Once you have created a web site, what will make people visit? The answer is marketing.

If anyone has ever studied the field of marketing before they can tell you that marketing a website is very similar to marketing a an idea, service or product. The whole point is to get your target audience to take notice.

What are some of the methods to announce your web site?

Search Engines

Use your own experience, and you will know that a search engine is how interested parties usually find a web site. By submitting your site to the top search engines you can ensure that visitors will be able to find your site in a list of search engine results. You must ensure that you have your site complete with META TAGS before you submit to search engines.

Announcements in Newsgroups and Message Boards (Warning Included!)

It may be a good idea to make an announcement in a NEWSGROUP or a MESSAGE BOARD to introduce your site.

But be very careful! If you do not do this correctly you may be singled out as a spammer.

When you make your announcement your should do so to introduce your site as a "new resource". Try not to make any outlandish claims about the usability of the site or the worthiness of the information on the site. Be honest and don't embellish.

Signatures

It is considered spamming if you post a web site address/link out right in a message board/NEWSGROUP, but most people won't care if that link is part of your signature.

Exchange Links

Go to sites where the current users would be interested in your site. Ask the other site's webmaster to place a link to your site in exchange for you doing the same to his/her site.

Tell a Friend

You may want to incorporate a tell a friend link on your site. This lets interested parties to be able to easily send their friend an e-mail that shows them your site. Tell a friend can be created by installing a fairly simple CGI/PERL script.

Analyzing Your Traffic

This is where you find out if all your efforts were worthwhile. There are different ways to measure traffic.

Counters

On the low end, counters will provide a running count of the number of visitors who have completely downloaded a page. The problem with counters is that 'count' is about all the data they provide. Also, they are considered unattractive and unprofessional by many (i.e. there are no counters on sites like CNN or ESPN).

Tracker Services

A 'tracker service' works similar to a counter in that it will count visitors, but most services can capture quite a bit of additional information such as operating system, time of visit, browser used, referrer, etc.

The drawback to tracker services is that they rely on the download of a graphic to register a user session. These graphics can be quite unsightly and they frequently contain advertisements. Also, downloading the tracker graphic itself can increase the download time of your web page.

Some popular tracker programs are:

Web Trends Live
Extreme Tracking
HitBox

Log Analysis Programs

If you have access to your server's log files, you can view very specific information about the traffic on your site. Many webmasters who are serious about search engine optimization, use Log File Analysis.

Page Views .vs. Hits .vs. Unique Visitors

Hits is usually considered the amount of files that were transferred over a period. Page views is the number of web pages viewed and unique visitors is the amount of separate IP addresses that visited the site.

Typically hits could be 1,000, but page views could be 100 and unique visitors could be 20 over a period of time. Even though hits are 1,000 only 20 people visited.

"Stickiness"

Stickiness is the site's ability to re-attract visitors over time. Stickiness is what enables a web site to increase in traffic.

Stickiness can be created by having regular and important updates. Message Boards and news feeds also create stickiness.