RESOURCE PAGE

Here are additional resources for promoting your site, customizing it with great free stuff and even earning money.

Link on one of the bullets below or scroll down.

OPTIMIZING YOUR SITE AND SUBMITTING IT TO SEARCH ENGINES
Registering with search engines is critical to promoting your site online. Each engine lists your site, based on keywords that it picks up from the title, description and/or META tags that you build into your HTML.

Here are some basic steps to developing your keywords and submitting them:

1. Determine your keywords
   Overture's free advertiser tool will help you determine the best keywords to use when generating your metatags, the code that many search engines use to rank your site pages. While Overture isn't representative of all search engines, it serves as a good gauge of what keywords are being used.
   
   WordTracker is service of choice for professional web developers since it provides an extensive list of keywords based on searches across multiple search engines. Keywords can also be easily downloaded and pasted into your keyword metatag.
   
   
2. Generate your metatags
   Submit Express provides a free tool for generating the code you'll need for search engines to find and rank you. Do this before you submit to Inktomi or any other search engine.
   
   
3. Incorporate keywords into your copy
   Aside from metatags, many search engines look for keywords in the copy and alt-tags of each page. For a particular keyword search, your page will tend to rank higher if that keyword occurs multiple times throughout your site or page. This is called keyword density.
   
   
4. Submit your site to the Inktomi Network
   Trellian is an Inktomi partner which offers 48 hour guaranteed URL inclusion to the network of Inktomi powered sites: MSN, Looksmart, HotBot, Overture, About and more. To purchase, first sign-up for an account with Trellian, an Inktomi partner, then go to their "Prices" section and select Inktomi@$39/year per URL; $24.95/URL for 2+ URLs.
   
   
5. Submit manually and directly to key search engines offering free submissions:
   • Google
   • Alta Vista
   • Open Directory - All the Web, AltaVista, Google USENET, Google, HotBot, Lycos, Northern Light and Yahoo all draw from Open Directory.
   • Lycos
   • Northern Light
   • Others - look them up on Search Engine Watch, a service offering a ton of free tips on search engines.
   • Zeal - noncommercial sites/pages are somewhat guaranteed to get published, but Zeal requires you to register with them before you can submit anything. If you have a commercial site, the trick is to submit a free information page linked to your commercial area. This will give your entire site automatic exposure for free on Looksmart network including MSN, Juno, etc.
     

Beyond this, if you need more traffic...fast...feel free to contact our marketing consultant and web producer, Madeleine Xavier, at mxavier@sfmarcom.com

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MORE FREEBIES ONLINE
Please note that you'll need to insert the HTML or other code provided by these services into the Tripod Web Gem field (go back to the Tripod Overview). Of course, you can also insert the code directly onto your pages using an editor such as Dreamweaver.

• The Freewebsites FAQ page
  
  
• Glossary of Web terms: http://www.freewebsiteproviders.com/glossary.htm
  
  
• Online tutorials on HTML and design: www.webmonkey.com
  
  
• Bravenet.com - Free message boards, counters, polls and other resources for web development.
  
  
• Free counters: http://www.bcentral.com/fastcounter
  Here's a sample of what the counter would look like after you insert the HTML/Web Gem on your page:
  
  
  FastCounter by bCentral
  
  
  
• Free photos…for personal use only: www.freefoto.com
  
  
• Free cool graphics and animations:
  • www.silverpoint.com - a private site, showcasing Leo's great icons, animation and other graphics.
  • www.coolgraphics.com/gallery
  • www.inki.com/clipart/textlist.php
    
    
• Acteva - Free Online Event Registration & Promotion service...it even enables you to accept credit card payments. $0 Set-up in 20 min.
  
  

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AND, WHAT ABOUT THOSE AFFILIATE PROGRAMS?
These are company sponsored programs that pay you for referring people to purchase their products or services. Generally, the service provides you with the link and banner HTML code to insert on to your page(s). Then, each time a person clicks through the link or banner and/or buys their product, you get paid a percentage of the sale.

I could go on and on about this great opportunity, but for now, I'll provide you with a sample of a few affiliate programs that are easy-to-use and don't charge. You should pick those company programs that offer products/services of interest to your site's visitors.

• Amazon.com - offer great books of all kinds. You'll get 15% on all purchases they make.
  
  
• Webwizards.com - suggest a great and economical web hosting service and you'll receive a percentage of anything they buy.
  
  
• Webcounter.com - provide free counters and stats to your visitors while gaining points toward $cash$ each time they simply click on the counter.
  
  
• LinkShare Referral Prg- Earn revenue for sales, leads, and traffic driven from a variety of top merchant links placed on your Web site. 1-800-Flowers, Dell Computer, Priceline, and AT&T are just a few of the merchants that participate in this program.
  
  
• Want to see more programs? Go to www.associatesprograms.com

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GREAT PAY-FOR WEB HOSTING SERVICES
...WHEN YOU'RE READY

To complement this free information, we've researched all of the various hosting services out there, based on price, features, reliability and service. From this, we developed several packages to offer you, and feel that these will provide affordable, yet complete services, based on your need...and when you're ready to upgrade from a free hosting service.

Services start as low as $9.95/month and are provided through Easy-Affordable Web Sites.

Each plan includes:

• No Ads
• Reliable, fast hosting service
• Free domain registration: www.yourname.com
• Free web site builder - same as Tripod's
• 200MB+ of file storage
• Scalable -- add more memory & email accounts, MySQL database, ecommerce storefront, online payment, etc.
• Free Set-Up
  
  Find Out More: Click here to go to: Easy-Affordable Web Sites

Plans start at $9.95/month:

• Solo XR: Great to start out with and includes no ads, free site builder, free domain registration, 200MB storage for your files, , web stats, FrontPage extensions, etc.
  Price: $9.95/mon.
• Pro: For businesses or professionals. Includes everything in Solo XR + 300 MB, MySQL database and Real audio/Video 8.0, PHP $, Perl, C, C++ support.
  Price $19.95/mon.
• E-Pro: For online businesses. Includes everything in Pro + 500 MB and a Miva storefront builder.
  Price: $34.95/mon.
  
  Find Out More: Click here to go to: Easy-Affordable Web Sites
  

Other Hosting Services or Plans?
While we think we've recommended the best service (above), based on price and features, please do search and compare against other services for yourself.

Check out:

• HostReview's power search - lets you search based on a broad set of criteria and produces a nice comparison chart of various hosting services that meet your criteria.
• TopHosts - has a larger list of services but will only let you search by Price/Month, Disk Space and Server Type

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