Lesson 9 - Other Methods of Increasing your visitors

1. Link Building

Link Building simply means getting other websites to link to yours. Getting your links on other websites will bring in more visitors to your own site as not only will people reach your site from other sites but the more people you have linking to you means you will rate more highly in a search engine. This is because the search engines look at these links as a “vote” for your website.

So how do your get your link on other sites?

• What about other local community sites? A good place to start is Torfaen’s Community Grid For Learning found at http://www.torfaenonline.co.uk. Here you will find links to other community groups in the area. Perhaps you could agree to link to each other

• Find other sites similar to yours. Try a search in your favourite search engine with your most important keyword phrases. Visit the top 20 sites under each keyword search and see if it would be useful to have your link on their site. Send a polite e-mail suggesting a link exchange. As a show of good faith, already have a link to their site/page and show where their link is displayed.

• Submit your site to the major directories. For example the Open Directory (http://www.dmoz.org) or Go Guides (www.goguides.org).
To start you off I have searched the Internet to find sites you could link to. You can find these in the resources section at the end of this tutorial. I’ve included links to local directories, local community sites, and national directories. These are ones that I’ve found but have a look yourself on the Net. If you find any good sites share them with us and I will add it to a list for all CGFL people to use. Have a look on the resources page.

2. Spread the word.
Let your family, friends and members know your website address.

3. Publish it everywhere.
Publicise it wherever you can. For example, in your group newsletter, on letterheads, leaflets and posters. You could even send a small article to the local newspaper or community newsletter to advertise your new website and try and include it on any articles you may send.

Lesson 10 - Submitting your website to Search Engines