There are a number of ways you can start promoting your website and attracting more traffic to your website.
I. Search Engine SubmissionThe most effective way to promote your website is to visit each of the top search engines and ask them to add your site. These search engines and web directories will require your URL. The URL (Universal Resource Locator) is your full website address (for example http://yourdomain.com or http://yourdomain.netfirms.com).
Click on any of the following search engine links as they will lead you to their website submission page. If a search engine of your preference is not listed, simply go to the search engine site and look for a link called 'add URL' or 'add website.
Here is a short-list of the most commonly used search engines:
Yahoo http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/
Excite http://www.excite.com/Google http://www.google.com/addurl.htmlMSN http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspxAltavista http://addurl.altavista.com/addurl/newLycos http://insite.lycos.com/searchservices/Search engine robots read HTML tags known as tags in order to determine the contents of a site. By using tags you are offering data to search engines to help them index your site. Such tags include the following examples:
<title>Title of your site</title>
<meta name="description" content="A description on your site">
<meta name="keywords" content="Keywords found in your site whereby each keyword is separated by a comma"></head>
Please note that many search engines may take 4-6 weeks to add your URL. You may also want to find some documents from the above links to provide you with guidelines on how to optimize your site for higher search engine rankings. Many of our customers have also found the following site useful: http://www.searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/index.phpII. Netfirms Site of the Week
You may also have your site considered for promotional placement on the Netfirms home page, please follow these steps:
1. Log into the members section of our site.
2. Click Site Tools
3. Complete the Site of the Week profile.
4. Click Submit
III. Google Adwords
Advantage and Business plan owners will have access to free google adwords coupons (one per hosting account) through the Netfirms Control Panel. This will facilitate customers to advertise their site and increase their search engine rankings using google adwords. To generate the coupon follow these steps:
1. Login to the Netfirms Members Control Panel
2. From the Account
3. Under the License section, click Google
Advantage plans will include a free $25 USD Google coupon
Business plans will include a free $35 USD Google coupon
4. Click the Generate Coupon button
5. Note your Coupon code and expiration date
6. For information on how to purchase google adwordss with your coupon, visit the Google Adwords
NOTE: The coupons will expire on June 30, 2007 regardless of when you login to the Control Panel to generate your coupon.
IV. Link Exchange with Complementary Sites
You may also want to participate in link exchanges with other complementary sites.