FAQ: Publicizing Your Web Site

Summary

After you've built your web site, you have to let people know how to find it. There are hundreds of millions of web pages. There are two ways for people to find you: directories and search engines.

Directories are lists of sites that are maintained manually. The list of "The Best Hollywood Web Sites" is collected, edited, and updated by people. The result is a list that is accurate in that every site will be a Hollywood site, but possibly not comprehensive, in that people make mistakes and perhaps they haven't found everything. Since the Yahoo list is maintained by people, it holds only several million entries.
Search engines are lists that are automatically maintained by computers. A computer searches the net and creates an index to web sites. The result is an exhaustive list of 292,000 sites that contain the word Hollywood. Since the list is maintained by computers, it can hold hundreds of millions of entries.

Many people treat directories and search engines as the same thing. That's fine for them. But you should be aware of the difference because they work differently.

There are easily several hundred search engines on the web. However, many of these are small, specialized, or unknown. As usual, most people only use the large search engines. You only need to register with the top search engines. You should also register with the Yahoo directory.

Web Directories

A directory is like the Yellow Pages: it's a list of links that is maintained manually by a team of people. They evaluate every entry and then add it to their list. They make sure that it is appropriate, that the description is accurate, that it is placed in the correct location, and that the link actually works.

To submit your site to their directory, you find the proper place within their web site for your site, and then add your URL.

There are two indexes to the web: Yahoo and BigBook.

The most popular index is Yahoo. Yahoo contains links to just about everything on the web. Yahoo is consistently one of the most visited sites on the web.
The BigBook directory is just for business listings. It contains some sixteen million businesses.

The following pages will lead you through registration at both of these sites.

Registering at Yahoo

Let's register your site at Yahoo. Use your browser to go to Yahoo.

Before you register, spend a few minutes in Yahoo and look at the various categories.

Make sure that your business name is unique in Yahoo. Go to Yahoo and at the search text box at the top, type your business name.

You have to place your site within one of the Yahoo categories. It has to be in an appropriate category so that people will find it when they are browsing within that category. It however doesn't matter too much, because people will be able to find your site by simply searching for keywords that describe your service. For example, your business is a bed & breakfast (B&B) in the Napa Valley in California. A B&B is a company, so first select the index Business and Economy. A sub-index appears. In the sub-index, select Companies. From that sub-index, select the Travel category and then select the sub-category Lodging. Your B&B shall be listed here.

Another way to quickly find the category for your business is to type a description (such as "Bed and Breakfast") into the search box at the top of the Yahoo main screen.

Once you've arrived at the proper category (where there are no more subcategories), you add your site. Before we do this, print out the list of B&Bs so that you can compare the descriptions. See if someone has written a very good sentence that describes their B&B. You can borrow, edit, and create the perfect sentence for your web site.

At the top of the Yahoo page, there is a button called Add URL. Click this and wait until the new page appears. Scroll to the bottom of the page and you'll find a form to fill out.

Category: This is filled out automatically for you. For the B&B, it's Business and Economy/Companies/Travel/Lodging/Bed and Breakfasts.
Title: Willy's Bed & Breakfast. This is the text that appears at the beginning of each entry.
URL: Your web site's URL. This will be, for example, www.yourcompany.com.
Additional Categories: You could add other categories under which your web site will be listed. For your B&B, you could list it under Honeymoons. However, a second category isn't too important. Your customers will search for you either by looking in the appropriate sub-listing or they will type keywords and Yahoo will display your site, regardless of the subcategory in which you've placed it. So, for this entry, type the exact full path. For honeymooners, Recreation/Travel/Honeymoons/ is the path. Be careful to use uppercase and lowercase letters.
Yahoo asks several questions: "Our site uses Java; Our site uses VRML: Online transactions?" Mostly, just leave these as "no".
Company Info: The following fields ask for your name, e-mail address, etc. If you don't have information for any of the boxes, or you don't want to reply to a particular box, just leave that box empty. At the bottom, it asks for the SIC number. This is your Standard Industrial Classifications (SIC) number. If you don't know your business's SIC number, then click on SIC and it'll bring you to a web site where you can find your SIC number. This lets you list your company so that other directories and searchers can find you by category.
Two Sentence Description: A short description of twenty words which describe your site. This sentence is very important. People will search for sites and use keywords. Don't use words for which no one will search, such as "and, there are, we have, " etc. Think carefully about your business and use words which generally describe it (B&B), give the location (Napa Valley), and describe special features which set your site apart from the rest on the Yahoo list (you offer candle-lit bedrooms. Wow!) For example, Romantic B&B in Napa Valley. In-room Jacuzzi, fireplace, porch views, candle-lit bedrooms. Summer: horse riding, jogging. Winter: enjoy snow trails. If you look at descriptions of other businesses, you'll notice that many don't say where they are (Bob's B&B: Located next to Bear Creek. No one is going to know where Bear Creek is unless they live next to it. It's unlikely that they will search for the name "Bear Creek.") Such a description doesn't sound very attractive either.
Submit: Before you submit your page, spell check your description carefully. The Yahoo search engine ignores misspellings. If you typed breakfust, it's not going to show up for anyone who searches for breakfast. If everything is okay, then click the Submit button.

That's all. Your site will appear in Yahoo within several working days. Be sure to check:

It appears in the correct sub-list (Yahoo's humans approve the submissions and humans make mistakes.)
The title and description are correct, no misspellings, and your description wasn't cut off.
Search for your site by starting at the front page of Yahoo and type candle-lit bedrooms or Napa B&B or any of your descriptive words. See if your site appears.
Be sure to re-check your listing every three months. Yahoo occasionally purges obsolete links and you must make sure that your links are active and working.

If you made mistakes, just resubmit your information to Yahoo.

You must check back several days later to make sure that your site was added correctly and that no typographic errors were made. It may take several working days for your site to appear; this is done manually by humans, not computers, so there can be mistakes, backlogs, and minor delays. When your site is added, Yahoo may send you a confirmation message. If it hasn't appeared within two weeks, either submit your site again or contact Yahoo.

Staying on Yahoo

Yahoo's computers are constantly testing the list. Every day, the computers look at a new part of the list and see if the links are still active. If a message such as "Page not found" or similar appears, the computer will check back in a few weeks and see again if the page is active. If it's not active, then the Yahoo computers may delete the link.

This is necessary to keep the list up-to-date. People lose interest in a web site, or it becomes irrelevant, or the owners move on to other projects. However, computers also make mistakes. Perhaps the Yahoo computer couldn't make a connection. Or your computer was busy and didn't deliver the web page. Or the information packet was lost in the net. Thus your web site may accidentally disappear from the Yahoo listing.

Furthermore, a competitor could send a polite e-mail to Yahoo, notifying them that he is the new administrator for your site and that Yahoo should redirect the link to their site.

So you must check every few months that your listing is still available at Yahoo and that it directs people to your site.

Registering at BigBook

The BigBook directory is a Yellow Pages of the web. It contains only business listings. It's well-advertised and in the top 100 web sites. It's free to add a simple listing for your business. If your business is already listed in the Yellow Pages or various business directories, there may already be a simple entry in BigBook for you. According to various fee rates, you can add more elaborate information about your business.

Take a moment to visit BigBook and familiarize yourself with it. Type your city, select your state, and then select your type of business and see how your competitors are listed.
See if your business has already been added to BigBook by typing your name into the text search box.
Find out the category for your business. Type a city, select a state, and then select the type of business. Write this down.
At the right corner of the BigBook screen, under Small Business Center, click on Build a FREE Home Page.
See the example for a listing.
Fill out the boxes with your name, address, and other contact information.
Click the Submit button and follow the instructions.
One of the screens will ask you to select a category. If you're not certain, use your browser to open a second browser window (pull down the File menu and select New) and check the category entries.
Finally, a screen will ask you for information about your business hours, location, and services. Fill this out, check it carefully, and click the Submit button.

BigBook will send you a confirmation e-mail. Reply to it so that your entry will be added.

It takes five working days for your entry to be checked and added to the listing.

Revisit BigBook within a week to see that your entry was added and that it is correct.

Search Engines and Spiders

Searchers, also called search engines, are computers and software that automatically searches the web for new URLs and adds them to an index. This index may be as large as a list of every single word that appears on every page on the web. When a user uses Excite to search for a word, such as flowers, it will refer to its vast internal index of the entire web and display the links to every single site that contains the word flowers. This will result in a list of over 400,000 web pages.

Search engines work in different ways.

Some search engines will index only the first three hundred words in your web site. So make sure that the you put descriptive keywords at the top of your web site.
Some search engines index the entire web site.
Some search engines only index the words that appear in the <CONTENT> meta tag. So, make sure that you added a meta tag to your web site.

Searchers will add URLs to their index in two ways:

Randomly. The search engine is often called a spider. It roams the web, looking at URLs. It adds new URLs to its index. It deletes any expired URLs. It takes several weeks to update its index.
By Invitation. You send an e-mail to the searcher's spider and within seconds, it will visit your URL and index your pages.

You only need to register once with a searcher. Afterwards, the spider will visit your site every few weeks. If you make any changes, the spider will automatically notice the changes.

Here are the most popular searchers on the web.

AltaVista's spider (named Scooter) is fast. Your site will show up within a day of registration. Altavista uses the meta-tags. To invite Scooter to visit your site, go to the bottom of the main page and click Add URL.
Excite's searcher is different from the others. It also finds similar words. If you're looking for dog care, it will also offer pet grooming. Excite does not use meta tags. This means that the text of your web site's opening page will be used to judge your page. Be sure to have informative, descriptive words on your front page. If you add a poem or other text that isn't directly descriptive of your site, the Excite spider will consider that as well and your site's rating may be diluted. To register, go to the bottom of the main page and click Add URL.
Hotbot's spider is named Slurp. It uses both meta tags and page content to index and rate your page. To register, go to the bottom of the main page and click Add URL.
Infoseek uses meta tags and page content to index only your first page, not the entire site. To register, go to the bottom of the main page and click Add URL.
Infospace is yet another searcher. To register, click Register with Infospace.
Lycos. To register, go to the bottom of the main page and click Add Your Site to Lycos.
McKinley: This search engine is named Magellan. Magellan is linked to Excite, so if you registered with Excite, you'll be registered with Magellan as well. To register, go to the bottom of the main page and click Add Site.
Point.Com: is a popular searcher. It is an index to Lycos. When you register with Lycos, you'll be added to this one as well. You should check that your site shows up in Point.com.
Search: This is a well-known searcher. It's part of Infoseek, so by registering at Infoseek, you'll appear in Search.Com.
Web Crawler: The webcrawler spider surfs the web. To register, go to the bottom of the main page and click Get Listed and follow the information.

These are listed alphabetically. These searchers are usually in the top 25 web sites.

The Meta-Content Tag

The Meta-Content tag is text which is placed within the HTML head tag. This text is invisible to the user but it can be read by some search engines. This lets you embed information into your HTML file that will be seen by a search engine and used to index your file without your reader having to see a long list of keywords.

The Meta-content tag is only used by AltaVista, Hotbot, and Infoseek. Other search engines look in the body of the file to collect their indexing information.

The AltaVista search engine will index your web site in two ways.

If there is a meta-content tag, it uses the contents of the meta-content tag to index your page.
If there isn't a meta-content tag, AltaVista will index all of the words in your document (except for comments), and will use the first few words of the document as a short abstract.

The meta-content tag lets you control how your page is indexed by AltaVista. It lets you specify the keywords to index and a short description. Let's suppose your page contains:

<META name="description" content="We specialize in grooming pink poodles." >
<META name="keywords" content="pet grooming, Palo Alto, dog">

AltaVista will then do two things:

It will index both fields as words, so a search on either poodles or dog will result in a find. It will return the description and URL to the user. In other words, instead of showing the first couple of lines of the page, a match will look like the following:

Pink Poodles, Inc.
We specialize in grooming pink poodles.
http://pink.poodle.org/ - size 3k - 29 Feb 96

AltaVista will index up to 1,024 characters in the description and keyword field. This is about ten lines of text.

When the meta-content tag became available, some people realized that if they repeated the keywords dozens of times, the search engines would give priority to their sites.. This is called spamming the meta tags. Don't do this. Many of the searchers will exclude your page if you do this. Don't repeat a word or use misleading words.

Another misuse of meta-tags is to add your competitors' names so that when people search for them, your site appears. This is an unethical business practice. Several companies have started lawsuits on this issue for trademark violation and consumer misinformation.

Prevent Indexing of Your Site

In certain situations, you may not want spiders to index all of your site. Since the spiders check every single link and page, and if you have a large number of pages, and there are some 250 spiders and they generally visit your site every two weeks, one can estimate that some 10-15 spiders are visiting your site daily. This slows down your site.

You could allow perhaps the main page to be indexed and then prevent the rest of your site from being indexed.

There are two ways to keep spiders out of your site: the robots.txt file and the robots meta tag.

The robots.txt file is a file with a list of files which should not be indexed by a visiting spider. Simply create a text file, add a list of files, and place it in the main HTML directory where your index.html file resides.

User-agent: * # directed to all spiders Disallow: /cgi-bin/sources Disallow: /access_stats Disallow: /cafeteria/lunch_menus/

The robots.txt file is respected by many search engines. However, it's not guaranteed.

There is also the robots meta tag. This is a tag that is placed in the head tag of each web page to exclude.

<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW">

A robot should neither index this document nor analyze it for links. This tag however is not universally respected.

Other Registration Sites

There are many other indexes for specialty interests. If you look in the appropriate area in Yahoo for your business, you may find that the first entries are directories for that kind of business. For example, the printing industry has PrintMart, which is a directory for printing companies on the web. You may want to register yourself with various directories, including professional associations, tourist boards, the chamber of commerce, and so on.

As always, you should evaluate whether it's worthwhile to be listed in a directory. If the directory is easy to find, then others will find you. However, if the owners of the directory were not competent at listing their directory on the net in such a way that people can find them, then your listing in their directory will not be seen. Try searching for the directory with the various top search engines and Yahoo. In Yahoo, you can search for your type of business plus the word "directory", for example, "horse, directory".

Regrettably, the word "directory" is not standard. You'll also have to search for "horse, directories", "horse, index", and "horse, indices." You may also have to search for "guide, association," and so on, including the plurals.

In Yahoo, you'll find a list of directories.

Mass Registration

To be listed on the various directories and indices, you must register with each one. You can either register yourself (it'll take a few hours) or you use the mass registration web sites. You enter your information once and it submits your information to many search engines. Some of these are commercial services; you pay for them to register you.

Tip: Make a note in your desk calendar to check every three months that your site can be found.

Test Your Site's Ranking on Search Engines

You can see how your site is listed on various search engines.

Rank This!

Swapping Links

There is another way to increase your web site's exposure. You can swap links with another site. Links to your web site can be placed on another web site that may have similar interests to both readers.

A link to your bed & breakfast's web site could appear on a web site from a local horseback riding stable. People who visit the stable's site would see your site and if they are looking for a bed & breakfast, they'll visit your site.

To have your site linked from another web site, you have to ask the owner of that site to add the link to your site. You can then offer to swap links so that you'll place a link to their site on your site in exchange for a link from their site to your site.

Some sites will automatically add you to their lists, such as the local chamber of commerce, the tourist boards, etc. Just fill out their form or send them an e-mail.

Visit your competition's web sites and see if they have a list of links to other sites. You can then contact those sites and ask if they'll add your site as well.

There's another way to find sites with whom to swap links. Go to your favorite search engine and type your business's keywords. The search engine will display the top twenty sites for that word. Visit those sites. Send the webmaster at each site an e-mail and suggest swapping links. If you can't get listed in the top twenty, then you may be able to get links into those web sites which are able to list themselves in the top twenty.

Cross-Links to Your Site

Anyone can add links to your site from their site. They don't need to ask permission and in many cases, you may never realize that there are links to your site.

This is usually a good thing: you want people to come to your site.

However, you don't want to appear on lists of The Worst Sites, Competitors to Avoid, or similar.

It's easy to search the web for any sites that have included links to your site. With either Altavista (at Altavista or Excite, you can type link:www.yourname.com and it will search for sites that have links to your site.

If there are web pages that list your site in non-flattering ways, you could send a polite e-mail asking them to remove your site.

Buying a Word

On Sesame Street, the letter G has been brought to you by Disney. In the same way, you can "buy" a word on many of the search engines. For example, if you have a flower business, you can pay a monthly fee to the search engine company so that whenever a user types in the word "flowers" to search for flower sites, your site will appear at the top of the list and your banner will appear at the top of the page.

The fees and methods for doing this will vary from searcher to searcher. Contact each search engine's advertising departments for more information.

Banners

A banner is the strip of advertising that appears at the top of many web sites. For example, at the top of the Yahoo page there may be a banner advertisement from Honda.

It's fairly easy to swap banners with other sites. Several people have created banner swap sites. You join and your banner will be rotated along with others banners on sites of similar interest. This gives you huge exposure for free.

There are several banner swap associations.

GSA Net
SmarkClicks also has a page which shows the most successful banners.
Link Exchange
Swwwap

These are ranked according to size: the largest one first. Of course, you should join all of them for maximum exposure.

There are a number of other banner exchange services which are specific to various types of interests. For a list of banner exchange services, see Yahoo's Banner Exchange List.

Both still and animated banners should meet the following standards:

The image should be 400 wide and 40 pixels tall.
It should generally be 7 KB (7168 bytes) in size.
It should use the 216 web color palette. It doesn't necessarily have to use all 216 colors, but those colors should be within the 216 color palette. (It's beyond the scope of this document to explain the 216 color problem. See any good book on web design for an explanation of this problem.)
Use the GIF format.

Web Rings

A web ring is an association of similar web sites which exchange links with each other. It's similar to banner exchange. You find a ring of related web sites and join the ring. Readers can visit sites on the ring by clicking from one to the next.

Web Ring has over 15,000 different web rings.

To find more web rings, go to Yahoo and search for "web ring."

Signature Text

A signature line is the line of text about yourself which is appended automatically at the end of every e-mail that you send out.

You must add your e-mail address and URL to your signature line.

For example:

Willy Katzenjammer
Visit our Bed & Breakfast in Mendecino County
at www.willy.com and enter for a free drawing.

Relevant Newsgroups and Mailing Lists

The Internet is made up of several parts, of which the web is only one part. There is also Usenet, which is made up of some 26,000 newsgroups. Each Usenet newsgroup is devoted to a discussion topic. For example, rec.food.cooking is devoted to discussions about food and cooking.

Newsgroups are an important part of the Internet. Some newsgroups are very large. The rec.food.cooking newsgroup has over 250,000 members, which is larger than the subscribed readership of cooking magazines. It is probably the most significant forum for food in the world now.

These newsgroups are an opportunity for marketing. Your posting will be read by most of the members.

You should find newsgroups that are relevant to your business. You should contribute to the discussion.

Newsgroups are often run by a small self-elected group of moderators. Newsgroups tend to be clannish and they often attack postings which are not permitted by their rules. It's a bit chaotic and each newsgroup is different.

You should never post your message to a newsgroup which says "Come and visit my site!" This will generally be seen as spam and you'll be attacked (flamed) online and your reputation will suffer.

The best way to post to a newsgroup is to read it for a few days. Eventually, someone will ask a question which you can answer. Give them a good, helpful answer. Your e-mail will include your signature line and it will tell people about your business.

Mailing Lists

There are over 70,000 mailing lists. These are similar to newsgroups. Whereas newsgroups are read with a newsreader, mailing lists send each new message to each member as an e-mail.

Most mailing lists are moderated or owned by a small group of people. They own and manage the list. Whereas nearly anything can be posted to a newsgroup, mailing lists are tightly moderated. If you send spam, you will receive a stiff warning.

Generally, to post to a list, you must be a member.

Be careful in posting a notice for your business in a mailing list. If it is inappropriate, you may get negative publicity and angry e-mail. It's best to first send your e-mail to the list owner and get their approval.

To find mailing lists, see:

The best way to post to a mailing list is to read it for a few days. Eventually, someone will ask a question which you can answer. Give them a good, helpful answer. Your e-mail will include your signature line and it will tell people about your business.

Web Promotion Newsletters

There are a number of free e-mail newsletters which cover ideas and trends in promotion on the web.

Virtual Promote

Other Ways of Promoting Your Site...

There are many ways of increasing traffic to your site. The more people who visit, the greater the chance that some will buy your product. However, you don't want or need useless traffic: if you have a dentist office in Oakland, you don't need visitors from Germany or the East Coast. Be careful to select promotion strategies that result in useful traffic.

Some possibilities include:

Drawings and prizes: You can offer a free drawing for a sample of your product or some small prize.
Create Awards: You can create an award and hand it out. People like to get awards that they can add to their web site and the awards will link back to your web site.
Offer Popular Pages: By having a few pages which aren't related to your site, but which contain things which are very popular, you'll attract people to your site. Once they are there, some may click on the link to your site's main page. For example, you could list a few favorite recipes. You could hire a programmer to write a small, useful program that you can then distribute for free at your site. You could also have a "Babe of the Month" page with a photograph. Such pages can result in visitor streams of tens of thousands per month.
Offering Free Software: People like to download free software. You can find a new or useful shareware programs at Shareware or Filez and then distribute it from your site. You can add a notice to your banners and e-mail signature line that the file is available for free downloading at your site.

Checking Your Registration

You should make a note in your desk calendar to recheck your registrations every few months. There are several reasons to do this:

Computers make mistakes. If a search engine loses your registration, then you disappear from the landscape.
Search engines automatically recheck their entries every few weeks. If your site was unavailable due to busy signal, etc., the spider will check once again a few weeks later. If it is still unavailable, your site will be purged from its index. You disappear from the world.
Competitors may use your information to mislead your customers to their site. They can simply submit a registration that matches yours but it leads to their web site. Several lawsuits have been won on this point; if this happens to you, contact your attorney.
Search engines disappear and new ones appear. You can't just register yourself once and forget about it. Within six months, half of your registrations will disappear and you won't appear on the new search engines that have arisen.

Therefore you should make a checklist and every few months, check with each searcher that your site is still available. If your site has disappeared at the searcher, just re-register.

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