A Site Owner's Work Never Ends 

When you finish your site you might think that all that is left to do is submit the site to a few search engines and wait for the flood of traffic. After a few days you may find that "flood" to be a mere trickle - or more like a few drips here and there. Your work has had just begun. Click here for a typical outline of an on-going web promotion project

Developing a web site is hard work, but it's nothing compared to trying to promote and improve the site...which is an ongoing process or even battle. It would be nice if you had a step-by-step set of instructions when it came to site promotion. Finish Steps A, B, and C and presto! Tons of visitors! You never have to do another thing to promote your site! It would be nice, all right, but it just doesn't work that way.

One of the first steps most webmasters take after completing their site is submitting to the search engines and directories. However, many times submitting isn't enough.

• You've got to check your ranking on a continual basis to ensure that you don't slip. If you do find your site slowly slipping in the rankings, you need to take action to correct that.
• You must apply other search engine optimization methods and tools, such as topical gateway or bridge pages, that require almost constant monitoring to be successful.
• In developing a search engine game plan, you must also keep tabs on which keywords are used to find your site, which search engine sends the most visitors your way, and more.
• Banner ads should be viewed as more than a one shot promotional technique. You must monitor which of your banners are most successful in terms of their click through and conversion ratios and constantly hone your banners to help boost those numbers. You must also constantly be on the lookout for new and/or better sites on which to place your banners.
• You should developing a reciprocal link program (or just a link program) which is also very time consuming. You must search out sites and contact owners to request links. This is something that will more than likely be done for the life of your site. There will be a good deal of time devoted to "checking up" on your link partners' sites to make sure your link is still active (this isn't too hard to do with a good tracking program like WebTrends or a free service like HitBox.com).
• You must promote your site using conventional marketing methods and you must track the return and determine those that work best.

Another aspect that quire often is not thought of in regard to linking is the fact that there are going to be sites that link to you that you DON'T want linking to you. Which may require an email requesting the site remove the link. This takes time to research and request the removal.

Then there is the effort involved in improving a site's design over time. Some aspects of your site design can't be refined until you've had quite a few visitors. There are companies that can afford to do extensive research and testing before they open their doors (so to speak) online, but for the average online entrepreneur, the research and testing information comes in the form of email from site visitors after the site has been launched.

Based on suggestions, complaints, and observations from those who've visited our sites, we learn what to keep, what to tweak, and what to lose. Email is valuable to a webmaster. Don't ignore common problems expressed by many visitors. You can learn a lot from visitor feedback and improve your site much more than you can by trying to assess the strengths and weaknesses yourself. Needless to say, this is an ongoing process as well.

Success in promoting a web site is measured by the amount of time and experience that goes into it. If you lack either perhaps we can be of assistance