Bruce does web promotion for a living, and his step-by-step instructions on how to go about the job are excellent. Well worth reading.Make Your Site Sell!
A great (and inexpensive, about $20) web-marketing course that concentrates not just on getting more people to your site, but on properly selling to them once they arrive. Available both as a digital and paperback book. More details here.RobotsTxt.org
Interesting pages on Web Robots, how they work, how to identify them, and how to create a proper "robots.txt" file, which allows you to control how Search Engines index your site. Must reading before creating such a file.Search Engine Help
PS: never create a blank robots.txt file; some Search Engines think this means "don't index me!" Also, check out the Robots.txt checker tool listed below.
The guys at Planet Ocean are in the trenches of the Search Engine Wars, and they have a great eBook that everyone who is serious should read. But more importantly, they have a monthly newsletter that tracks the search engines in great detail and is full of good articles. Not cheap, but well worth it; I have subscribed for some time. Very Highly Recommended if you decide to get really, really serious about web promotion (such as doing it professionally)Search Engine Watch
This site gives you the skinny on how all the search engines work, and how to do better when submitting to them! A real gem, I cannot recommend it highly enough. There is also a special private section of the website for subscribers ($69 a year) that is well worth the price if you are serious about site promotion. I finally broke down and forked over the bucks, and I'm kicking myself for not doing it earlier. I learned a couple of tricks in the first 10 minutes of browsing that will pay it back 10-fold. Next to SelfPromotion.com (heh heh) this is the best deal on the net when it comes to site promotion.Traffick
An excellent source for news and commentary about Search Engines and Indexes. Very insightful.WebMasterWorld
Another great source of up-to-date search engine information; excellent forums.WordTracker
WordTracker is the best site on the net for tuning your keyword selections. It helps you develop lists of relevant keywords, ranked by their popularity. It then queries the major search engines to determine which keywords are the least competitive. It's usually not much use targeting a popular keyword (lots of searches) if there are millions of other pages that contain that keyword. On the other hand, a relevant keyword that only gets a few searches a day but which has only a few pages competing for it is a good candidate, because it will be much easier to get a high ranking. WordTracker has a free trial that will give you a lot of information, and additional services available by subscription - including some great tools for working with the major pay-per-click sites.WordTracker Keyword Research Tool
WordTracker now has a free keyword research tool that can help you find decent keywords for your site.
Lots of tools for keyword tracking, adwords stuff, more.Mall-Net Search Engine Keyword Report
This is a great site that gives you tons of up-to-date info on what keywords are being searched for. Don't be put off by the cluttered pages. This is a gold mine -- but you have to dig for the gold!MarketLeap Link Tools
Free Tools that help you check your link popularity and more. Simple and nice.Page Rank Search
Nice pagerank and link checking tools.Trellian Keyword Discovery
Pay service, similar in scope to WordTracker. I don't have personal experience with it, but it looks good.Web-Stat
Web-based visitor statistics service. Gives you lots of ways of looking at your hits, including a helpful list of what keyword searches people are using to find you.VisiStat
Another statistics service. Both Web-Stat and Visistat have good feature sets, check them both out and decide which is best for you.
Nicely done site with a perspective similar to mine and a pleasant style; nice to see someone else with the same mindset!Clickz
A wonderful high-end resource for website promotion and advertising. If you are running a serious website, you'll find lots of meat to chew on here.Do-It-Yourself Search Engine Optimization
Well organized tutorials on DIY web promotion. Similar perspective to mine but a bit more aggressive.eMarketer
A great resource for people who are serious about internet marketing and online commerce. Not for amateurs!FreeLinks
Good summary of search engine news; links to other internet marketing resources.Free Search Engine Secrets
A concise primer on submitting to search engines and getting a decent ranking. I don't agree with everything he says (in particular, he recommends manual submission to the major search engines), but the no-nonsense style and advice is well worth reading. He must know something; he got me to give him a link!Gebbie, Inc.
Gebbie, Inc compiles databases of contacts at newspapers, magazines, radio & TV stations, and other media outlets. A lot of these contacts are on their website, free for your use. You can also purchase them on diskette, for printing mailing labels, emailing, etc. If you want to send out a press release, this is a great resource.Linking 101
Advice and information about how to get more people to link to you. Good introduction to the topic.PromotionWorld
A real gem of a site, with tons of articles about web-promotion - and a newsletter too. These guys are giving VirtualPromote a run for their money.The PR2 Free Website Promotion Course
An excellent place to learn how to promote your website. Plenty of links to other resources.ReallyBig.com
Great site with links to hundreds of other website resources.SEO Edge - Search Engine Optimization Company
Good basic introduction to SEO terms and techniques, nicely organized by technique. SEO Edge also provides SEO services.Spider Food
Great set of tutorials about search engine optimization and positioning. A real in-depth site.VirtualPromote
VirtualPromote is one of my favorite sites, and a great starting place for finding resources.WebDevelopers Journal
An excellent online magazine for developers. Very broad list of topics. Highly recommended.Webmaster T's World of Design
Wonderful resource about Website design, construction and promotion.
Nifty Java-based tool for generating palettes of colors that work together nicely.CSS Pointers Group
Tons of links to Cascading Style Sheet pointers and information.DaveSite
Contains, amoungst other cool things, an excellent HTML for Beginners tutorial.Dr. HTML
A great free HTML and link verifier. Highly recommended.W3C HTML Validation Service
By far the most comprehensive and downright picky HTML validator on the net, and it's written by the folks who define what HTML is! Don't be surprised if it reports hundreds of errors in your HTML, often a single error can trigger a cascade of other errors. I typically fix the first error and do another validation. Highly Recommended but a bit hard to use.W3C CSS Validation Service
The counterpart of the HTML Validator, this w3.org tool validates Cascading Style Sheets.
Nice site full of info about pay-per-click search engines like Overture
A great About.com site about Personal Websites. Very friendly.About.com Websearch
Tons of tips and news about searching the web. Highly recommended.Article Marketer
Submission service for articles as opposed to websites. Has a free option.BigNoseBird.com
A great, though weirdly named, resource for webmasters. Tons of tips on site design, cgis, and so on, presented with with almost as much style and wit (and more humility) as this site!BrainFind
Useful index that specializes in webmaster resources. Well laid-out.DomainNameStuffEtc
Tons of articles on every aspect of getting a website up and running - in particular for beginners. Useful.EmailAddresses.com
An excellent site that lists just about every place on the net you can get a free email address, plus lots of email-related information.Free Center
A seriously cool site, Free Center is a great index of free resources for Webmasters. Hosting, Email, Chat rooms, CGIs, Contests, Counters, Fonts, JavaScript -- you name it, if it's free, it's listed here!Freedback
A great resource. Will design and generate the HTML code for a feedback form for you. You don't need to worry about CGIs or anything.HostIndex.com
Good place to look for a company to host your website. Has user-ratings of major webhosting companies.HostReview.com
If you are looking for webhosting, this is an excellent place to start.HTML Goodies
An excellent resource; tons of tips on writing good HTML!ITToolBox
Great resource for the very high-end webmaster who is running his own servers.Mal's E-Commerce
Provides free shopping cart services, premium services, affiliate tracking tools, and more. I haven't used it but one of your fellow users says it's great.Online Soldier
Broad overview/introduction to webmastering, including things like deciding on webhosting.SitePoint
A huge compendium of links to just about every resource of use to Webmasters. Well done, easy to use site.WebHosters.com
A great database of just about every company offering web hosting, with a powerful search system.WebReference.com
Run by the people who run AskJeeves, this is an excellent compendium of web resources. Go check it out.
Cute little Javascript applets that 'live' in your favorites menu or bar, and do all sorts of useful webmastery things, like checking html.WASP Plugin
Nice toolbar plugin for FireFox and Internet Explorer - it can lookup pagerank, alexa rank, and whois info for the current page, as well as do google searches.
Excellent list of major, regional, and specialty search engines.Directoryguide
Database of 400 special-purpose indexes.
A wonderful resource full of tips on saving your business money and low-cost marketing. The author obviously enjoys his work, and it shows. I found the site very useful -- and the tips are worthwhile for both virtual (net) and real-world businesses.Jotbot
A cute hack that makes it easy to quickly search all the major search engines from one form. VERY useful!The Onion
A truly demented, often inspired, weekly parody of the news.Wood That Works
You've got to see these amazing kinetic sculptures in action to truly appreciate their beauty and charming design. I've had one for many years; if you've got a wall and want something cool to put on it, this is the thing!User Friendly
A great comic strip, if you're a geek like me.
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