Promote Website

Hello World
So now you have created a website, parked it on some web server, and registered it. You waited for a day or two to let your website propagate through the entire Internet at which point when you entered your website URL (http://www.yoursite.tld) in your browser address field and execute it, you were able to see it on the screen.

Happy as you can be, the hardest and best is yet to come. You have to let the world know you have just created a website.

On the surface, Internet Marketing seems easy. Who would not love to build some websites and suddenly people start sending you their money? That would be great!  But in reality, there is a lot of hard work that goes into making money online.

Before doing anything else, you should start your website promotion efforts by listing your site in the most popular Internet directories. The reason is that several major search engines index websites from these directories. They can send you substantial amounts of traffic and affect your ranking in various search engines.

Go back and read the chapter about website development to make sure you have done everything possible to make it easier to get listed in directories and search engines.

A Word About Yahoo Directory
Currently, Yahoo Search results primarily come from their Search Engine, which spiders the web looking for pages. When Yahoo first started, their searches returned results in Yahoo Directory first, then presented search engine results from other sources. Then they reversed the process, and started showing the search engine results first, followed by the directory results.

Later Yahoo developed their own search engine. So now, Yahoo search results are a blend of directory and search engine results, and it seems that having a listing in the Yahoo Directory can boost your rankings in these blended search results.

You can promote your website in three steps:

Submit To Directory
The very first step is to submit your website to directories. Here you will get a basic idea of what directories are and how to submit your website to them. This includes ODP (DMOZ), Yahoo, Google and a bunch of other directories.

Submit To Search Engines (SE)
The second step is to submit to the most popular and frequently used search engines. The major search engines you would want to submit are Google, Yahoo and MSN. Another list of search engines is given for your convenience to submit to.

More Guidelines
The third step is to use link popularity, sitemap, ezine articles, auto-responders, social & business networks, discussion forums, etc.