POPULARITY

So you’ve now made your website as search engine friendly as possible, we now need to give them a bit of help to find you and start indexing your site. We now need to consider the following areas;

1. Inbound Links
2. Search Engine Submission
3. Social Networking

Inbound Links
Links from other websites are an important tool for increasing your popularity. Not only will you get more visitors but the search engines will also hold your website in higher regard the more people who are linking to you. There are some really easy and again free ways to do this;

1. Press Releases
2. Business Directories
3. Networking Forums

Press Releases
This is one of the most powerful free tools, a well written press release both promotes your company to potential customers and can create hundreds of back links to your website. They are often picked up by automated RSS readers and can very quickly spread around the web. You can also create as many as you want!
A few things to bear in mind when you write the release are, make it catchy, always write in the third person, where you can include your logo always do and always put a link back to your website where you can.
There are many free press release sites available a few being:
www.free-press-release.com
www.i-newswire.com
www.prlog.com
www.1888pressrelease.com
www.freepressreleases.co.uk

Business Directories
Business directories are a great way to get some genuine static links to your site, take the time to fill out as much content as you can and be careful which categories you place your business in. A quick web search for “Free Business Directories” brings up hundreds, a few examples are:
www.freeindex.co.uk
www.applegate.co.uk
www.ukbusinessdirectory.co.uk
www.bttradespace.com
www.brownbook.net
www.trustpilot.com

Networking Forums
These are a great place to go and promote your website as well as take advantage of free back links. Most of these sites let you have a link in your forum post signature (though on some you have to post X posts first). A few popular ones are:

www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk
http://forums.teneric.co.uk
www.businesszone.co.uk
Search Engine Submission
Search Engine submission is an important tool that can help speed up the time it takes for the search engines to find and index your website. It is not recommended to submit your website more often than every 6-8 weeks, to get you started below are some links to the submission pages of a number of search engines, just click the “submission page” text next to the search engines name to go straight there.

Burf - Submission Page
Exalead - Submission Page
guruji - Submission Page
Gigablast - Submission Page
Entireweb - Submission Page
FyberSearch - Submission Page
MixCat - Submission Page
OneSeek - Submission Page
WhatUseek - Submission Page
Scrub The Web - Submission Page
Search Site - Submission Page
Infotiger - Submission Page
SonicRun - Submission Page
Abacho - Submission Page
Acoon.com - Submission Page
Amfibi - Submission Page
homerweb - Submission Page
JGDO - Submission Page
Myahint - Submission Page
Walhello - Submission Page
Big Finder - Submission Page
Web Squash - Submission Page
W8 Search - Submission Page
Google - Submission Page
Yahoo - Submission Page
MSN/LIVE/Bing - Submission Page
Search-O-Rama - Submission Page
Igwanna - Submission Page
Cipinet - Submission Page
Navisso - Submission Page
AxxaSearch - Submission Page
Dino Search - Submission Page
Boitho - Submission Page
Gheto Search - Submission Page
Intel Seek - Submission Page
Search Ramp - Site Submission
Ultimate Web Search - Site Submission
Find Once - Submission Page
Net Search - Submission Page
Susy Search - Submission Page
iASK - Submission Page
ZhongSou.com - Submission Page
Famhoo ) - Submission Page
Megaglobe - Submission Page
AnooX - Submission Page
Alexa - Submission Page
Aesop - Submission Page
Shoula! Search - Submission Page
NetSearch - Submission Page
SearchIt - Submission Page
Official Search - Submission Page
Iconnic - Submission Page
Coolfishy - Submission Page
Enter UK - Submission Page
Antya - Submission Page
Searchme - Submission Page
Claymont Search - Submission Page
BoroLook - Submission Page
Stopdog - Submission Page
searchengine.com - Submission Page
eXactBot - Submission Page
Vmgo.com - Submission Page
eBingBong - Submission Page
Swoogle - Submission Page
Knoole - Submission Page
XavierSeek - Submission Page
Lexxe - Submission Page
Xoole - Submission Page
eTracking (- Submission Page
Yoozila - Submission Page
Searchii - Submission Page
Web Portal Guide - Submission Page
Search Blast - Submission Page
iDoFind.com - Submission Page
SpongeLink - Submission Page
ubExact - Submission Page
Thorseek (- Submission Page
Oriango - Submission Page
Find Once - Submission Page
cuil - Submission Page
WASALive! - Submission Page
Super.Info - Submission Page
Abraham Search - Submission Page
Searchers - Submission Page
Majestic-12 - Submission Page
SearchWiz - Submission Page
All Xplore - Submission Page

Social Networking
Social Networking for Business is still not being used as much as it should be though websites such as Facebook and Myspace are very highly ranked by the search engines and having a page for your business can prove very useful. You should also encourage your employees to “become a fan” or join your network as you never know who their friends might be – they might just be your target market. Some of these networks such as Facebook also allow you to have a sub-domain such as network.com/mycompany. A few of the biggest are:

www.facebook.com
www.myspace.com
www.linkedin.com

Another useful tool for your website is to add a way for your visitors to add a link to your website on their own Social networking page. People are often using this now to save their “Favourites/BookMarks” so that they are accessible wherever they might be, tools such as “addthis” make it very easy to include these on your site.