A Theme-Based Website, Part 5- Promoting The Site

Author: Julie Georg

All right, we're going to wrap this up. I now have a terrific theme-based site, jam-paked with high value content and built to feed those search engine spiders. However, my site is going to just sit in web space if I don't do some work to promote it. Fortunately, I'm well prepared. My site is optimized for listing with the search engines. I have hundreds of keywords to use for Pay-per- Click engines and my content is theme-focused and OVER- delivers so directories should have no problem listing my site. Let's take these one at a time.

Search Engines: The most important thing I need to do is submit my pages to the major search engines. They will deliver, by far, the most traffic to my site. I'll submit to AltaVista, Excite, Google, HotBot, Lycos and NorthernLight. Each has it's own policies, which I need to be sure to follow. Then I'll check my site's log files, to see which of their spiders have visited, and which pages they took back to the engine. If I don't see an engine's spider within a certain amount of time after submitting, I'll resubmit, according to each engine's acceptable limits. Next, I'll watch for when each of my pages has been indexed (listed by the engine). All this takes a lot of effort and time, so I might consider a service like Position Agent ... http://www.positionagent.com , although it's not cheap and not all the engines are covered. Or I could try AgentWebRankingSuite... http://www.aadsoft.com/agentwebranking/ranks.htm , which is free and runs on my computer. Or, if I've built my site with SiteBuildIt!... http://buildit.sitesell.com/assist3.html , it will do all the submitting, spider-spotting, index-checking and rank- tracking for me.

I'll use this information to tweak my pages. I may adjust lower ranking pages to be more like higher ranking ones. I'll probably experiment a bit with changing keywords in META tags or playing with keyword density, maybe increasing or decreasing content. It's tedious, but I know that the engines will deliver the most traffic to my site. I'll tweak until at least half my pages are in the top ten on half the engines. Any more tweaking after that is probably pointless because the engines will occationally change their ranking formulas and things will move around, usually evening out in the long run. I'm better off adding more high-value content pages to my site than continually tweaking.

Pay-Per-Click Search Engines: I want to research and submit bids for keyword placement at Overture, Bay9.com and Findwhat among others. The most popular keywords can be expensive, but my theme-based site is working a niche and I have hundreds of less popular keywords I can bid on. Because I'm paying for clicks, I want to be sure my title and description really relate to the keyword I'm bidding on and are completely relevant to my site so that they only attract highly targeted traffic.

Major Directories: Links to directories will bring some traffic and help my link popularity. Directories don't use spiders. Real people review the pages and decide what gets listed. Luckily I've loaded my site with lots of great, single-theme-focused content. To be listed at Yahoo I need to decide if it's worh the $299 for my business listing. It's unlikely that I'll be able to submit for free, as my site will be generating income. I can submit to Open Directory for free and to Ask Jeeves by telling them what question my web page answers. I'll automatically be listed at AOL and Netscape when I submit to Open Directory.

Less effective but useful methods of promotion: First there's ""word of mouth"", which I'm certainly going to get because I'm delivering great content. Second, I'll eventually add a newsletter subscription to my site. And I'll probably use some of my great content as articles to submit to other people's ezines. Perhaps I'll do some offline advertising as well.

Once I've done most of the above, I'll analize my traffic, checking click-ins and click-throughs. I can create special tracking links to measure the success of my efforts. I'll build on what works and improve or get rid of what doesn't. I now see the beneficial results of building a theme-based site. I'm working a niche and getting highly targeted traffic. I offer my visitors valuable content and deliver them to my merchants in a ready-to-buy state of mind. My site scores with the engines, my visitors and my merchants. And all that spells WEB BUSINESS for me. Now, I think I'll kick back and start thinking about my next theme-based site.......

Trouble coming up with a theme? Maybe I can help. Send me an email. mailto:yourhelpline@mail.com

About the author: Julie Georg is a consultant to individuals and small businesses interested in establishing a web presence. Step-by-step directions for building a theme-based site can be found in the excellent, free Affiliate Masters course. Blank email mailto:tamsassist3@sitesell.net