Online Manual - Lists, Links, Malls and more
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What's New Lists and What's Cool Lists | Links | Malls
News Groups and Mailing Lists | Traditional Advertising

What's New Lists and What's Cool Lists

Many places on the Internet keep "What's New" and/or "What's Cool" lists. These lists are kept by software manufacture's such as Netscape, or by search engine companies, or by almost anyone who wants to create one.

If you have a new or cool product or service, you should apply to all places that you can find to get on their lists. These lists change often, but are read by large numbers of people. Even if your product or service is not new or cool, you should still apply. Maybe your home pages just look really great and are unique. This is enough to get you listed.

People who get their sites listed in the new or cool lists, often report high traffic at the times that they are on the list, so it is definitely worth your time to try and get on any specialized lists such as these.

Links

The next best thing you can do for free to promote your site after submitting it to the search engines using Add-it, is to get as many sites to create a link to your site as possible. Many will require a reciprocal link, but usually they will not specify where it must be located, so that you can put all reciprocal links on a separate page, or at the bottom of your home page.

There are many ways in which to find sites that will place links to your site.

First, you should search the Internet looking for sites that discuss topics related to your business. For example, the person trying to sell tropical fish, should search the Internet looking for sites that deal with pets, or aquariums, or fish. Search the Internet using these keywords, and visit every one that looks interesting. Then, e-mail the webmaster and ask if he/she would provide a link to your page. Even if you see no links on that page, it is a good idea to ask anyway. You may want to offer a reciprocal link to their site in your first e-mail message. Generally, your direct competitors will not want to make links for you, but others will usually be more than happy, especially if your site offers something interesting.

A good way to search for sites that might place links to your page, is to see which places have links to your competitor's pages. To do this, I recommend using the Add It! simple search.

Once there, search on the entire URL of your competitor. Place his URL in the keyword search box, including the http:// part. When the results come back, look at all pages not located on his site, (those not at the URL you just types in).

What the search engine is doing is searching the web for pages that have that URL in their document. Any site that links to your competitor must have his URL in the document. Visit each site to determine if indeed they have a link to your competitor's site. If so, then ask if they would also consider placing a link to your home page.

Malls

Another place to look for are business malls. Many require a fee to become a member, but many do not. These malls are sites set up that house many different businesses in one location enabling the user a one stop shopping site.

Your Internet provider may offer a mall listing all of the businesses that use their services. Or, some communities have sites set up by local colleges, businesses, or the chamber of commerce which link all sites within the community. Check all available sites in your area for these.

News Groups and Mailing Lists

Don't forget to join all newsgroups and become active in them. This is a good way to stay on top of your field of business as well as promote your site. I don't want to get into detail here about what newsgroups and mailing lists are, because there are quite a few good resources on the web for that. However, suffice it to say that it is definitely worth looking into since you can pretty much find a newsgroup that focuses on specifically the business you are in. Newgroups are very focused groups of people all with the same interest.

Traditional Advertising

There are many different types of traditional advertising avenues you may pursue. Even if you have just started your business and all marketing resides on the Internet, you can not forget traditional promotion techniques. Here is just a small list of the different types of ways you can promote your site via traditional methods that may be different from the ways you advertise now.

Press releases or stories sent to newspapers, and magazines.

Once your site is up and running, you should make up press releases specifying that your business is now up on the Internet, and information about what you are offering. Don't forget to include the URL address (http://whatever....) in the press release. If you've never written a press release, then you can find information in your local library, and probably on the Internet. Many word processing programs have ready made templates with complete examples for you to use.

Once written, send them out to all newspapers that you can afford to send it to, especially local ones. Local newspapers love to hear news of an exciting or unique product or service being offered through the Internet. Today, it seems that if a story has the words World Wide Web, or Internet in them, they are bound to be published.

Send them out to columnists who talk about computers or the Internet. Send them to computer magazines, Internet magazines, and trade magazines.

You can find lists of magazines under the Yahoo directory or any other directory. Don't hesitate to e-mail your press release to all the magazines that you find listed.

Yellow Pages

Don't forget to update your yellow page ad in your phone book with your URL address. This will set you apart from most other ads. If you are trying to target a specific area of the country, it would be beneficial to place an ad in that area's phone book as well.

This is by far still the most common way people search for businesses and services within their own community.

Company Letterhead, Business Cards, etc.

Change all your company stationary, letterhead, business cards, envelopes, etc. to include your site's URL.

Make sure that readers will know the difference between your home page address, and your e-mail address.


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