1. E-mail Announcement & Informing people

Write a brief invitation and give your url describing what your site is about. Don’t blow your trumpet high with words like ‘Wonderful’ ‘greatest’ ‘ultimate’ as people will not find it convincing. Encourage people to visit with your themes and have something free to offer like download facility, poster or cartoon through mail or any gift articles so that people are likely to peek at your site. Don’t leave the subject line blank and don’t send with attachments too. When you socialize or meet friends, make sure you give your url to them.

2.  Register with Web Directories

Web Directories are the yellow pages of the Internet. Yahoo, Goggle,  GoButton, Questfinder, yellow pages, etc. Even many portal sites has this feature of listing like 123india.com., List your site under the right category.

3. Register with Search Engines

Search Engines are the key to your site’s online exposure. Take time and fill up the forms at major search engines. Some of them require to provide a short description of your site in addition to your url. So, be prepared with a brief background and site details. It’s wise to test your site prior to submission. Test it Free with www.netmechanic.com (free main + 20 pages) or any, other which gives your Site Report in your Email box. Once tested, submit to Search Engines. These search engines are vast varying from free submission to paid. Some offer 35 search engine submission free and for more, some ask for fees. You can always submit for free! Hitbox.com is one link from where you can submit to various search engines. Some known search engines are yahoo, google, altavista, metacrawler, Trackerdogs, etc.

4. Use Site Submission Services

Submit-it and some of this kind submits sites to more engines than one can manually do and save a great deal of time and typing. Web Position Gold (webposition.com), Inktomi etc is also a free-based service, which helps to submit to various search engines.

5.  Use Mailing Lists

There are thousands of newsgroups and mailing lists out on the web. Choose and pick the right one but don’t spam. There are rules out there on the web. So, send mails to as many as you want but be sure to put the code below about the spam rule. Many newsgroups resent promoters. So, make your choice cool.

6. Use <META> Tags

Meta tags let you specify the key words related to your website. These are the short descriptions about your site like if it is a valentine site, you need to put the key words as love, meet, ecards, message, marry, etc. These meta tags should be placed between the <TITLE> tags in the html section of your index page.  The descriptions appear below page titles on a search response. Tagmaster and metamedic can be used to create and check meta tags. To generate keywords www.jimtools.com helps you to find more than a thousand words related to your website.

7. Register multiple pages

It is wise to register multiple pages for more hits through the search engines. You can submit the main url for eg. http://www.sambhaav.com and also along with this,  submit more pages like http://www.sambhaav.com/commerce.htm   or angna.htm etc. Submitting pages individually is a good idea especially when your site is deep and has well defined sections. Make sure to have a proper title to the site and make sure to put its own meta tag keywords and descriptions.

8. Register with New Sites

Whatsnu.com, the fresh pick section of Netscape and Starting point, stpt.com specialize in highlighting newly created sites. Fill up the forms and scores of surfers and reviewers look for sites.

9.  Promote others on your site

Promotion schemes are good for more hits. Give links to other sites provided they link to your site. Some ideas are to publish stories, jokes, etc. of employees, friends and associates on the site and in turn, if they have a web page, they can link you and even if not, they will do mouth publicity about your site. Link to Cartoons sites too who link you back. If there is enough server space, allow one page Homepage to Business people, build free homepages for voluntary organizations, etc. engaged in social work. This will give mileage.

10.  Give Awards, Take Awards

If your site is Excellent and with good coverages, give away Awards by reviewing sites of surfers. By doing so, thousands of web sites online will ask for your Award if you have an attractive Award scheme along with a good image. Thus, by giving Awards, you can invite people on your site. Even visit many Award giving sites and fill up your details. If you are lucky to be considered after their viewing your site, you are awarded. Visit for such Award winning site http://members.tripod.com/holy_98 which has won the Canadian Award, etc.

11. Get Linked/Give Link

Allow people with submit a link section and request them to give you a link too. Thank those who have been around your site. Request them to give you a link too. If there is a rush, give the category like personal, business, computers, etc. according to their exposure online. You can even make a Link Logo page for eg. www.indiavisit.com/sambhaav ( Sambhaav place a link to this site and they, in turn make a Logo page for you on their site)

12. Banner Exchange

Banner Exchange links are surprising and you do not know who has linked you. Simple! Sign for a Banner Exchange at MSN and all one has to do is paste the html they give on your site and in turn, use the online feature at MSN to make your own Banner or make a Banner in Powerpoint and upload the same to MSN. Once you paste the Banner html, your Banner given is placed on somebody else’s site. Thus, you paste someone else’s banner on your site and your Banner is shown to other sites too! They send you the report showing your Banner to 400 sites and your site placing their banners 200 sites and visitor figure who visit by clicking your Banner.

13. Advertisement schemes & E-mail Advertising

There are schemes on many sites who have good hits or sites with good coverages who allow you to place your Advertisements with fees. Pick up if you want the exposure on big sites. For eg. www.sambhaav.com . Such sites has various schemes of Advertisements. One can pay for the advertisement appearing in the Newspaper as well as get a coverage on the web site.  E-mail Advertising is placing an advertisement in the email Newsletter. If the volume of traffic is big with more people subscribed to the email newsletter, the Advertiser gets a good coverage.

14. Print url and email on all stationery and advertisements.

Business cards, Letterheads, mail covers, brochures etc. should all carry the url and email id. Offline promotions are just very important as online efforts.Big companies do require to expose their url through Commercial Hoardings / Billboards.

15. Site Statistics and Counters

The number of people visiting your site is known by the counters and stats. The browsers used and screen resolutions of visitors, number of pages clicked. This helps in improving site and promoting too. Host servers too provide Stats which give you feedback about your visitor who come from where, what time, how many pages viewed, what browser is used, which url recommended, etc.  Many people put wrong Hit counter which rolls down the hits every half an hour.. There are also invisible stats and the greatest part about hits is that webmasters can put in their starting figure what they like and keep changing the figures too! This is fooling own self. There are sites which give sample report of Stats and calls for a few *$* for right report. Professional Webmasters cheat by copying sample reports and change the figures and report to the web site owner. So, keep figures right to know your site status and thereby work out for better promotions. After all, you can’t fool people all the time. So next time if someone reports his Hit List, Watch Out – The figures may be twisted and you can of coz get sample Reports too which you can fill up and submit to hook for web business or get advertisements, whatever!

Calling Netizens….

Ezines are the most sure fire way to Expose your Website or Homepage! Till we inform you about the Ezine tricks in our next coming issue, if you are on Internet, sign up for these Informative Ezines – All for Free!

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Peter Thiruselvam @ pete@webpronews.com  www.Webpronews.com

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Freesouls & Kidsfreesouls dedicate the Computing column to
MR. DEVANG MEHTA - IT Genius "President NASSCOM"
Our Computing Role Model
May God rest his soul in peace
May his inspirations help us strive for Excellence!