Web Site Promotion

What is promotion?

Once your site is up and running it is essential to promote its name, both online and offline. The name of the web site is its URL (uniform resource locator), otherwise known as the web address. It looks something like http://www.mycompany.co.uk. If promotion is not done properly, potential visitors will simply not reach your web site and sales will be lost. Web site promotion cannot be left to chance. It must be planned from the start, implemented effectively, then monitored and maintained as the web site grows.

Offline Promotion

This is done by you, the web site owner. Just as in any aspect of marketing, there are many ways to make your web site name known to your target audience.

Here are just a few ideas:

Online Promotion

Promoting your web site name on the Internet is achieved mainly by a process called search engine optimisation (SEO). Once the site is optimised, it is necessary to submit it to the search engines and directories. Submission is free for some, but not all, search engines.

Search Engine Optimisation

Optimising web pages is a technique which, in general, must be planned from the beginning. Although it is possible to adjust existing pages, this can involve a substantial re-write of the code and content, and is therefore more expensive.

The search engines work by indexing key words and phrases from the underlying code of a web page. Each search engine is unique, and all have their own set of rules for determining which sites have content which is more relevant to a keyword or phrase. It is this relevance which leads one site to appear higher in the rankings than another. Relevance is decided on the basis of keyword prominence, proximity, density and frequency, as well as the size and positioning of the content. However, it is not possible to achieve higher ranking simply by repeating keywords hundreds of times in a page - this is deemed to be 'illegal' (known as 'spam' in the industry) and can lead to the permanent exclusion of a site. Note that no guarantees can be given regarding search engine positioning - the details of the criteria used by the search engines are a closely guarded secret.

There are other rules which must be observed in optimising pages for search engines. It is only the text within a page which is 'visible' to the search engine programs which analyse web sites. They cannot 'see', and therefore asses the relevance of, pictures, sound or video files. Also, they are confused by sites built around framesets.

Search engine positioning can also depend on the number and relevance of links from and to your site. As part of the optimisation process, it is vital to identify other web sites which may be willing to exchange reciprocal links. These could be the web sites of clients, suppliers or even competitors.

Site Submission

While some of the search engines (e.g. Google) and directories (e.g. the ODP) allow free site submission, many others require payment. For instance, Yahoo charges £199/year for a commercial site; Ask Jeeves charges £40/year for the first URL, and £25/year for subsequent URLs.

Another way of paying for site inclusion is through sponsored listings. You pay for certain keywords, then when potential customers search using these words, they see your site in a highly visible ad space. You pay only when the customer clicks the link to your site. This is also known as 'pay-per-click'. The more popular your site is, the more you pay.

What we can do for you

We can advise on, and implement, all aspects of online promotion of your site. Our standard approach is to structure every page in such a way that it is optimised for the major search engines.

On completion of your design we submit your site to a number of free search engines and directories (in particular, Google and the ODP), included in the basic cost of your site. For an additional fee (see Pricing) we will arrange submission to the paid-for search engines and directories and arrange sponsored listing.