• The single most important thing you can do to boost your site's popularity is to get other sites to add links to your site. Many search engines measure your site's popularity based on how many other's think your site is worth linking to.

• There is only one effective way to get others to link to your site. You must take the time to search out related sites and ask to trade links. This is a manual, labour intensive and slow process. Prepare a standard link to your site with a brief (2 or 3 line) blurb explaining what your site offers and include that in your email requests for link trading to other web sites.

Cross Promotion:

• Never miss an opportunity to cross promote your firm using both printed and electronic media to re-enforce each other. You should print your e-mail address and web address on all stationary, printed ads, business cards and invoices. Any printed material on which you would normally put your street address or phone number and that leaves your firm should include your e-mail and web address.

• Use your site for announcements, news letters, new products and sales.Your web site is significantly faster and cheaper to update than printed material.

• Don't forget to include your web address in all advertising, including tv, radio, magazines or newspapers. It is not necessary to always include the "http://www" portion of your URL. People know this is standard. Customers and potential customers can reference your web site for up to the minute happenings.

• Your e-mail signature : Make it easy for people to reach you. Add a simple file that is appended to the end of all your e-mail messages. It contains your name, e-mail address, sometimes mailing address and phone numbers. This is an excellent spot for a very brief, one line maximum, promotional message

  --------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Your corporate message here
  Mr John Doe                         
  http://www.yoursite.com			 JDoe@yoursite.com
  Tel: (999) 999-9999				Fax: (888) 888-8888
  Address  City, Prov/State
  ==========================================================================
  

• Set up a media room on your site. Include telephone contacts for the people in your firm who are authorized and able to speak to the media.
• Include all your Press Releases, new product announcments and related information.
• Include your financials if you are a public corporation.

• Create a page on your site which will permit people to subscribe to your company's private mailing list. This usually requires an incentive such as a contest, a freebie or some special reason to induce people to subscribe. Include a committment that the list will be kept private and not used to spam subscribers.

• This list is strictly for legitimate and infrequent announcements which will interest your subscribers. The key is to get people to ask to subscribe to your list. Just as you hate to get junk mail in your mail box, it is extremely bad netiquette to do mass mailings of an advertising nature.

Discussion Mailing Lists:

• Join an existing Mailing lists (also known as list servers or discussion lists). We are not suggesting that you start spamming people. That always backfires for legitimate businesses.

• While participating in mailing lists takes time, it is a useful way to gain exposure for your web site. If a mailing list exists related to your business, you can subscribe and receive messages everyday from people with similar interests. By participating (sending e-mail to the list), you generate exposure for your business and your Web site.

• WARNING: Do not use these lists or groups for advertising or promotion purposes. That is extremely bad netiquette and will only generate angry responses.

USENET Newsgroups:

• Use newsgroups to establish your expertise in an given subject. Do not advertise or use hype in newsgroups.

• Newsgroups are like discussion mailing lists except that instead of coming to you via e-mail, you run a program to access the messages. The best program for newsgroups is Agent or it's free version, FreeAgent. Both Netscape and Internet Explorer have built in newsgroup access programs as well.

• There are over 30,000 Usenet discussion groups that classify newsgroup users into groups by subject or topic, covering every topic imaginable. They are a rich source of help, tips, information and contacts for any business or individual and they are all free. These groups provide a highly effective method of generating publicity for your company and your Web page.

• Usenet Newsgroups are like community bulletin boards. You can post your own messages as well as read, but stick to the topics at hand. Warning: Monitor a newsgroup for a while before you start posting. This is known as lurking and may prevent you from embarassing yourself. Many groups also have FAQ's which you should reiew before asking questions that have already been answered a thousand times.

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