TT280 - Publicising the Site

Its no good having an excellent site if nobody knows about it, and for an eCommerce site it is imperative to have good search engine position. There are many things that can be done to promote the site some, before you even go near the Web.

Registration of a good Uniform Resource Locator (URL) ideally will be the company name, .com is best followed by .co.uk, register both if available. Cost £8.99 pa .com and £2.99 pa for a .co.uk (prices at time of writing).

Once the URL is known add it to all business correspondence i.e. letterheads, business cards etc. Add the URL to any advertising campaigns currently running and to all future campaigns. Word of mouth recommendations from current to prospective customers is probably the most effective.

Submission of the site URL to the search engines, this can be done for free with most engines but it will take anything from 4-12 weeks to be listed. Google is the search engine to be listed on since over 90% of all web searches are performed using this engine. There are ways to shortcut this by using paid submission services that can get you listed in 48hrs (Not Google). A paid inclusion service offering submission to the Inktomi engine should be preferred as it provides content to many other search engines such as HotBot, Lycos, Excite, MSN, Netscape, etc., (Google excepted). Other important directories to be listed in are Yahoo and the Open Directory (DMOZ) both supply their content to many engines and a ranking in these can significantly increase search engine positioning.

Possible affiliate program, this one is a win – win situation. What is affiliate program? Your affiliates put links in the form of banners or text on their own pages and when someone uses that link and arrives at your site and then buys something the affiliate gets a percentage of the sale as commission.