rating, improve the page and if needed add more information.

Examine the popular search keywords visitors are using to find your page. If a page has search keywords that do not relate to information you have, add it to your page.

Forum, bulletin board, or other user generated community

Create a community

Create an online forum or comments section that allows visitors to make their own comments, questions, and posts. Creating a community is a great way not only to build a brand community but at the same time generate more content for your site. If you already have a forum make sure that you read through our tips for making your forum more popular. See theComputer Hope forum for a working example of a forum.

Join other social networks

Register and become a member of popular online communities and social networks such as Facebook, StumbleUpon, Twitter, and MySpace. If you have a company, product, or service also consider creating a fan page on Facebook. After joining StumbleUpon and getting the toolbar make sure to visit your page and give it a thumbs up so other StumbleUpon users will see your page.

Submit to major Search Engines

Google - Today, Google is the ranked as the most popular and well-known search engine on the Internet and often the only search engine used by many people. It is not necessary to submit every page in your site, however, to accelerate how quickly the Google bots find your site submit your main page to the below link. What makes Google unique is their proprietary PageRank algorithm, which makes the most relevant pages shown first.

Direct Google add link (new window)

Yahoo - Another one of the most visited and known search engines on the Internet and now part of Microsoft Bing. To add to Yahoo visit the below link, sign into your Yahoo account, and submit your URL.

Direct Yahoo add link (new window)

Search optimization services and other paid services

There are several companies and people that claim they can help improve your search engine rankings. While it is possible for these services to improve your rankings, it is not likely going to happen for search queries you want or is so insignificant that it is not worth the price. It is more beneficial to follow all the free recommendations in this page than any paid service.

Analyze search engines

Google

Google has one of the largest (if not the largest) search engine indexes on the Internet. Use it to your advantage to view who is linking to you or your competitors and what they are saying about your site. Use each of the below searches to see how your page is indexed and who is linking to you.

site:www.computerhope.com

In the above example, Google search displays any page they have index containing computerhope.com. Replacing computerhope with your domain is an easy way to determine how many entry points you have into your website. The more entry points a page has the better chance a visitor is going to find your web page.

link:http://www.computerhope.com -site:computerhope.com

In this next example, Google displays all pages that link to computerhope.com but are not computerhope.com. Replace computerhope with your domain to get your results.

Setup Google Alerts

Finally, setup a Google Alert to send you e-mails anytime your webpage or company name is mentioned. This is a easy method of finding new pages and articles linking to your site or mentioning your service.

Setup Google Web Master tools

The Google Web Master Tools is yet another excellent free service Google provides web masters. This service provides you with a quick look at search queries used to find your pages, crawl errors, links to your site, keywords, diagnostics, and much more.

Alexa

Finally, Alexa is another excellent place to check and compare your pages statistics. If your site is indexed on major search engines and popular enough you will be able to view your sites traffic rank in comparison to all other page on the Internet, view a graph of traffic details, rank, page views, page visits per user, and much more.

Watch for errors
Bad links

Bad links are a growing issue with web pages and an easy way to lose visitors. Never change any of names or location of your pages, even when redesigning a web page. It is likely that those pages are already indexed in search engines, linked on other web pages, or even bookmarked. Removing or moving your page is like starting all over, and could cause a significant reduction in new visitors.

If your server allows for custom error pages, always take advantage of this ability. A custom 404 error page that directs visitors to other pages on your site is much more useful than a blank 404 error page.

Use the Google Web Master Tools to also quickly identify bad links.

Spelling and Grammar

Your page is going to be seen by thousands or even millions of different types of people, watch your spelling and grammar. Make sure to run a spell check on your pages and proof read before posting the page. A page that has spelling and grammar errors will cause the more educated visitor to leave your site.

HTML, CSS, and other programming errors

HTML, CSS, or other programming errors can cause your website to not load properly or to not work with older browsers. Make sure your web page is going to work with all recent Internet browsers and that anyone who may have disabilities is going to be able to read your page. Use free online services to check your site or blog for errors.

Grade your website and let it age
Let it age

Like a fine wine many search engines (such as Google) are also incorporating a websites age into the overall rank of a site. This means a site that has been online since 1998 is going to have a higher PageRank than a site that has only been online since 2005. When setting up your domain make sure it is going to be something you will be happy with forever.

It is also a good idea to register your domain for several years into the future. This helps Google and other search engines in determining the domain is not just a temporary domain setup to scam people.

Grade your website

Finally, after doing all of the above steps and suggestions rate and grade your website or blog using online tools.

Credits to:http://www.computerhope.com/

Source:http://www.computerhope.com/

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