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Copyright © 1997 by Southern Minnesota Internet Group and University of Minnesota's Hormel Institute

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Ways To Promote Your Home Page

After all the hours you've put into creating a really great SMIG site, you don't want your mother to be the only one who comes to visit, right? Here are a few helpful hints to make your hard work pay off.

1. Register your site with search engines. It doesn't take long, and most Web-browsers do use one - Yahoo, Lycos, Infoseek, Excite and AltaVista, and there are dozens of smaller ones - as a jumping-off point. Here is a list of a few that'll take the "legwork" out of announcing your pages:

  • Submit-It - A FREE service designed to make the process of submitting your URLs to a variety of WWW catalogs faster and easier. Register with over 15 different catalogs, but fill out just one form !
  • Postmaster - To get the MOST announcements (over 350) for your URLs, go here!
  • Gridlinks - A FREE service in which you can submit your URLs and get published in Websight magazine.
2. Put your URL in your email signature file. That way every message you send - to anyone - reminds people where you live on the Web.

3. Put your URL on your resume. Don't you think your potential employers will be impressed if they see what you've created online?

4. Write a letter to the editor of your favorite magazine, and sign the letter with your name and URL. Magazines often print the e-mail addresses of people who write in electronically, so why should a URL be any different?

5. Visit other SMIG personal pages and invite them to do the same. Your web neighbors would love to hear from you, and they'll be thrilled that you took the time to visit their sites - and they'll quite likely reciprocate. They may even link to you if you ask.

6. Join a "web ring." These rings, which link people who visit a site to the next person in a circle of members, are popping up everywhere. Next time you see one on a web page, email the author and ask how to get involved.

7. When you're in a newsgroup, listserv or chat room, mention your address - but only if it's appropriate to the setting. The soft-sell approach is key here, because if you barge into an online community and start plastering your URL everywhere, you'll make plenty of enemies and do yourself absolutely no good. If you've created a great site about Yorkshire Terriers, it's fine to mention it in a dog-lovers' list. But don't go spamming the net - it's a violation of our guidelines, and believe me, we'll hear about it and take action.

8. Tell your mother/father/sisters/brothers/kids to tell everyone they know to visit your site. Isn't that what family is for?
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Copyright © 1997 by Southern Minnesota Internet Group and University of Minnesota's Hormel Institute