A Few Words About Our Host

An industry design veteran who has successfully conquered both coasts, Drew Stauffer combines innovation with web standards to bring a blend of usability and creative vision to every project. As Director of Development for Wildfire Productions and CEO of Alibi Productions, Drew leaves no development stone unturned. He has published many articles on web standards and has been featured on WebProNews and Google News, and his companies count The Hyatt, BMW, and Michelin among their many satisfied clients.

If You Build It They Will Come?

Posted on Monday, April 10, 2006

You’ve designed and developed a beautiful custom website and written user stimulating, rich content, but can anyone find it? After the development of your website is complete, it’s time for the promotional wheels to start turning. Promoting one’s website can be a daunting task without the necessary tools and know-how.

There are many different ways to promote your website besides just submitting it to the proper search engines. Submitting your website is a good first step but the majority of traffic that good websites get is not from search engines. If you have rich content that users readily need then they will naturally check back to your site and even link to you, thus boosting your Search Engine Results Page Rank.

Websites are weighed by search engines on a 20:40:40 rule:

20% of the weight is based on the construction of the website….the code
40% is based on the actual content of the website
40% is based on incoming links

Incoming links are one of the best ways to boost your Page Rank (PR) on the search engines. Simply asking other websites to link to your site is one way to go about things. If you politely write a letter to the owner or webmaster, they might be willing to link to your site. This can provide a quick boost to your PR, especially if the incoming link is from a site with a high PR. Research other sites that are similar to yours on the search engines and look for ones with a high PR. Contact those companies first to talk about a link exchange. However, avoid link farms at all costs. Link farms will ultimately hurt your site in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Promote your website

Writing and submitting a press release can be an extremely effective way to get hundreds of incoming links to your site with little effort. Articles that are well written and useful to readers can be published on many different national news forums. Every time the article is published it will have a link back to your site. Whenever Alibi releases a new site, I always give my clients one free press release article. This effort immediately gives my sites an advantage over others that are simply submitting them to search engines. I also give my clients free monthly corrections and updates so that they can keep expanding their website. This not only builds lasting relationships with my clients but also gives them the ability to constantly grow and adapt.

Content is King

Keeping your website in good standings on the SERPs is an ongoing effort. Websites can become out-of-date very easily if you allow them to. Users don’t return to websites that never change. If you want to increase your traffic and exposure of your website, you have to keep in interesting. Offer ways for the users to become involved, like questionaires, mailing lists, or contests.

Maintain your website by updating the content on a frequent basis and promote your website as much as possible. Always be on the look out for new ways to expand your website. By keeping your website interesting, you will in turn keep the users interested.