Cyberbubba Central - Web Authoring Starter

We have gathered resources to help you build and promote your site. For instance, if you need to make meta tags, you can get them made at WebPromote. You can check your tags for functionality at the Meta Tag Analyzer, and then you can use use Virtual Promote to submit your site search engines -- all for free.

1. Sites to Help You Build Your Site

It is important to have a well-designed site in order to get and keep your visitors and increase traffic and, therefore, sales. Here we list sites that will help you with HTML and in building your site in general. If you don't want to bother with HTML at all, you can use the web page wizard at Web Alley. Tripod, Angelfire, The Globe, and GeoCities, as well as other free web hosting sites, have their own web page wizards to help their members build pages easily. In general you will want to stay away from using frames and keep your graphics minimal for better rankings in search engines.

Web Alley
Introduction to HTML
How Do They Do That with HTML?
The Barebones Guide to HTML
Wade's HTML Tutorial
A Beginner's Guide to HTML
Authoritative Guide to HTML
Hotwired's Web Monkey
Web Diner
Great Website Design Tips
Tripod -- web page builders and more help.
Yahoo's HTML Guides -- a list of HTML guides.

2. Meta Tags

Make sure you have meta tags and your title in place before you submit to search engines to ensure better rankings. While meta tags will not ensure a No. 1 ranking in the search engines (and some search engines ignore them altogether), it is a good idea to try to help the search engines that do use them to index your site and give you a better ranking. You want to have a short title that describes your site's content, such as, "John's computer books for sale." The sites below will help you set up your meta tags. Meta tags basically consist of two parts: keywords and a description. You will want to choose keywords and a short description that are relevant to your site's content. Keywords that you want to emphasize can be repeated twice in the meta tag keywords; if you repeat keywords more than twice, however, your listing may be rejected.

Try to make your main page as search engine friendly as possible in order to help get a better ranking. The more the search engine finds relevant words on your site, the better ranking you will get. You may want to work the targeted keywords in bold/large imprint into the copy on the comment page itself. You can also put keywords in the alt tags of your images and in comment areas. Make sure your HTML is accurate, your page does not take too long to load, your links are working, and you stick to your targeted subject. For instance, you may want to submit a specific book page separately with its own meta tags.

You could use a title such as:

<HEAD>
<TITLE>John's computer books for sale</TITLE>

You could use keywords such as:

And a description such as:

To get an idea of what words you may want to use for your area, do a search on the keywords you want to target and see what the top sites have used. Then click through to those sites and view their source code. The more specific the keywords and focus and the more relevant they are to your site's content, the more likely you will be to get a higher ranking in the search engines.

Sites to Help You with Meta Tags

Here are some sites that will help you make your meta tags and get better rankings.

WebPromote.com -- makes your tags for you.
Vancouver Webpages -- makes your tags for you. (advanced)
Search Engine Watch -- tips on meta tags and search engine guidelines.
Scrub the Web -- checks your tags for functionality.
Web Site Garage -- helps you tune up for web site promotion.

3. Search Engines

Search engine listings are important to drive traffic to your site, and each search engine and directory works in a different way. To get better results make sure you have your title and meta tags in place. You can sometimes submit more than one page from a site (see the tips in each search engine).

Major Search Engines and Directories

Submit your URL to the following sites so that others can find it. It is best to submit to each of these by hand.

Lycos
HotBot
WebCrawler
Excite
Yahoo
Infoseek
AltaVista
LookSmart

Sites to Help You Submit Your Site

These sites will submit your site to many search engines and directories for you.

The Promoter -- submits to search engines and link pages for free.
Submit-it! -- submits to more than 400 search engines and link pages.
Submit-it! Free -- submits to search engines for free.
WebStep 100 -- submits to top web sites for free.
Virtual Stampede
Postmaster
WebPromote
Add me
Net Announce
Virtual Promote
Link-o-Matic
Register-it

4. Sites to Help You Promote Your Site

These sites will help you promote your site and give you search engine tips.

Marketing Reference -- marketing tips.
The Art of Business Web Site Promotion -- search engine, meta tag tips.
Hits to Sales -- articles, tools, and resources for web promotion.
E Page -- places to announce your site
Promote your site -- places to announce your site.
Northern Webs -- search engine tips.
The Ultimate Promotion -- submit your site, display your banners, tips on building traffic.
Internet Marketing Center -- marketing tips, newsletter.
Bruce Clay -- search engine ranking help.
For GeoCities members -- GeoCities has special banner exchanges and other resources.
Rank This -- search engine ranking help.

Newsletters

Starting an email newsletter about your site keeps your visitors coming back. Let those who sign up know when you make changes or have special features on your site. Send them out every few weeks or so, mention barnesandnoble.com and your store, and link back to your site to promote traffic and increase sales. You can get free email lists from the following:

Findmail -- start your own email list for free.
Listbot.com -- start your own email list for free.
Onelist

Banner and Link Exchanges

You can also generate traffic by putting links and banners on your site in exchange for links on other sites. These sites will help you:

Link Exchange -- free banner exchanges.
Trafficx -- free banner exchanges
Hyperbanner
Exchange It!
Yahoo's list of banner exchanges

Newsgroup Discussions

Join discussions that are relevant to your site's topic, and include your site name and URL to promote traffic. Make sure you do not send commercial messages when posting to newsgroups. Commercial messages will be considered spam and get you in trouble with the newsgroup and its members.

Web Rings

These URLs will help you find a group of sites like your own. People who are interested in your topic will be able to find your site through the ring.

WebRing -- join a ring of sites like yours for free.
Yahoo's list of web rings

Start New Sites

You may want to start new sites for different subjects you want to cover. You can then submit your new sites and link the sites together to share the traffic. Here are places where you can get free sites:

Tripod
Angelfire
Xoom
The Globe
Freeyellow
gURLpages
Geocities

Get Your Own Domain Name

You may want to get your own domain name, as this helps your site's credibility and gets you listed higher in search results. Ideally, you want to choose a name that is easy to remember and to spell and that relates to the topic of your site. You can register your domain name here:

InterNIC -- domain name registration services.