Getting Your Website Out There
Written by Mike Schmoyer
Key Terms
The first thing you will need is for your webpage to get hosted on a server, and unless you have a constant server at home, and know a load about networking and servers (and if so, why are you reading this???) you will need a host. One of the most known hosts is Geocities, which is where this website is hosted. It is a free web hosting service that comes with many features and has basic, learning and advanced HTML editors. The only condition with a free service is that you usually get a popup banner or in our case, the square box that pops up. Non-free hosting services charge anywhere from $35 a month up to $150 a month, this being way over our budget.
Some Free Web Hosting Services:
How would you go about finding information on Australian Kangaroos? You would obviously go to a search engine and search for "Australian Kangaroos" well the one biggest way to get visitors to your website is by search engine, and to get on a search engine's search list you must apply to them. First though, you will want to have a good set of meta tags, title, keywords, description and all. This way, the search engine will properly document your website, so if your website is about Kangaroos, and you put the keyword Australian Kangaroos into your keywords meta tag, you site would pop up in their search results. To get higher on the list of search results, you must relate your websites content to your keywords, and your title.
Popular Search Engines:
Search Engine Adding Services:
Another very useful thing to have on your website is a way to track your visitors. Commonly referred to as a counter, this will enable you to see how many hits, or page views your site recieves. Some trackers allow you to see what browsers visitors use, or what Platform they use, and various other things. They also show you what time of the day a user visited, days of the week, visitors per month, year, and total visits.
For a webmaster like yourself, this can be very useful becuase it can show you whether your work paid off, and whether you need to update some parts of the site. Also, if you place a counter on a download page say to an application you made or special picture or something, you can see how many people have downloaded your file.
Some good Site Statistics Pages:
Some Website Counter Pages:
Now for one of the most useful chapters you can read, exchanging links. By exchanging links, you get your website to be linked up to various other websites with the same content as yours, and visitors from their sites will go to yours and vise versa. Having a link section can boost your website's value and give visitors another thing to do once they finish checking your site.
To exchange links, browse the web and find other sites with the same content as yours, type in keywords similar to those you would use to find your own site. Then, email the webmaster and request him to place your link on his or her site, and in exchange you will place their link on yours. Be sure to write down the URL, and Email for that specific page so you will know later on whether you already linked with a certain site.
Sample Email:
Dear [Webmaster],
I have just finished viewing your site and found it quite enjoyable. I found the content to be very valuable, particularly the [Good thing about their site]. My site visitors would appreciate your content as I think we appeal to the same audience. My site, [URL] focuses on [what is on your page] and would likely be of value to your visitors. If you have no objection, I would like to add a link to your site. Also, if you would like to place a neat banner, please visit [Your Banner Page] we would really appreciate this and would gladly return the favor.
Once they reply to your email, check out their site again and find your link on it. If you find it, place their link on your website and email them that you placed their link on your website (this will get you more credibility). That's all there is to it, remember...the more sites that are linked to yours, the more visitors that will travel to your site.
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Key Terms
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