Tell Everyone About It 

Prepare your site for search engines and directories

• Don't announce your site while it's still under construction.
• Carefully check spelling and grammar before posting new or updated pages.
• Use a short but descriptive title for each page. Consider using the company name in the title of every page.
• Post a copyright notice or company logo on every page.
• Include a link to your company homepage on every page.
• Make company contact information easy to find.
• Use meta tags to provide descriptions and keywords for search engines. Meta tags belong in the section of your webpage.
  
  meta name="description" content="My company makes this and that."
  meta name="keywords" content="company_name, location, industry, this, that"
  
  

Link Marketing 101

• Prepare a short (25 words or less) description of the site. If you can't describe your site or webpage in a sentence or two, you need to go back to the drawing board. Use this description in your meta tags and when you submit your site to various search engines.
  
  
• Prepare a press release and send it to business associations, libraries, government agencies, as well as local, regional and national media.
  
  
• Select appropriate search services for site submissions. Submit main page and key pages to appropriate directories and search engines. Don't ignore niche services serving regional or special interests. Some experts suggest that manual submissions work best, but a free online service like Submit Express can save you a lot of time.
  
  
  • Major subject directories (Yahoo)
  • Search engines (Google, MSN, AltaVista, Excite, Hotbot, Lycos)
  • Usenet newsgroups
  • Print guides and magazines, if appropriate
  • Local media
  • Regional indexes (Metronet's Minnesota Web Directory, MNGuide)
  
  Note: There are a number of fairly expensive services that offer to register your site with various search engines and directories. They may even promise to improve the position your site achieves on various searches. Before you hire these companies, try to register your site with the major search engines yourself. Search engine positioning is often more related to having a content-rich website that's been around for a while than any tricks that these services might use.
  
  
• Be persistent: marketing is an ongoing task.
  
  
  1. Submit site
  2. Check results
  3. Resubmit if your site doesn't get indexed within a month or so. Resubmit every time the site is redesigned or a significant new page is added.
  
  
• Exchange links with other businesses, local media, government agencies, etc.
  
  
• Use your URL: include the URL in email signatures, and on business cards, publications, and handouts.
  
  
• Track the results
  Check the search engines: Which search engines index your pages? Which of your pages are indexed? How many pages are indexed?
  
  

Learn from others
A poll of small businesses who are or plan to be online found that 80% expect online promotions to help them compete more effectively.

Most of the promotion methods listed in this table are inexpensive but may be time-consuming to set-up and maintain. Which methods fit your business best?

DoubleClick: "Interstitials are ads that play between pages on a website, much like a television ad plays between sections of a program." The most common form are small Javascript pop-up windows that play ads as a page loads or when someone leaves a website. Many people consider them annoying especially if they are over used.