# 7 - Standing Out from the Crowd

Standing Out from the Crowd

By Chris Maher

The web's phenomenal growth is attracting many business, and web sites are being built at a furious pace. How do you attract the attention of a potential customer so they will visit your site, or even find you at all?

This is a large topic, and I address different aspects of it in all the articles under the Promotion - The Key To Success heading in the Article Index. Be sure to check them all out.

Many artists rely on the big search engines like Alta Vista, (http://altavista.digital.com/) HotBot, (http://www.hotbot.com) or catalogs like Yahoo! (HTTP://www.yahoo.com/) to direct their customers to them. With tens of millions of web pages indexed, these sites have tremendous traffic.

The trouble is, a simple query like "jewelry" will bring up a huge amount of pages (HotBot returned 104,325 matches) Only the top 50 pages in that listing have a chance of being visited by any but the most dedicated researcher.

How to get into those top spots is a topic of great interest to anyone trying to promote a page on the Web. I have spent a great deal of time researching it, and have put my findings in my web site promotion guide at (http://www.1x.com/promote).

The most useful things you can do to help your position are putting keywords in your pages title, in your meta tags, in the headline of your page, and use them in the first paragraph of text on your page. (For more tips check out Danny Sullivan's Search Engine Watch at http://searchenginewatch.com/)

But there is an easier way to get noticed than fighting the huge crowds of sites that come up with general search terms. Think in terms of your niche. Title each page you create with terms that are as specific to your intended customers as possible. The term "pottery" returned 46,505 matches in HotBot. but the phrase "salt fired tea pot" brings up just 3 web pages.

And don't just rely on the search engines. Think of where your potential customers are on the Internet. Newsgroups and Mailing Lists are great ways to let folks know about your work.

Be forewarned, unsolicited, off topic posts are sure to get you angry responses. Be sure your posts are on topic, and you will find many interested folks coming to check your site out.

The key is to find where your customers are. To join in discussions in the rec.food.drink.tea newsgroup (yes, there really is one) is a great way to get noticed by those who are your potential customers for those fine tea pots you produce.

In issue #8 I address where you can find the newsgroups and mailing lists that are relevant to your customers, and how to use "sig files" to advertise your site every time you send an e-mail message or post to a newsgroup.

This page last updated: 09/02/04

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