. The World Wide Web Offers Great Opportunities, but It's Not a Field of Dreams
No one really knows how many web sites there are on the Internet.
Worldwide there are at least a million web sites available to the viewing public. How the heck are they going to find you?
The first place most people go to search for a web site is via a search engine (the term that has been given for a directory of web sites). They just click on the Netscape or Explorer browser and are instantly sent to one of the many new search engines that support the WWW.
There are two basic kinds of search engines: 1) those that depend on people to register their sites; 2) those that actively go out on the web and search for new pages (known as spiders). The most popular search engines using the spider methodology are InfoSeek, WebCrawler, Lycos, AltaVista and Excite. Yahoo is the most popular of the kind that depend on individual registration.
If you have a web site, you want to make sure you're registered on all of these search engines (and a dozen others that I haven't mentioned). You can do this in one of three ways: 1) visit the site and follow the individual procedures listed on their instruction pages; 2) go to one of the sites that offer to do it for free (www.submitit.com, www.infospace.com); 3) or pay one of the many companies that have popped up to do this kind of work (often referred to as Internet PR). In every case you need to keep going back to these search engines to check if you're registered. They are so swamped with registration requests that they often get lost or aren't acted on.
A good deal of your web site traffic can come from being linked to other sites. At one time this was fairly easy, as just about anybody would link your site if you'd link to theirs. However, this is not true today. Providing links is now a business, and most of the web sites that generate substantial traffic are looking for banner advertising to pay a good portion (if not all) of the freight. That is not to say that you can't get links. The best way to do it is go to the sites you like and offer to exchange links; when done by e-mail, your only cost is time.
Banner advertising can be quite effective. If the web site offers a targeted demographic, the prices range from $75-$150 per thousand impressions or page views per month. If it is a less targeted demographic, like one of the search engines, prices range from $18-$60 per thousand impressions. At Yahoo, for example, you can expect to pay $18 per thousand if you purchase a contract for one million impressions or more per month.
Search engines offer another option known as the keyword search. The search engine programs its system to display a selected banner when a search word is entered. For example enter the search word "movies" and up pops the Disney banner. The cost for a keyword search varies depending on the popularity of the category; the range is $65-$100 per thousand, with a monthly minimum of $500 or more.
Another option is to list your business with the different WWW directories. There are hundreds of these on the web. Some, like DC/CHIROWEB.com (www.chiroweb.com) are industry specific; others like Yellow Pages On-line (www.ypo.com) and GTE Super Pages (superpages.gte.net/) are emulating the yellow pages with an online service that offers maps and other things you can't get on paper. Prices on the various directories vary from $10 to $25 per year to a $1,000 or more depending on how targeted and focused the directory is. The Yellow Page style has not proven too popular yet, but they are growing as they add new features.
Finally, there are the very basic things that you must do. Put your web site address on all your letterhead, business cards, yellow page ads, coupons and any other form of advertising you do. It cost you nothing to add a web site address and requires no further explanation. If the reader doesn't know what to do with it, it doesn't matter.
Steven Sheiner
Tel: 818-505-8207
Fax: 818-505-8302
Click here for more information about Steven Sheiner.