| Getting
People to Come to Your Site! - Friday, 31 July 1998 |
A web site without visitors is not a web site at all, it is a wastage of
cyber space, wastage of resources, wastage of bandwidth. It is a shame to have so much
wastage and most of this stuff isn't recyclable as well! So how does one ensure that the
web site stays popular with the surfers? Well, here are just a few strategies you can
employ! Enjoy, and I hope you get your visitors knocking on your door, or pounding them
down, hehe!
- Site Content
Always remember that when people come to your site, they must see something,
make sure your site is worth the visit! Or else you get loads of first time visitors who
do not bother bookmarking your site. Not worth it, it seems... So make sure you know about
something. I always recommend people to write a bit about themselves. Why? This helps to
get things started, I always get questions like, "What should I base my homepage
on?" I always answer, write something about you! Once they get started, they know
that they cannot stop, a WEB would evolve, because they would write about their interests
and soon enough, things get out of hand, like me! HEhehe!
- Submission to popular
search engines
Search Engines! They form the crux of the WWW this is where people from all
over the place seek information, if you site has useful information, they will come! To
allow the submission of your site to be as effective as possible, follow this hints!
- You need an EFFECTIVE META tag
Search engines employ selfless workers (slaves more like) called spiders or
bots. These bots go to wherever they are told and they "surf" the WWW following
links etc to sites. What do they look for? META tags.
- How do I make a good META tag?
Good META tags are difficult to generate. META tags are actually HTML code
which you put between your <head> and </head> tags. This is a sample of a META
tag:
<HEAD>
<TITLE>My web site</TITLE>
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="keyword1, keyword2, keyword3,
keyword4, etc">
</HEAD>
Keywords are hard to think of, because you want something special but you also don't want
it to be too special. Like my site is on Emiri Nakayama, so I have keywords that look like
Emiri Nakayama, Nakayama Emiri, photo gallery, music, links, web ring etc.
- Good healthy tips for a good keywords site:
- Do not! Spam your keywords, spamming means repeating the same
word over and over in the content attribute.
- Do not! Capitalise your keywords, like EMIRI NAKAYAMA and so
on.
- Why?
- Search bots will dislike your site and REFUSE to index it, uh
huh, these machines have feelings too, if you are made to read the same word over and over
and read CAPITALISED letters, I am sure you'd get pissed off as well, right?
- Good search engines list, you will find a
"SUBMIT URL" or "ADD URL" somewhere there.
- Or allow these pages to do the submission for you:
- Or purchase this program and let it do the
submissions for you!
- Submit Wolf Pro - http://www.achieveusa.com/wolf.htm
- it has the widest database on search engines - Check out this extract :
- The URL Submission Software preferred by
webmasters and web professionals is Submit Wolf PRO!
- With a database of over 1100 sites to promote
your URL and 800+ fully automated submission scripts, dramaticaly increases your site
traffic.
- Saves your keywords and descriptions for
future use
- Provides a complete reporting of all sites it
was submitted.
- Use it as often as you like.
- Customize and add your own scripts and sites
- "Stop drooling, you're making a mess!.
" - Alex :-)
- Special Banner Programs
Banners are great, all you need is a KICK @$$ banner, this is a true fact,
if you have a good banner, visitors come to your site more often. Before I got my present
banner, I get 1 click per 160 displays, now I am down to 1 click per 40 ish displays. So I
reckon that is a great percentage and improvement. Generally I stick to just LinkExchange,
because it is free and most free web page hosting services ALLOW LinkExchange banners, and
it is getting partners left right and center, it is worth the investment to link up with
LinkExchange. They have a large member database. So they get you more exposure.
- What to look for in a banner exchange program.
- Are they well established?
A bigger banner exchange is more reputable, they also have better resources,
their banners would load faster!
- Does their banner take a long time to load?
Some banner exchange servers are slow at spitting out banners. So choose one
that has a reliable server. A banner program that loads faster in your area might not be
the same for someone in Malaysia or Japan. Keep that in mind.
- What kind of rules do they have?
Some banner exchange programs provide you with cash, on a click through
basis. Is this rule against your host's rules and regulations? If you are unsure, please
check with your WWW host! You don't want your homepage to be DELETED because of not
knowing the rules right? AHEM!
- Do they have nudity / partial nudity? Are they
safe for KIDs?
Making the WWW a safe place for the younger generation is such a chore
nowadays. Rude language, improper idealogies, all come together on the WWW. Some banners
are testimony to this fact. So if you are planning to make your web site safe for kids.
Make sure your banner exchange program is reliable enough to screen out the unwanted
material!
- Web Rings
Web rings are a popular and a new invention. They can increase web traffic
by 20% to your site if you join a relatively SMALL web ring. When the web ring gets
popular, the traffic you get can be pretty small. Take it this way, law of supply and
demand, demand to see sites with a particular topic is a constant but the number of sites
get bigger! So the demand is more spread out to the supply! So do join a web ring only if
you need it, some web rings have bad images, that take ages to load. So again.... take
care of the loading times! However, they are good because they make the need to search for
sites with the same topic redundant!
- Popular downloads or resources
Does your site have a good thing that people can download? This will ensure
more people coming to your site! Guranteed! And if you can get people to interact with
you, I would think that this will increase the chance of people coming to your site more!
- Awarding People
The number of award giving sites have increased over the years! It is simply
amazing, the types of awards you can get. And some sites have established themselves as a
CRITICAL award giving body. Their award is highly coveted and only given out to sites that
are popular and good. So if you can make yourself known as the respested award giving
body... success and traffic to your site guranteed!
