When you've finished building and publishing your web site, you'll be ready for visitors. Depending on the kind of site you created and the contents of your pages, web users may stumble upon your site, but after all that hard work, you'll want to ensure that your target audience finds you. This guide will help you get started.
For background information and key concepts, please review "Before You Begin Promoting Your Site."
1. Choose Your Web Address Wisely — or Register New Ones
To most effectively market your site, you'll want a web address that's relevant to your site. Choose an address that includes your business name or describes yourself or your organization. Be creative! With the growth of the Web, it's often difficult to register the exact name you want; the key is to choose a name that will make sense to your site visitors and anyone (including search engines) looking for your site. Finally, be sure to choose a name that's relatively short and easy to spell and remember. If potential customers can't remember your domain name, they'll have a hard time visiting or returning to your site. Learn more about domains.
You chose a customized domain name when you signed up for your plan. Have your web site needs changed? If you find that your web address doesn't suit your site or seems too difficult to remember, don't worry: You cannot change your current domain name without canceling your service, but you can register another web address anytime.
If you've already built your web site but want to use it with a new domain name, we suggest this simple solution: Sign up for a Yahoo! Domains plan, then set up domain forwarding. When your friends and colleagues visit your new web address, they'll simply be redirected to your current web site. (Hint: When you set up domain forwarding, select the "forwarding to a Yahoo! hosted site" option, and your visitors will never even see your original web address.)
You can register as many domain names as you like and forward them all to your current web site. You may want to consider registering variants of your domain name to make sure your visitors find you: For example, you could register not only widgetdesigns.com, for example, but also widgetdesigns.org and widgetdesigns.net; or purchase thewidgetdesigns.com as well as widgetdesigns.com.
(Please note that you may also purchase as many Web Hosting plans as you like. With this option, you can manage multiple, distinct web sites with different domain names from the same control panel. Learn more.)
2. Set Up Your Email
Setting up your email service and creating useful email addresses that match your domain (such as info@widgetdesigns.com or feedback@widgetdesigns.com) is the next step to solidifying your brand and can play an important role in your overall marketing strategy. Add a signature to all of your emails that includes your web address, and keep in touch with your audience by sending weekly or monthly updates about your company, upcoming event, or organization. Feel free to reuse content from your flyers or offline mailings — the point here is simply to remind your audience of your presence and encourage them to return to your site.
When you've set up your email and become familiar with its features, be sure to look into Yahoo! promotion tools such as Got Campaigner™, which can help you manage your email campaigns and subscription lists. You'll find a list of this and other promotion tools on the Promote tab of your Web Hosting Control Panel.
3. Organize Your Site, and Say Something!
A well-organized, professional-looking web site will attract visitors, encourage them to stay longer, and prompt them to refer their friends. Plan your web site carefully so potential visitors can find the information they need, embellish it with interactive add-ons like email forms or a guestbook to keep them interested, and give them a reason to come back! Your site visitors will be more likely to return when there's something new to see, so update your content often to keep your site fresh. Add articles, customer testimonials, personal recommendations, recipes, news items, reviews — anything relevant to your site that might interest your audience — and rotate the content on your home page regularly.
An added bonus: Rich, organized content will not only appeal to your viewers but also often elevate your ranking in search engine results.
To use Yahoo! add-ons and create as many pages as you like, you'll need to use PageBuilder, SiteBuilder, or your own third-party software to build your site. Learn more about choosing a site building tool.
4. Add Keywords and Meta Tags
Although most search engines have deemphasized their significance, meta tags and keywords still represent an integral part of search engines' ranking formulas. Don't artificially load your web pages with keywords to influence the search engines; instead think of a few descriptive terms appropriate for your site and make sure those words appear regularly in your meta tags and site content. Think about the search terms you would enter into a search engine to find your site and work those into your content. Do you sell cookies on your site? Cookies, baked goods, and shortbread might be good keywords for you. And don't forget to give each page of your site a concise, descriptive title. The title, which appears in the topmost bar of a browser as well as in bookmark lists, helps orient your site visitors and can positively influence your search engine rankings.
To add meta tags to your web pages, you'll need to use PageBuilder, SiteBuilder, or your own third-party software to build your site. To add meta tags to a PageBuilder page, choose Page Properties from the Format menu and enter a title and keywords. In SiteBuilder, you'll find the same tool in the Edit menu. If you need help adding meta tags when building your site with third-party software, please consult the manufacturer's instructions. (You can also add meta tags manually to the <head> section of any pages you created with Yahoo!'s Text or HTML Editors. Learn more.)
5. Create Links
When determining your site's ranking in their results, many search engines consider not only keywords but also the number and quality of links on and to your web site. How does quality fit in? Content-rich sites of a similar topic that link to your site enhance your site's appearance of authority (while, of course, providing a path to your site for potential visitors); links from your site to other high-caliber web sites suggest that your site is a hub of information. The more of both kinds of links, the better.
You can use PageBuilder, SiteBuilder, and third-party tools to easily include links on your web pages. Like keywords, links should become a thoughtful, natural part of your site; creating pages of irrelevant links can actually harm your search engine status. Be sure to link to web sites that complement your own — though not, of course, to your competitors!
How can you get other web sites to link to yours? Try asking! Find complementary, high-quality web sites and send them email asking for a link exchange. You can link to each other, enhancing both of your sites' status in search engine results.
6. Explore Yahoo! Web Hosting's Promotion Tools
You've carefully chosen a domain name and optimized your site with compelling content and relevant keywords. How else can you drive traffic to your web site? Head to the Promote tab of your Web Hosting Control Panel and learn about the many promotion tools Yahoo! offers. Here you can sign up for ad placement programs, take advantage of email-marketing tools, list your site in a variety of Yahoo! directories, and more. Experiment with tools that seem appropriate for your site and see what works! Learn more.
7. Monitor Your Success
You can promote your site using every online and offline tool imaginable, but how will you know your tactics are working? Keep a close eye on the reports generated by the Site Statistics tool, which can help you quantify the success of your site. Head to the Home tab of your Web Hosting Control Panel to review general information about your site activity, then click the "Site Statistics" link to dig deeper. On the Site Statistics page, you'll find an index of your site directories and pages; click the "Stats" link next to a web page name to review detailed information about that page's performance.
What can you learn from your reports? Your Page Views report will show you how many times your web page was viewed, and by how many unique users. From your Referrer report, you can learn from which sites and search engines your visitors came. Your Visitor Profile report displays information about the technical capabilities and settings of your visitors' computers.
By comparing your reports and following trends in your site activity, you can learn more about the effectiveness of your pages and marketing efforts. For example, you might check to see if a recent promotion or change to your site coincided with a spike — up or down — in your site traffic. Find out which of your actions led to the most positive results, then use that information as you plan future campaigns or redesigns. Similarly, look for trends in your Referrer report, such as a sudden rise in traffic from a particular web site or search engine; you can use this information to bring the same success to other pages. Data from your Visitor Profile report may inform your future design decisions.
Learn more about Site Statistics.
8. Market Offline
Marketing your web site through search engines and emails is helpful, but don't forget about traditional tools like word-of-mouth referrals and offline advertisements. Tell your friends and colleagues about your web site and include your web address on your brochures, press releases, flyers, letterhead, product packaging, and business cards. Think about your target audience and tailor your marketing efforts to their needs.
Next Steps
The best tactic for attracting visitors to your site is to stay vigilant. Include your web address in all of your online, offline, and verbal communications, and keep at it! Creating a compelling web site and updating your content regularly will keep your visitors coming back — and make them more likely to refer their friends. The more attention you can give to your web site, the more successful it will be.
Stay alert for new ideas and trends, and use Yahoo!'s tools to enhance your web pages — then review your site's performance. And don't forget to work on an offline marketing strategy! Take advantage of every tool at your disposal, and experiment to find out what works. For more ideas and information, please refer to our comprehensive online help center or get started with the pages below.