ISG Events - Public Library Web Managers WorkshopA presentation on 'Publicising Your Web Site with Search Engines' was given at the Public Library Web Managers Workshop on Thursday 12th October 2000.
Creating a slick, user friendly, informative Web site is not enough these days. To dramatically increase the number of users and traffic flow to your site you will need to raise its profile. There are numerous ways to do this including writing to mailing lists, advertising in the press and giving talks at conferences. One of the most successful (and cheapest) ways you can help Internet users find your site is through the use of search engines. A good understanding of what search engines are and how they work will ensure that your Web pages are designed in a way that makes them accessible to current search engines. This presentation will cover 'search engine friendly' design and consider the use of metatags, URLs, and the robots.txt files. It will also outline how to actually submit your site, which search engines to use, how to check for problems, and touch on using statistics to analyse the usage of your site.
URLS for:
| Broadcaster Website Promotion, Broadcaster | <http://www.broadcaster.co.uk/> |
| Engenius | <http://www.pegasoweb.com/engenius/> |
| Exploit Submission Wizard | <http://www.exploit.com/wizard/> |
| Net Submitter Professional | <http://www.netsubmitter.com/> |
| Register Pro | <http://www.registerpro.com/> |
| Submit it! | <http://www.submit-it.com/> |
| WebPosition Gold | <http://www.webposition.com/> |
| Introduction to Search Engines - An introduction, review, and com/parison of the major search engines, from the Kansas City Public Library | <http://dmoz.org/com/puters/Internet/WWW/Searching_the_Web/> |
| Easy Searcher - Guide to specialized search engines | <http://www.easysearcher.com/ez2.html> |
| Webopedia - Online dictionary for com/puter and Internet technology | <http://webopedia.internet.com/> |
| Bobby - A browser compatibility and accessibility checker | <http://www.cast.org/bobby/> |
| BotSpot - Guide to Bot - A bot is a software tool for digging through data. You give a bot directions and it bring back answers. | <http://www.botspot.com/> |
| BotWatch - Site for perl script that analyses log files | <http://www.tardis.ed.ac.uk/~sxw/robots/> |
| Comparing Externally-Hosted Web Statistics and Purchased Statistics Services - Article in Exploit Interactive, issue 7, 2nd October 2000 | <http://www.exploit-lib.org/issue7/statistics/> |
| Externally-Hosted Statistical Software - Ariadne, Issue 23, 2 March 2000 | <http://www.ariadne.ac.uk//issue23/web-focus/> |
| Nedstat - Externally-Hosted Web Statistics service for individual pages | <http://uk.nedstat.net/> |
| Netmechanic - Promotion Tip: How To Pick Your Keywords | <http://www.netmechanic.com/news/vol3/promo_no9.htm> |
| Performance Indicators for Web Sites - Exploit Interactive, issue 5, April 2000 | <http://www.exploit-lib.org/issue5/indicators/> |
| Search Engine Features For Webmasters - Chart for Webmasters showing how crawler-based search engines index their sites | <http://searchenginewatch.com//webmasters/features.html> |
| Search Engine tutorial for Webmasters - How to design your pages keeping search engines in mind. Design tips for each individual search engine | <http://northernwebs.com/set/> |
| Search Engine Watch - The best site for general information on how to use search engines to promote your site. Check out Search Engine Submission tips | <http://searchenginewatch.com/> |
| Search Tools - a guide - Excellent list of all of the useful search engines | <http://www.mmu.ac.uk//h-ss/dic/main/search.htm> |
| Self Promotion - Picking your Keywords | <http://www.selfpromotion.com/pageprep.t> |
| SiteMeter - Externally-Hosted Web Statistics service for the whole site | <http://www.sitemeter.com/> |
| Stats4All - Externally-Hosted Web Statistics service | <http://www.stats4all.com/> |
| Superstats - Externally-Hosted Web Statistics service | <http://v2.superstats.com/> |
| Using Externally-Hosted Web Services - Exploit Interactive, issue 5, April 2000 | <http://www.exploit-lib.org/issue5/software-used/> |
| W3C HTML Validation Service - Web Validation Service | <http://validator.w3.org/> |
| Web Page Backward compatibility - Allows you to view your pages as they would look in old browsers | <http://www.delorie.com//web/wpbcv.html> |
| Web Page Purifier - Checks your HTML for purity | <http://www.delorie.com//web/purify.html> |