Getting started
Just like moving
to a new house, if you publish a website without telling anyone where
you are you will have very few visitors! If your site is for friends or
family, or for a ready made group of subscribers or club members, then
send them your new url address and they will be able to find you. To
reach a wider public it helps to understand the arts of search engine
optimisation and social media networking.
Put yourself in the directory
Submit the url (the address of your website as written in the address bar) to
the search engines. Send it for free to google and bing at the very
least. Now they know you exist and can list you to internet searchers.
Engines succeed by recommending useful material, so they won’t
initially list a new website that has few visitors. But it’s a catch
22 – if your site isn’t visited it won’t be read either. So how to
start? Friends, relations, supporters, members or similar organisations
can all help. Search engines notice traffic to your website from a
number of sources, and will begin to notice you if you can bring 20 or
more visitors to your websites key pages. Send the address of your
website homepage or a key page to as many people as you think will agree
or be interested to click on it, and ask them for feedback. For
example:
Email it to friends and to people you think will be interested in what you have written
Post it on your facebook page or ask friends or supporters to post it on theirs
Use twitter to reach a wider audience, or ask others to help – but be sure to make it interesting!
Ask other websites to add a link to your site, and return the compliment
Send the link to rivals – they won’t be able to avoid looking out of curiosity
Stuck for people? Have a competition with a prize that requires
people to visit your site to find out the answer to a quiz or question
Be interesting and original
Is your material worth
reading? Search engines are very discerning. If your articles and
content are copied from other sites then they will know. Like your
readers they prefer original content. The golden rule is to talk about
what really interests you, and trust that other will want to read it
too.
Set up a stats counter
If you don’t track your visitors you will have no idea how succesful your site is. Google analytics
or blogger carry statistics counters that are easily set up. These
will tell you how many people have visited your site and when,
which posts they read, which country or city they are from, what they
searched for to find you or where they came across you (twitter,
facebook, google etc). This will tell you which of your posts is
popular, where your audience is coming from and where the gaps are if
you want to try targeting a new audience.
All this will help you to manage the content of your website and to build the most effective publicity campaign you can.