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Major Communications
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Major Communications
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by Margaret M. McGillin President, WOWFactor, Inc.
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The marketing of your website is not much different than marketing any other product, service or event. The same basic rules apply, however, there are some specifics about the Internet and the WWW that may require a little research and self-education on your part. The one major difference is cost. Armed with a little knowledge, you can very effectively market your website for little or no cost!
The first step (besides creating an attractive or useful site) is to spend some time surfing the Web and doing a bit of research. Go to on-line directories and search engines to initiate the types of searches that potential visitors to your site would use. See which sites are returned in the "top listings" and visit them. Look at these on-line offerings, which may be websites for businesses similar to yours and make notes about them - what works? - what doesn't work? When on the website, use your browser to view the source of their main page. Look for META tags and embedded text to see what keywords or descriptions they are using, which may have helped with their placement on the list returned for your search. Do these sites offer links to other useful sites or industry-related information? Do they provide visitors with something more than a sales pitch, which would encourage their return visit? Did their site contain all the information you would expect to find? Forgetting that they are your competition - would you be inclined to re-visit their site? What techniques did they use successfully within their website which you implement into yours?
The second step is to "get the word out" about your website. You can do this on-line by making use of the numerous areas available on the Internet which have been created for the promotion of websites. You can do this off-line by remembering to include your website information as a part of advertisements and on printed materials used to promote your business itself.
The most important thing to remember is that a well-promoted website can bring you feedback from current or potential customers, heighten your business's visibility within its industry group, expand your customer base and help you to reach the goals you have set for yourself and your business. All of that makes the efforts put into promoting your website time well spent!
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OFF-LINE PROMOTION STRATEGIES - There are many things which you can do to promote your website in the "real world" as a part of the day-to-day promotion you do for your business as a whole. Some of the ways in which this can be accomplished is to provide information about your website in your company's:
1.Brochures
2.Business Cards
3.Mailers & Announcements
4.Print Advertising
1.BROCHURES: After you have established a presence on the Internet be sure to include the information about your new website in all of your company's printed materials. One of the most important of these are types of items are the brochures which you mail out to potential and current customers. Make sure that the URL address of your website is included on the brochures along with your phone and fax numbers. Remember, your website is now another place through which people may obtain information about your business and its products or services. Along with the website information, also remember to include your e- mail address.
2.BUSINESS CARDS: The same rule applies to your business cards that apply to your company's brochures. It is an item on which you can promote the fact that your company has a website. You want to make sure that the information for both your website and e-mail are noted on your business cards as soon after "officially launching" on the WWW as possible. Again, the website and your e-mail account are now ways in which your customers may contact you. Listing this information on your business cards gives them options (in addition to phone, fax and "snail mail") for how and where they may contact you!
3.MAILERS & ANNOUNCEMENTS: Just as you would "announce" the opening of a new store location or an affiliate office you should announce the launch of your website. After all, it is a new location for your business isn't it? It is a place at which clients and customers may find useful information on your business, place orders for your products, print out the price sheets for your services or read about the newest offerings you are making to the business community. The announcements themselves do not have to be anything formal or fancy. Select a colorful (8 1/2" x 11") paper - perhaps something to coordinate with your brochures and other printed materials - and create an announcement to send out by mail. Invite your customers and clients to "stop by and visit our new location - open 24 hours a day for your convenince!"
4.PRINT ADVERTISING: For those of you who use print advertisements in organization newsletters, the yellow pages, business directories and/or news publications to promote your business, the inclusion of your website information in those ads is an important way to effectively promote your website at the same time you are promoting the business itself. Even a "business card" ad in a community event program can bring traffic to your website. If you have already included your website and e-mail addresses on your business card all the better, since the card can be duplicated for this type of inexpensive advertising and contain all the information pertinant to your new "business location!"
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ON-LINE PROMOTION STRATEGIES - There are numerous areas on the Internet where self-promotion of a website may be facilitated. Since all of them are FREE resources, there is no reason not to take advantage of them. Through their use you can enhance the overall visibility of your website, its ranking in search engines / directories and increase the amount of traffic it receives. The areas of on-line promotion, along with links to some of the specific places that they can be accomplished at, have been listed below. These will give you a great start for marketing your website on the WWW. Remember however that this is not a complete listing of all of the places which fall under these categories. There are lots more. A little bit of research on your part will help you to locate others.
1.What's New Pages
2.Web Directory Pages
3.Web Search Engines
4.Newsgroups
5.Newsletters & Mailing Lists
6.Books that have Websites Listed
1.WHAT'S NEW PAGES: A "What's New" page lists sites that have only recently come online. This used to be the only way to advertise your new website, and is still quite popular. A great many of those "surfing the Net" regularly check these types of listing so that they can visit the WWW "new arrivals." Here are three examples of these types of sites.
•EPage Classifieds - Under the category "announcements," there is a "web announcement" listing where you can take out a classified advertisement for free. They can also create a FREE classified service for your site. •Netscape What's New - Netscape has a "What's New" page but only publishes sites that are "unique" or that represent a good example of a web page. •Open Market - This site provides a daily listing of new commercial sites on the Web. They turn around their new submissions in about a day.
2.WEB DIRECTORIES: Web directories are indexes to various places on the Web, listed alphabetically, by region, or by subject. The most effective sites list by subject or category. Since you want the most people to see your site listing it is very important to carefully choose the category for your site. I always recommend that you be totally familiar with each directory service and how it works before you submit your site. This will help you choose the best category for your site, and might mean the difference between 10 hits/day and a 100 hits/day.
•Galaxy - A must for any website. As with Yahoo, choose your category carefully!
•Infoseek - Infoseek,
similar to Yahoo, contains listings of cites by categories. A good place to have your site listed.
•Internet
Mall - If you sell a service or product over the Internet, they will list your site for free!
•Starting Point - A
great place to have your site listed.
•The Virtual Tourist - This site lists what is on the Web by subject or
region.
•The Yellowpages - You can submit your site only by E-mail to The YellowPages. Be sure to
include your category, URL address and a 2-4 sentence description of your website offering.
•W3. - A very
comprehensive "by subject" directory of many websites.
•WWLib - A comprehensive catalogue of WWW
pages at sites in the United Kingdom.
•Yahoo - A very popoular site, this is a must location for listing your
new Web page. Yahoo will place your site in their directory as well as on their "What's New" page. (HINT
- Have the "name" of your link start with a low letter in the alphabet!)
3.WEB SEARCH ENGINES: Web search engines are quickly becoming the most popular way to find sites on the Web. Users type in what they are looking ofr, and the search engine lists all the sites that it thinks you might be interested in. If a user types "used Mustangs for sale" they might get 100 possible places to look!
There are two important techniques to incorporate on your page before you list your site. First, make sure the "Title" of your HTML document is descriptive. It should stand on its own. (Example: Instead of "Mary's Page" use "Mary's Mustangs for Sale.") The second trick it to think of the keywords you want people to type to find your site, and make sure that they are included near the top of your web page (easier said than done). If you want people to find you if they type "used Mustangs for Sale" you should make sure some or all of these words appear on your page near the top, but not necessarily in any order. If this can't be accomplished the use of "meta tags" on your web documents will help to facilitate this.
Some of the search engines you may wish to list your website with are:
•Alta Vista - Up to 21,000,000 sites indexed (and counting) Alta Vista is another "must" for your website.
They used to be accessible internal to DEC only, but since they have allowed public access their popularity
is increasing quickly. If you go to this site, there is a link to "add" your URL. Pay close attention to the
instructions: you only need to add your "top" page and Alta Vista will find the rest!
•Lycos - Lycos gets its
listing by automatically searching the Web. The entire web. Do nothing and it may find you anyway! But
you can "ask" the Lycos program to search/list your site ASAP. Lycos has over 11,000,000 listings, so
ASAP may be a few weeks.
•WebCrawler - A robot search of the web and one of its most popular search
engines, especially for those of your visitors who may be coming from an AOL account.
4.NEWSGROUPS: Newsgroups are a way in which people "subscribe" to receive information through their e-mail accounts. Some newsgroups are industry-related. Other newsgroups are for a particular subject of an industry. There are many listings of the various newsgroups available on the Internet. Depending on what the content of your website is you may find several that would be interested in sending your website information to its readership. These notices can do quite a lot to promote your website. Since the (potentially) thousands of people who subscribe to the newsgroups want to receive information on the topic the newsgroup covers, sending a notice regarding your website to the group could amount to a few thousand potential visitors learning of its existence all at once.
When you are researching what newsgroups would be most appropriate to send a notice of your website to, make sure to read the instructions each newsgroup will have listed regarding submitting information to them. Not only will it save you time, but it will ensure that you are going about sending the notices the right way. If you send them the "wrong way" the group may not post your announcement.
Although there are several hundred newsgroups which may be appropriate for you to send an annoucment to, one that is appropriate for every website is:
•comp.infosystems.www.announce - This is a moderated newsgroup and is the place in the Usenet Community to announce a new website.
5.NEWSLETTERS & MAILING LISTS: Newsletters and mailing lists are similar to newsgroups, in that the people whom they are distributed to have "subscribed" to the newsletter or signed up to be a part of the mailing list. Another similarity is that the audience of any particular newsletter or mailing list may be in the thousands, helping to "spread the word" about your website to a great number of people with very little effort on your part.
Some of the newsletters/mailing lists that you may wish to send your website announcement to are:
•Net-Happenings - This is a newsletter sent out to a mailing list, also archived on the Web. You can
announce anything about the net here and all postings are moderated. To subscribe, E-Mail to
majordomo@is.internic.net. with the phrase "subscribe net-happenings" in the body of the message. That is
the only thing that should be in your message, otherwise the information will be returned to you.
•Net
Surfer Digest - This newsletter promises an overview of new and interesting websites.
•New Product News
- This is a daily newswire on AOL and Delphi that will include website announcements. Write to Robert
Baker in order to obtain the details and guidelines for submission.
•Scout Report - Mailed to about 20,000
people weekly, with an additional website, the Scout Report welcomes suggestions for their newsletter. E-Mail may be sent to scout@internic.net.
6.BOOKS THAT HAVE WEBSITES LISTED: There are several publications, both in print and on-line, which list websites and offer brief descriptions of their content. Most all of them will accept any suggestion or submission of a website that someone wishes to have included in their publications. Once their staff have received
•Free Stuff from the WWW - Does your website offer something free to its visitors? Some sort of give-a- way item of contest prize? If so, you may want to have your website listed here. This book contains many sites that provide "free stuff" on the web. •Internet Roadside Attractions - Published by Ventana Press, this book specializes in things to do on the Internet. If you website provides something "to do" (apart from reading your company's information) a listing in this publication may be just what you need to bring your site to the attention of those who may be looking for what it has to offer! •New Rider's Official WWW Yellow Pages - The 1996 edition of this book listed over 6,000 sites in 800 pages. The front of the book suggests writing to internet@newrider.mhs.compuserve.com if you would like to suggest a webiste to include in their next publication. A visit to their website will give you the opportunity to list your website within their indexes. •Walking the WWW - Also published by Ventana Press, the most recent edition of this book had 322 pages, 200 of which have listings of websites. The author (Shannon R. Torlington) provides an extensive writeup for each site listed in the book.
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GLOSSARY OF TERMS - Some of the terms that are used within this article, that you may read in other articles or that you may hear when discussing the Internet and on-line promotion, can be somewhat confusing. Sometimes asking for an explantion of the terms can result in your being even more confused by the answer. This is especially true if the person providing the explanation is speaking "computer-ese" instead of English! Hopefully, the terms and definitions listed below will provide clear explanations for some of the more common words and phrases you may run into. Where appropriate, examples have also been provided.
BANNER ADS - A very popular, but somewhat expensive method of promoting your website. They are the little rectangular graphics (40 x 440 is the standard size) that you see near the top or bottom of some popular web pages. When "clicked" by a visitor, they take you to another website. Although most places charge a premium for banner ads placed their websites, there are also a number of "banner exchanges" through which your website may be avertised in this manner for free. To locate these exchanges, go to any search engines / directory and intiate a search using "banner exchanges" as your keywords / phrase.
DOMAIN NAME - Your domain name is what you have registered with InterNIC for your website address - www.yourname.com. This term applies only to those webistes which have their own domain name. If you are hosted under someone else's website, your website is under their domain name - www.theirname.com/yourname.
EMBEDDED TEXT - Similar to meta tags embedded text is a programming tool used to enhance a web page's chance of being found by a directory or search engine when someone has initiated a search. The text is a set of keywords or a paragraph of descriptive text which relates to the content of a web page or a website as a whole. Embedded text should be placed at the bottom of a web document before the "end body" and "end HTML" tags as follows:
<!-- Enter string of keywords or a paragraph of descriptive text here -->
</BODY>
</HTML>
HTML DOCUMENTS - HTML is an abbreviation for Hypertext Markup Language, which is the programming language used to create web pages. An HTML document is a web page.
INTERNET - The large network made up of two or more connected LANS (local area networks) or WANS (wide area networks). The "common" reference meaning is the world wide network used by businesses today.
INTERNIC - This is the "governing body" of the WWW. They are responsible for processing the registrations for domain names and securing the use of those names for the businsses that have requested the name. The charge for their service is either billed directly to the business registering the name or to the company who is providing the service to the business.
INTRA-LINKS - Another name for a link. Specifically it refers to a link used within a page, which will bring the visitor to a specific spot within the same page when they "click" on it.
LINKS - A link is a word, phrase or image, which is programmed to allow you to "jump" from to different areas of a web page, from one page of a site to another of its pages, or from one website to another website. Examples of links can be found throughout this article. They have been used to allow the readers to go directly to the information they wish to read, without them having to read the information they don't want to.
META TAGS - Meta Tags are a programming tool used to help enhance a website's chance of being "found" by search engines and directories when a search has been initiated. A meta tage may consist of a string of keywords or a descriptive paragraph. Whether keywords, a description or both are used in a document, their content should be indicative of the web page or website's content. Meta tags should be placed after the "head" tag in a document as follows:
<HEAD>
<META Name="description" Content="Write your description here">
<META Name="keywords" Content="Keywords or phrases, separated by commas">
</HEAD>
RANKING - Each search engine or directory gives each document they find some measure of the quality of the match to the query someone has made. This measure, which is sometimes referred to as a "score" is also commonly referred to as the website's "ranking."
URL ADDRESS - URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator, but the best explanation is that it is the "address" of where a website page may be found. This term is most commonly used to refer to the "home page" of a website - http://www.yourname.com. However it actually applies to every page of a website, as each document of a webiste has its own unique URL address - http://www.yourname.com/products.html. This is important to know when submitting your "website URL's" to search engines and directories. Most people assume that their website only has one URL address, being the home page for their website. Each page of your website can be (and should be) entered into each search engine and directory. This not only expands the amount of information about your website in a search engine or directory, it also provides a way in which visitors may enter your website through the page on which they'll find the exact information they are looking for. If you are unsure what you "other" URL addresses are, go to any of the pages of your website and what appears at the top of your browser screen is the address of the page you are on.
VIEW THE SOURCE - To "view the source" of a document means to take a look "behind the scenes" at what isn't visible while looking at the page as it appears on your browser. Viewing the document source allows you to see how it was programmed and what it contains. To view the source of a document in Netscape, simply choose VIEW from the main toolbar and then DOCUMENT SOURCE from the pulldown menu which will appear.
WEB BROWSER - The software which allows someone to view the contents of the WWW. If you are reading this page, you are using either a web browser software package (such as Netscape) or using the browser within a commerical on-line service (such as AOL).
WEB SERVERS - A computer that stores web documents and through a special software installed on them, allows those documents to be viewed through a web browser. More commonly, web servers are referred to the "hosting service" for a website and its contents.
WWW (World Wide Web) - An internet service used for browsing websites. It is considered the "Internet within the Internet" and is formed by all the web servers and HTML documents currently on-line.
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If this is all new to you, give yourself some time. Don't expect to learn or accomplish everything overnight. Plan your marketing strategy as you plan out your website and allow yourself a set amount of time each day or week to work on implementing your plan. After you have put your plan into action, re-evaluate it in a month or two, after having checked the "results" in the search engines and directories. Promoting a website is an ongoing process which may require additional or different actions on your part. But your efforts will be well worth the results!
Margaret McGillin is President of WOWFactor, Inc., a marketing and hosting services company that encourages women to be on the web. Copyright©1997 WOWFactor™, Inc. All Rights Reserved
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