Up: Summer Course 1996: CMWH Schedule

Helping the World Find your Web Site

In order to be useful, a web site needs to be easily accessible to its intended audience. A big part of that can be accomplished by good site design. Nonetheless, you still need to take steps to insure people can find your site in the first place.

Getting Linked In

Typically, you will want people to be able to find your site by following links from other closely related places.

Official Pages -- Usually, you can arrange to have your site linked in to departmental and University home pages just by asking, if you aren't already responsible for those pages too. This is basically the minimum you can do.
Bookmarks -- If you work closely with a University computer lab, you may be able to arrange for your site to appear in a default bookmark file.
Reciprocal Links -- Identify closely related sites, and link to them. Send a brief note to the webmasters there notifying them that you have linked to them, and ask them to link to you. By the same token, watch your logs and webmaster mail for other sites offering you reciprocal linking.
Web Indicies -- There are lots of web sites that maintain lists of links. Frequently, you can request to be listed.

Search Engines

URLs are hard to remember, and locating a page by following a sequence of links is tedious. Many people will end up trying to locate your site with search engines. Consequently, you need to do what you can to insure they will find you.

Descriptive Titles -- Make your filenames, titles and headings descriptive. Most search engines will weight these heavily, even if they search the rest of the text.
Keywords -- Try to emphasize a short collection of unique keywords. The less common the keyword, the more likely it will be picked up by a search engine, and the shorter the list of similar pages. Search engines frequently weight repetition.
Local Search Engines -- If your department or University web site maintains a searchable index, you will very likely have to ask to have your site added in a timely fashion. You should ask in advance if there are special comments, etc. that you need to include in your pages to facilitate indexing.
Registering -- All the major search engines provide forms that allow you to directly enter your pages into their data base.

Announcing your Presence

Another important ingredient in attracting your audience to your site is letting them know it exists. The particulars of doing this depend strongly on what is appropriate for your situation. Here is a range of ideas.

News -- Lots of people read internet news. Monitor all the news groups you can that might be reasonably related to your site for a few weeks to determine which are most appropriate. Then post a series of messages over several weeks.
Typically, you might post a general announcement first. After that, to avoid irritating people, you might want to wait until opportunities arising in the newsgroup to mention your site in response to other postings. If there aren't any opportunities, you probably have no business posting to the news group anyway.
Some general news groups to try:
- sci.math
- k12.math.ed
- misc.education
Direct Email -- In a university setting, it may be appropriate to send out general email to faculty and/or students announcing your site.
Mailing ListsDepending on the site, it may also be appropriate to send out mailings to related LISTSERVs or mailing lists, like the Geometry/Topology mailing list, or the Ostebee-Zorn mailing list, etc.

Up: Summer Course 1996: CMWH Schedule

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Created: May 22 1996 --- Last modified: May 29 1996