Promoting Your Website

You have successfully designed and published your site.
Don't go yet! There is still more to be done. There are more exciting things to learn about the vast and fascinating world of the internet.

Have you ever wondered, when performing a search in Google, how certain sites got to be on the first page of results? Next time you do a Google search, take a look at the number of search results that are being returned. Depending on the search term, it can be anything from 5 to 50 million! Most search terms return at least many thousands of results, which gives you some idea of the competition that you face if you want YOUR site to get noticed. The incredible power of Google is it's ability to return useful and relevant results. This is why, when we search, most often we find exactly what we are looking for in the first 5 or 10 results. The flip side of this is if you want your website to rank highly with the search engines, you really have to earn your place!

But don't despair, there is a lot you can do to start bringing high quality visitors to your site. And as a start, you can keep reading in this blog... :D
There are 3 main ways that people will find your site:

1. By typing the URL directly into their browsers.
2. By clicking on a link from another site to find your site.
3. By searching on Google or another search engine and finding your site.

It is unrealistic to expect your site to show up on page 1 of a Google search 5 minutes after you publish it. However, if you concentrate on doing a few key things you can greatly increase your chances of getting "found".

And this are somethings that can help with the promotion of your site:

* Description
Type in a description of your page. For more information read: Search Engine Optimization Basics: Meta tags

* Keywords
These are words you think people would type into a search box when looking for your site. A great way to find keywords is to use the Google Suggest Tool. This tool helps you to find keywords for your site and allows you to check the popularity of those words.

* Favicon
This is a special icon associated with your website that displays in the browser window and browser tabs next to the URL or the name of your site. A neat trick to make your website stand out from the rest!

* Google Webmaster
Google Webmaster helps you to submit your content to Google and improve the traffic to your site. In order to make use of this service, sign up for a free Google Webmaster account.
Republish your site and you will be verified with Google Webmaster and you can start taking advantage of this excellent resource.