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Australian weather and the seasons The Australian Gold Rush European discovery and the colonisation of Australia Convicts and the British colonies in Australia Great Barrier Reef Australian Indigenous cultural heritage Sydney Opera House Modern Australian fashion Australian food and drink Sydney Harbour BridgeGuide 9. I'm online. Now what?
How do you promote your website? (screen 2 of 8)
There are millions of websites out there. So how are Web users going to find yours?
There are three main ways users will find out about it:
- Cross-promotion(1) for example, when you provide the address for your website on your stationery and other promotional material.
- Other sites provide links to your website.
- By using a search engine(2).
You can promote your website using sites such as 
A1's Directory of Free WWW Webpage Promotion Sites(3), Webcom(4)and Webcrawler.com(5). There's more about this in an earlier Guide(6).
Put your URL on your stationery
Don't be shy about your site. Put it's URL on your letterheads and business cards. Put it on any promotional materials, pamphlets, brochures, newsletters, tickets, or anything you print. You should also include your email address.
If you take out advertisements in the press, on radio or on television include your URL there too.
Send information about your website to Internet magazines
Australian Internet magazines such as Australian Net Guide(7) often look for new Australian sites to mention to their readers. Include your site among them.
You could also target the Internet-savvy community by placing advertisements for your site in computer and Internet magazines, or in the computer pages of newspapers.
Advertise on search engines
You could advertise on other websites, particularly search engine websites.
Make announcements on discussion lists
You can also make announcements on appropriate newsgroups and distribution and discussion lists, both in Australia and internationally.
Launch your website publicly
A public launch of your website, and linking your site to physical events, are other ways to promote your site.
Register your website
A good place to register your site with all Australian search engines is the OZ Gateway(8) site, where you can also request to have your site announced as a new Australian site. Individual international and Australian search engines allow you to register from their search screens.
Note that it can take several weeks for a search engine to list your website. You might consider buying an additional registration service which will submit your URL to hundreds of search engines rather than doing it yourself. Planet Domain(9) includes a good level of information on registering your site, re directing your URL, and many other related services. Registering your site on large web search engines is also useful, for example, the Australian and New Zealand search specific engineAnzwers(10).
Become part of a free banner bank
Banner banks are a good way to advertise your site. Some are free. Users can click through from the banner directly into your website. It means you advertise other websites on your website and yours is advertised on theirs. It may be a good idea to develop a banner bank with organisations similar to yours.
Join a webring of similar sites
Webrings(11) are links to related websites in a chain or list. Webrings help Internet users find sites on the same subject matter, such as the webring Artists of the Web(12).
And of course if you're an Australian cultural website you'll add your website details to our database of Australian culture and recreation websites(13).
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References
- Guide 4 screen 8 http://culture.gov.au/resources/guides/g4/s8.htm
- Guide 3 screen 5 http://culture.gov.au/resources/guides/g3/s5.htm
- A1's Directory of Free WWW Webpage Promotion Sites http://www.a1co.com/index.html
- Webcom http://www.webcom.com/html/publicize.shtml
- Webcrawler.com http://webcrawler.com/Help/GetListed/AddURLS.html
- Guide 4 screen 8 http://culture.gov.au/resources/guides/g4/s8.htm
- Australian Net Guide http://www.netguide.com.au/
- OZ Gateway http://www.ozgateway.com.au/
- Planet Domain http://www.planetdomain.com/
- Anzwers http://www.anzwers.com.au/
- Webrings http://www.webring.org/
- Artists of the Web http://m.webring.com/hub?ring=artistsofthewebn
- Our database of Australian culture and recreation websites http://culture.gov.au/add/
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