Hunting for readers: how to draw people to your website

Sun, 10 Jan 2010

Hamburg - It's never been easier or cheaper to set up a website. But getting people to check that site out? That can be an infinitely more difficult task. One approach is to make use of social networks. Using the short-message service Twitter is a simple way to draw attention to one's own site with comments about other websites. The same applies to fora or blogs.

"That's a way for you to show your skills as an author, but it can take a while," says Mario Fischer, a professor teaching business technology at a university in southern Germany.

The use of social bookmark services can help. It works like this: users set up bookmarks while surfing and register them with other sites like Mister Wong or del.icio.us so others can also take a look. There's no rule that one can't share a link to one's own site this way.

These services often offer previews of websites that users can integrate into their own sites as a button, making it easier for yet more readers to add that link to their own personal bookmarks.

But none of those methods are guaranteed to bring in more traffic. If they don't work, the next step is to try to give your site a search engine optimization. Search engines are supposed to be able to sort through sites for their pros and cons so they can put it as close to the top of a list when a site corresponds to a particular search.

"Google weighs in on about 200 signals," says Kay Oberbeck, a spokeswoman for Google's German operations. Google divides these criteria into three categories: composition, quality and technical implementation. Links from other sites play a key role in setting a website's popularity and are used to provide a page rank, a key measure of popularity.

But how to get links? One way is to post comments in well-visited blogs or fora, leaving behind a link while doing so. But this only works if those posts are serious and have some value. There's also little point in simply leaving a series of links on the pages of friends and co-workers. "Those link networks are recognized by search engines," says Fischer.

Search engines often have problems with dynamic content and Flash animation. If you don't want to do without them, you need to provide a sitemap for those engines. People with a Google mail account can use its Webmastertool to construct a sitemap.

Also pay attention to the source code, the website's programming. Metatags in the code's header provide clues to its content. Experienced web designers swear by the metatag "Keyword," convinced they can get better results with Google and other search engines by putting something relevant there.

Fischer disagrees. "They are not even read by search engines."

More important is the metatag "Title." Its contents are shown by the browser in the page title and are read by the search engine: for example, "Kitty cats - a blog for cat lovers." Fischer advises using five to seven keywords. Designers can also use the tag "Description" to give a short idea of the page's contents, which Google then passes on its search results.

But budding designers need to realize that there is no way to make a website popular overnight. "You have to give yourself a little time," says Fischer. "The first results will come in two to four months."

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/302903,hunting-for-readers-how-to-draw-people-to-your-website.html.