One of the most important things any webmaster has to do on a regular basis, other than, you know, master the web, is to advertise his or her website using the best possible methods.

The process of promoting one’s site consists of three fundamental steps:

Step 1: Brainstorm good promotion ideas.
Step 2: Initiate good promotion ideas.
Step 3: Go back to step 1.

Thankfully, with my help you can all skip step 1 as many times as you’d like. That’s because I’m about to show you a few of the greatest methods you can use to promote your website. (The following were all stolen from omnistaretools.com, but since I wrote the page in question myself, I don’t mind the blatant plagiarism. Though you should note how I’m careful not to mirror my own content, since both of these pages are indexed by search engine spiders.)

1. Publish An Article

Write a really good article in your niche and e-mail all the bloggers in that field to let them know about it. You’ll be surprised at how many may link to you. Just remember to make sure your article is good, or you may get some bad press. (On the other hand, even bad press still counts toward your pagerank, unless they link you with a nofollow tag. But really, who takes the time to do that (except Matt Cutts, of course)?)

7. Be Opinionated

If you happen to notice a blog entry or forum topic where the majority opinion seems to be completely incorrect, be very opinionated on letting them know that you hold the opposite opinion. If you’re lucky, you may get a few links back saying that you’re wrong. (In fact, why not just hold the opposite opinion every time, even if they’re technically right? After all, in the SEO world, any link back is a good link back.)

18. Create a Great Favicon

A good favicon image accomplishes so very much: it increases brand awareness, makes your site stand out from the crowd, and gives you that street cred that comes along with every well-made favicon file. Just don’t make it animated gif style—you may think it makes you stand out even more, but users have been known to delete a bookmark or close a tab solely because of an animated favicon. Just don’t do it.

You can, of course, find many more great tips at the best ways to advertise your site page, hosted right here at Omnistar. (c;

Oh, and as a reward to my faithful blog lurkers, I’ll even add in an extra tip that has yet to make it on that other page:

0. Advertise Your Webpage Through Your Blog

When you finally make that great webpage that you want to spread the word about, don’t ever ever forget to write a blog entry about it, with lots and lots of links pointing right at it. Preferably with good keywords, like Web Promotion Tips You Just Can’t Ignore!.

If you have any tips of your own that you’d like to contribute, feel free to leave a comment. I’ll gladly post any suggestions that make me smile. (c;

Posted by Eric Herboso.
Did you enjoy this article? If so, then subscribe to my RSS feed.
There are more resources available at our On-line Webmaster Resource Center.

Posted by Eric Herboso.
Did you enjoy this article? If so, then subscribe to my RSS feed.
There are more resources available at our On-line Webmaster Resource Center.

BREAKING NEWS:
At pubcon, Matt Cutts of Google just announced that they will start limiting search results to two subdomains for any one web search. This is a drastic revision, and may very well affect your site, possibly very negatively. Thankfully, the announcement specifically stated that the changes would be rolled out only in the next couple of weeks, so you still have time to prepare.

What This Means

In the past, search engine results have treated subdomains as though they were different sites. If your company is QWERTY, Inc., for example, and you sell widgets and fizzsnaps, then you might use widgets.qwerty.com as your widgets site, and fizzsnaps.qwerty.com as your fizzsnaps site. In this way, you could keep using the same branding for all your sites by using the same domain, but use different sites for each product.

But now, that logic has been perverted by google’s recent announcement, because now, no matter what the search is, your domain can at most occupy two slots on any search engine result. Which means a search on “qwerty”, for example, would at most show the www subdomain and your most popular other subdomain. Other slots will go to other people’s sites.

Even worse is if you do not own your own domain, but are just renting out a subdomain–now, for any given search, you are almost GUARANTEED not to get into the search results AT ALL.

How To Make Sure Your Site Does Not Take a Hit

If you are currently relying on subdomains for the different departments of your site, now is a good time to start thinking about setting up different domains for each of your departments. Do not abandon your old sites, especially if you have long term seo investment already in them, but start up new sites with unique one-page content on each, that links strongly back to your old domains. Once these pages reach sufficient pagerank, they should be able to replace the positions that you will have lost from Google’s drastic change.

If, however, you unfortunately are hosting your site under a mere subdomain, then this is the call for you to get your own domain. When this new policy rolls into place (Matt Cutts said it would be “in the next couple of weeks”), your site will be effectively dropped from all search engine results, period. The only way to fix this, unfortunately, is to get your own domain.

Posted by Eric Herboso.

Did you enjoy this article? If so, then subscribe to my RSS feed.
There are more resources available at our On-line Webmaster Resource Center.

AJAX is one of those things that every webmaster needs to know about. In today’s e-commerce world, every move toward making a site easier to navigate and interact with is a big plus, and using AJAX is one method of doing just that.

AJAX stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML–in english, that just means that xml and javascript are being used on a page to load content asynchronously with the rest of the page. In other words, a webpage that has an ajax component can fully load and remain static even while the ajax component is still processing data between the user and the server.

The beauty of AJAX is that it allows a user to do things without requiring the entire page to reload. This makes it a powerful way of improving the speed and functionality of your site. But, perhaps more importantly, it makes your site seem more professional. As end-users, we are so used to seeing interactivity cause page refreshes that whenever we interact with a page and it doesn’t refresh, that by itself can make it feel professional.

And yet, strangely enough, AJAX is not some complicated new technology. It’s just a new way of processing information, and its power, though perhaps more psychological than anything else (saving page loads isn’t that big a deal, when you stop and think about it) is sufficient to make it a staple of all the new web 2.0 technologies.

Writing AJAX into your site is not difficult if you’re already familiar with javascript. In most cases, a good webmaster will be able to integrate AJAX into a site without too much technical trouble. (A good tutorial on writing AJAX is available here.) The hard part is not writing the code; it’s recognizing which parts of your site should integrate AJAX.

Try to find an interactive part of your site that would not lose functionality by making it just a small box on your main page. For some, this might be a link to subscribe to your newsletter; although if you are marketing a product, you should keep in mind that a ’subscription confirmed’ page is not fluff, but is an important and viable marketing stategy. Another idea might be to integrate a sales presentation on your site if you have a product to sell, or a virtual home tour, if you are a realtor. Although these functions could also be done in flash, AJAX is preferable because of standards. Nearly everyone has javascript available. Also, flash loads much more slowly, since the entire program has to be uploaded before it can even begin.

As you can see, AJAX is a powerful tool that webmasters can use to increase the speed, functionality, and professionalism of their site. I hope that these ideas will convince you to start working on implemenmting AJAX on your own site. Oh, and if any of you care to share, please post any examples of AJAX you’ve used on your website in the comments. (c;

Posted by Eric Herboso.
Did you enjoy this article? If so, then subscribe to my RSS feed.
There are more resources available at our On-line Webmaster Resource Center.