YOUR WEBSITE PROMOTION PLAN

Before you plunge into the world of website promotion, you need a plan. Grab a pencil and plenty of paper, and get ready to jot down your ideas for global website domination.

1. BUILD A TRULY GREAT SITE - If you start promoting your site before there is anything to see, you are wasting your effort (and probaly a few bridges). Nothing says "never come back" like a website that consit of an "under construction" message.

2. SEE STEP 1 - If in doubt, keep polishing and perfecting your site. Fancy graphics are not the key concern here. There most important detail is wether you have some genuinely useful content. Ask yourself - if you were browsing the Web, would you stop to take a look at this site? Make sure you take the time to add the kinds of features that keep visitors coming back. One great option: INCLUDE A DISCUSSION FORUM.

3. MAKE YOUR SITE SEARCH-ENGINE FRIENDLY - There are a number of ways to tweak and optimize your site to help search engines understand the nature of your content. Small details like page titles, alternate text, and meta elements are easy to overlook when you start building a site, but become more important when you need to popularize it!

4. SUBMIT YOUR WEBSITE TO INTERNET DIRECTORIES - Like search engines, directories help visitors find websites. The difference between directories and search engines is that directories are generally smaller catalogs put together by humans, rather than hug sprawling text indexes amassed by computers. Search engines may give preferential treatment to websites that turn up in directory listings.

5. SUBMIT YOUR SITE TO INTERNET SEARCH ENGINES - Now you are ready for the big time. Once you submit your site to search heavy weights like Google and Yahoo, it officially enters the public eye. However, it takes time to climb up the rankings and get spotted.

6. TWEAK YOUR WEBSITE'S PUBLIC PROFILE WITH THE GOOGLE WEBMASTER TOOLS - These handy tools let you adjust how Google sees your site and reveals some valuable information about it. For example, it lets you specify the geographic region you want associated with your site, and it lests you discover whether Google's having trouble indexing some of your pages.

7. FIGURE OUT WHAT HAPPENED - To assess the successes and failures of your promotion strategies, you need to measure some vital statistics - how many people visit your site, how long they stay, and how many visitors come back for more. To take stock, you need to crack open tools like hit counters and server logs.