13: Attracting an Audience: Publicizing Your Site in Java

Encoder Code39 in Java 13: Attracting an Audience: Publicizing Your Site

the Webmasters and ask them to put the link back in You can download Link Trader Pro at wwwhomebizfactorycom/Link_Trader_Prohtml Many search engines (Google, for example) consider the number of other sites with links to yours when determining how high you rank This means that of two sites, with everything else being equal, the one with more links leading to it from other sites shows up before the other one in search results Reciprocal linking is a powerful tool that you can use to legitimately boost your own site s rankings

Web rings are a kind of super-size reciprocal link arrangement Instead of making a reciprocal link between two sites, you make it with an entire group of similar sites at one time You can find Web rings on just about any topic you can think of, and many such rings are listed at http://dirwebring com/rw or wwwringsurfcom (See Figure 13-6) You can also start your own Web ring if you want

The weakness of Web rings is that they link in a ring In other words, each one links to the previous one in the list and the next one in the list If any site drops out of the ring, that messes up the whole thing, just as if you broke a link in a chain

In a banner exchange, each member creates a banner ad and submits it to a central site That site, the exchange itself, automates the process of displaying all the members ads on all the other members Web sites A banner exchange sounds like a great idea, but in practice, few banner exchanges survive for very long If you re considering joining one, make sure that you ask how long it s been in operation Also make it a point to contact current members and see how satisfied they are with the exchange That said, joining a banner exchange is an easy task You fill out a simple application form on the exchange s Web site; then you send the exchange your banner and place some HTML code on your site That s all there is to it the exchange handles everything else Several reputable banner exchanges are listed in Table 13-3

Table 13-3 lists some places on the World Wide Web where you can find more information on the topics covered in this chapter

Table 13-3

Web Address wwwaddmecom wwwedynamicsoftcom wwwgmarketingcom wwwhitxnet wwwlinkbuddiescom wwwsearchenginewatchcom wwwwordtrackercom

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Finding your niche Delivering the goods Designing for orders Adding a search function Adding a FAQ

ore pure bull hockey is floating around about Internet commerce than about practically any other topic in the world If you haven t found thousands of e-commerce Web sites promising you the moon and a moon made of gold and platinum at that you aren t looking According to these self-proclaimed gurus of e-commerce, all you need to do is put up a Web page not even a site, just a page and the money comes rolling in You can vacation in Acapulco this weekend and sun yourself on the Riviera by Monday The secret to this success Well, of course, they can t just tell you what it is That kind of information is worth some real money, you know This get-rich-quick-over-the-Internet scheme reminds me of an ad that used to run in the backs of cheap magazines many, many years ago For 25 , the ad promised, you could discover how to make a fortune fast After you sent in your quarter, you got back a pamphlet that, boiled down to its basics, told you to put an ad in a magazine asking people to send you a quarter Today s get-rich-quick schemes are no more solid than that one, even if they re draped in the latest finery of high technology So is there any truth at all to the glowing promise of Internet commerce Yes, there is The Internet represents the greatest market that s ever existed, and the opportunity is very real You can make a fortune in e-commerce, just as you can make a fortune in any other kind of commerce But success takes a combination of brains, toughness, marketing savvy, luck, and most of all determination to succeed In this chapter, I show you how to become a real Internet marketer