How do I establish a noticeable presence in the WWW for free?
I may be able to help you get an answer. A few years ago, when I was in college I got an assignment for which I needed to investigate the United States Government Structure. The first thing that I thought was “I should be able to find all my answers in a government web site”. It did not happen. After researching for a while I found out that to get the information that I needed I had to visit many different places in the web. My frustration made me decide to publish a web site with all the things that I found on my research to make it easier for others.
I searched for a good domain name and I decided to get www.theusgov.com .I thought that the most difficult part was going to be to design the web site and learn how to use a web design program, but I was wrong. After designing the web site in a format that was easy to understand I decided to put it in the air for others to see. I didn’t know much about the subject so I thought that I could just send my website to a search engine and they will host it. It does not work that way. I needed to find a web host that would fit my budget. After paying for it, I could unlock the extensions of the type of program I was going to use to upload the information into it. It took more time than what it could take me now knowing how it works but, that had to be explained to me by the host company that I hired. I could start the process now.
First, I found out that search engines would not publish a web site only because it is submitted the correct way. The procedure is easy to follow but, the requirements of the different search engines are different. I was interested in Google but they were not interested in my web site. After the submission I waited more than 3 weeks before they could even look at my web site. I got a letter from Google telling me that my web site could not be published because there were a few things missing in its structure. I had to publish my website because this had become personal. I understand that search engines want to keep their search results at a good quality level but, I just wanted my web site to be published! They wanted my web site to have a disclaimer, a good description and to be specific on the structure if I wanted it to be published for free.. I fixed the web site the way they wanted it and found out that the process had to start all over again. Sometimes is better to hire a professional to do this type of job but, in my case, I was not going to spend money on a website that was for educational purposes only, and therefore was not going to generate any money back. Google decided to publish my web site after the 2nd attempt. It was great! My website was in the internet! The problem that I had now was that I had no visitors to my website.
I looked around the internet to find the way to get people to visit my website. There were a few companies that offered to direct traffic my way but I DID NOT WANT TO PAY. Why should I pay if I was not going to get any profit from my website? Even though, now Google pays for my website expenses. I kept on submitting my website to as many search engines that I could find until I got bore of doing it. I even tried one of those banner exchange programs that are announced in a few major WebPages but it did not work for me. It may have been because I was still the only visitor to my website. There was another option, link exchange but who wants to link to a web site that only the webmaster of it knew? I searched the web for answers until I got one that worked for me. The key to get some traffic for free was the content wording and its relation to its metatags. It may not work the same way now in Google but it does for some other search engines and they got me the links that I needed to get my free traffic started. I found out by searching for my web site using the description that I had sent to the major search engines. For example: I used “government of the United States”, “United States government departments” and finally a word that it is within my website description “United States Government Structure”. The web site was within the first 10 results. I started to get visitors from all over the world within a few months. I also discovered that there are still ways to make, publish and rank a web site in a good position without spending a lot of money. I decided to do everything myself and it took me more that a year to get where I am now but, if I knew then what I am telling you now, everything could have been way easier.
I hope that my experience could help you learn and save time and money.
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