Attracting visitors to your site takes more than adding your site
to search engines and directories. Your Web site must be easily found
and linked in huge traffic locations.
That is where a new breed of promotional companies come in--Web
promotion organizations are quickly popping on the Web as more and
more companies realize they need help directing traffic to their
site.
Some organizations will get the word out for you at no cost. For
example, Submit It! will register your site with 15 different catalogs
or Web search engines such as Yahoo!, Starting Point, WebDirect! and
The Yellow Pages Superhighway. But according to online promoters, that
is not enough.
"There are hundreds of search engines and directories and that
number is growing every day. Submitting your URL [address] to some
search engines is a good start, but to succeed on the Internet you
need ongoing, targeted marketing," said John Weiss, vice president of
marketing for WebPro-mote, one of the Web's largest Web promotion
companies. WebPromote has helped clients such as Lexus, Coldwell
Banker and Car & Driver Magazine design promotional programs for their
Web sites. Promotional services usually run between $175 to $1,200 a
month.
Announcing Yourself
The first step in online promotion is submission to the top
directories, search engines, and other listing sites that Internet
users are using every day. With more than 500 search engines and
directories, each one works differently, and has its own quirks and
delays. For example, some will classify your site by the number of key
words that are prominent on your first page. This could be a menace,
as one company found--because all of its text was embedded in
graphics--the only word that came up was their copyright on the bottom
of the page.
For more exposure, The Postmaster, a Web promotion company, will
announce your URL in as many places as possible (over 350). The
service costs $500 for a single use and $1,000 for four uses.
"Finding and submitting to these sites is very time-consuming
because directories take more than a month to list your site," said
Ryan Scott, publisher of The Postmaster. Companies need to make sure
their site appears in each of these directories under the correct key
word and with the right description, he said. Insuring that your site
appears correctly requires follow-up, and many times, resubmission.
Another way to increase traffic to your site is to purchase
advertising banners on popular Web pages. A new company, SponsorNet
Media Market, now sponsors a real-time online auction for ad space.
Link-Up With Prominent Sites
One of the greatest features of the Web is the ability to link to
other sites. Companies need to search out various links and
continually add new ones to their list in order to increase traffic to
their site, said Scott. Some links are free and others are paid.
For example, marketers at automaker Lexus have links to hundreds
of other sites with headings under style, travel and leisure. The
company has links to auction house Sotheby's New York as well as the
Armani site and Conde Nast Traveler.
Web promoters can also help you get on award sites. Becoming part
of a site such as What's New and What's Cool can bring additional
traffic to your site as well as boost the credibility of your site.
The Golden Tiger Awards, Excellence in Oddity Awards and Web
Select are just a few of the general topic award sites out there.
Information about these sites and hundreds of others can be found on
the Web site Promote It!