Promoting Your Website (or homepage)
By creating a website or Homepage you have established an "office" on the net. Now you have to let people know you are there and get them to come to your "office". In the search engine section and the creating a website section we tell you about the features that should be included during the process of creating your site. Here we will discuss the promotional elements of doing business on the web. Over the next few months we will expand this section covering all the ways this is done.
One promotes a website via a number of different means. This includes the search engines, links on other websites, listings in directories, e-mail lists and by promoting the site address in the real world.
One of the first things we need to address is the location of your site or page. There are locations that are poor choices because of accessibility or an inability to promote. These include AOL. Members homepages and home pages on Realtor .com. The search engines do not normally index pages on these sites because they are so big and because the site design does not allow access. This may also pertain to homepages on GEO cities, Prodigy and similar sites.
As with any kind of promotional activity, the more you do, the more exposure you achieve and the better the results. On the net it is a question of getting as many different exposures as possible. These "exposures" are the search engine listings, links on other sites and listings in directories. You can accumulate 100, 150, 200 or more of these "exposures". Individual Realtor web sites that have done this are achieving visitor counts of 200 to 400 per month.
The search engines provide about 50% of the potential for visitor traffic. Here we refer to the top ten engines that account for 95% of the activity on the net. Achieving top positions on the engines is a lot of work and requires constant maintenance. See our section on [search engines]. There are a lot of tricks to achieving a maximum exposure on the engines and this requires an extensive knowledge of how the engines work. One of the most important things to do maximize your positions is to put up as many pages as possible and to keyword each page differently.
There are a number of very effective real estate directories and links advertising sites that will attract visitors for you. Many of these sites offer free listings and on some you can pay to get a better position, have your name in bold, etc. We will be putting together a list of recommended sites in the near future. In the meantime, the top directory is The International Real Estate Digest (www.ired.com) and another good one is Relocation Central (www.relocationcentral.com). Then there is Yahoo and the lesser general directories that are important also. Check these out under your keywords. Before you jump to list on a site that charges for a listing be sure that they show up under real estate searches in your area.
How many sites should you link to? Well, in any given location around the country there is probably a combination of 15 to 30 different sites that may be worthwhile. You must take the time to research these sites using your keywords on the search engines. Be sure to check all the engines, AltaVista, InfoSeek, HotBot, Lycos, Excite and the directories.
It takes time to build traffic so allow yourself three to six months to see the results.