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

By Julie Georg
Posted Wednesday, June 30, 2004

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