Announcing and Promoting Your Site
Your website is only useful if people come to it. This is probably quite obvious; but many people adopt the "if you build it, they will come" approach, which simply doesn't work on the web. So, how do you bring visitors to your site?
1) List your site with major search engines
Even the most friendly web addresses can be difficult to remember, so most of us end up using search engines to find what we are looking for. While it's true that some search engines will eventually stumble upon your site, it's much better to proactively list your site:
Google (Essential)
www.google.com/webmasters/tools/submit-urlBing (formerly MSN Search - Highly recommended)
www.bing.com/toolbox/submit-site-url
2) Add Google Analytics Tracking Software
After logging into Google/Gmail, visit the URL below. Next, click "Admin" in the top right, then "+ Account" to add your account. The "Account Name" should be your domain name - yourname.com. Select the correct Timezone and leave other settings as is. Once you've added your account, you will see it listed. Click your new Account Name once to access properties, then click it again so you can see "Tracking Code" as one of the tabs (2nd tab). This provides the code that we'll add to _head.php on your website. Copy and paste the code at the bottom of your _head.php file, below the </style> tag. This will also put it right before the </head> tag in your overall document. Recall that </head> is found in _top.php.
(Google/Gmail Account required)
www.google.com/analytics/
3) Verify ownership of your site with Google Webmaster Tools
Next, add our site to Google Webmaster Tools and prove that you are the site's owner. The easiest way to do this is with Google Analytics, which we just added in the step above.
Google Webmaster Tools: (Google/Gmail Account required)
www.google.com/webmasters/tools
4) Set up a Google Custom Search and Spider your pages
Once your site has been submitted to Google and is being spidered, you can use Custom search tools to get Google to spider pages on your site. You can also add a search box to your website (generally useful only if you have enough content to make search necessary).
Google Custom Search (Google/Gmail Account required)
www.google.com/cse/
5) Use your web address in your promotional material
People will remember your web address if you present it to them regularly and consistently. Make sure that your web address is listed on all of your promotional material, including photos, your bio, business card, posters, recordings, and any other materials you make available. Also, when you send out email, make sure that your website is included in your signature file.
Adding a Google Calendar (not promotion Related, but Google Account Related)
First expand "My Calendars" (little arrow on the left") then use the small "Dropdown" arrow after the calendar you want and click "Calendar Settings". This will take you to a page with HTML code you can use on yoursite. Next, click the "Customize the color, size, and other options" link to find tune how your calendar will display. For instance, you may wish to select "Agenda" as your default view. Paste the resulting code into the content area on your website. Note that there is an example page with optimal hight and width for a "no-side-image" page listed on the class website under course materials.