Making your website popular

Search engine optimization (SEO)

Position & optimize your web site traffic
with search engines & directories

Website development

Identify your audienceIs your audience
local? regional? national? international? professional? content driven?

Keep perspective on developing your website:
you are not competing with Microsoft, the United Nations, or the Library of Congress

Review your contentWhat in your content is valuable to your audience?

Recommendations:

• create intuitive and obvious navigation; enable multiple topical "entry points"
• clearly present current content
• published research and items of interest
• establish credibility with the credentials of authors and list awards
• include a few items of personal interest (humanize)
• delete gimmicks or gratuitous technology or distracting graphics that have no purpose to that of the website
• facilitate contacts and feedback:
  make it simple!

Structure your content
for convenient and intuitive navigation and access
Your audience should easily find what they are looking for
A web site of links has little value compared to search engines and directories

Positioning your web site for search engines, directories, and portalsDo not promote a site that is not well-developed
First (bad) impressions will affect later positioning.

Content development:

• Competitive landscape: 
  Compare your site to similar sites;
  Determine critical keywords/search terms
• Prioritize keyword density
  Constructively and proactively use keywords in your home page content;
  make sure it reflects the content

Metatags:Metatags are located in the HTML source code of a web page that detail administrative information about a web site/page. Some information is also scanned by portals, directories, and search engines and listed in the web site's description,
such as < title > and < description >

• Title metatagDisplayed in the top line of a browser, and often duplicated in listings of search engines, etc.
• Description metatag: 
  Employs keywords well-reflective of content; duplicated in Alta Vista's listings of your site
  Should be consistent for all submissions: directories, search engines, portals
  Should be descriptive, not hyped: The Open Directory Project (ODP) rejects sites with promotional descriptions.
• Keyword metatag: 
  Generally obsolete but still necessary:
  Google does not index the metatag for "keywords"
• Add metadata to imageswith the < alt > tag and include/reinforce keywords

Open Directory Project
"The Open Directory Project (ODP) is the most comprehensive human edited directory of the Web, compiled by a vast global community of volunteer editors. The ODP powers core directory services for some the most popular portals and search engines on the Web, including AOL Search, Netscape Search, Google, Lycos, DirectHit, and HotBot, andhundreds of others."

• ODP criteria
  for submitting and listing web sites
• For an excellent illustration of the central role the ODP playsgo to Bruce Clay, Inc. "Search Engine Relationship Chart"

Search engines:

• GoogleSpiders/crawls the Web and ODP for web sites (submitting a site not necessary)
  Increases the rank of your website by the number and quality (keywords!) of links to it
• YahooMost sites in this directory are suggested to it

Promoting your site

• Is the Web site incorporated consistently into all marketing plans?
  Is the URL/address prominent in all print and media publications?
• Are there professional e-newsletters, listservs, blogs, etc. where the site can be promoted or referenced?
• Do professional organizations list member Web sites?
• Are you a part of any Webrings?
  (An Internet site that links web sites that have the same theme)
• Do you encourage your staff, supporters and enthusiasts to refer to the site in publications, speeches, etc.?
• Do you monitor traffic on the site, especially its most popular pages for opportune developments?
• Have you reviewed all search engines, portals, directories for positioning?
• Do you submit your site for awards?
  and post the kudos?
• Do you exchange links with appropriate entities?
• Are there associated resources where you can promote your Website: an electronic newsletter, users group, events alert, blog, etc.

Tools to monitor website traffic and links to your site

• GOOGLE analyticsA free service with executive, marketing, and webmaster analyses
• Search Engine Colossus:
  International Directory of Search Engines
• Link popularity:
  Alta Vista | Yahoo | MSN
  Enter: link:pressdl.blogspot.comor
  link:http://www.pressdl.com for Google
  Use your own URL/address following this format!
• Alexa
  Monitors traffic of those using its tool bar

See also:

• Google Webmaster tools:
  invaluable site monitoring and suggestions
• Web Style Guide, 2nd Edition
• WAVE
  accessibility evaluation tool
• WDG HTML Validator
  Validator gives warnings for valid but dangerous HTML
  Validator gives warnings for undefined references