Submitting Your Campaign Website to Search Engines
A search engine is a tool that enables users to locate information on the World Wide Web. Users enter formation sought. Having created a search engine-friendly keywords into search engines to find websites which contain the techniques of the previous articles, it’s now time to make your local campaign famous!First, it is important to understand that unless you are running for a major office, the majority of your site traffic will come from people who see your campaign literature and type your domain name into a browser address bar. However, others might search for you or your campaign on the Web. In order for them to more easily find you, you will want to submit your website to search engines and possibly run other sorts of online advertising.
Submitting Your Campaign Website
Start early! Once your site is up and running with content , the first thing you should do is submit your site to the major search engines and directories. Since it may take several weeks for your site to show up, you will want to start this process as soon as you can.
As a first step, manually submit your site to important directories such as Google, Yahoo!, and the Open Directory Project. During submission, you will also need to write a description that concisely and accurately describes your website.
Here are a few of the most important search engines and directories:
The Open Directory Project: http://dmoz.org/add.html
Google: http://www.google.com/addurl.html
Yahoo! Search: http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request
Yahoo! Directory: http://www.yahoo.com (Find the directory where you want to be listed, then click the Suggest a Site link.)
MSN: http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx
You do not need to submit your site to dozens of search engines since search engines and directories routinely spider each other’s content. The overwhelming majority of your website traffic will come from only the top few directories listed above.
Paid services exist that will submit your website to search engines for you - and guarantee terrific search engine results. Beware! A common scam involves promising and delivering page one search results — but only for irrelevant or overly-specific keyword phrases. Besides, most campaign websites are of short duration, and by the time the effort would come to fruition, the campaign might well be over.
Don’t obsess over your search engine ranking. As mentioned above, the majority of your website traffic will come from individuals who learned about your site from offline resources. Just as single mailing won’t win an election, submitting your website to search engines and directories is just one component of an overall online campaign strategy.
This article was an excerpt from Running for Office as an Online Candidate, an e-book included FREE with any Online Candidate hosting package.
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Tags: campaign promotion, website tips
