Vijay Mallikarjunan
vijaya@vt.edu
WEB SITE PROMOTION
Needs Assessment
The proposed topic, "Website Promotion", suggests there exists an instructional need that
should be addressed by web site developers and web site owners. In addition, the
learners would benefit from a systematically designed instruction related to this specific
need. Before embarking into a full-scale project, one should critically examine the
suggested instructional need. This document provides the reasons for website promotion
and will analyze the needs for the task.
The Internet is growing in a phenomenal rate adding thousands of web sites in a day.
With this growth, it would be difficult, though not impossible, to locate such material.
Internet is one big online library having millions of websites. People from all over the
world make websites for variety of purposes and add to this ever-growing information
super highway. Many times, they make a great web site and many of them don't know
how to let others know about that site. Many may have useful content, but the customers
and end users did not know about them. It is clear and evident that there is a need for
publicity and promotion of one's site.
The end users have a wide variety of search engines and web directories to find
information they want. When they use a prominent search engine technology to search
for certain keywords, they may not get the links to the some of the sites from their search
results. But these sites might contain wealthy and useful information for that particular
end user. This also confirms that there is a need for a web site promotion in an
appropriate way.
Need Identification:
Based on the following criteria, one could establish that there is a need for promoting
web sites:
Using search engine technologies to find a particular site
Looking for a reference from other sites to the particular site
Looking for advertisement/banner ad from other websites
For any one given site, the worst-case scenario could be:
No search results found from popular search engines
No reference from other site
No ads from any web site promoting this site
Every website owners (it can be an organization, company, service, or even an
individual) and webmasters will get benefit from this instructional module. With Internet
growing in an exponential speed, many people have a need of promoting their sites.
Since it is already a web related issue, an online instruction would target larger audience
in learning at their own pace of time and place at their own convenience.
Online instruction will be the best and appropriate way to inform the web developers on
how to promote their site. The other possible ways to address the need (web site
promotion) is to employ a marketing department and use television, newspaper and other
popular media to announce about the availability of such sites. However these options
could be expensive for small organizations and individuals.
In summary, with Internet growing in an exponential rate, many web sites need
promoting them and the web site developers and owners have an instructional need to
learn ways to promote their sites.
Instructional Goal
After learning the ways of web site promotion and web developers will implement those
techniques to promote their website with the desired end result of the site becoming
popular and well known with increased traffic to that site.
Learning Domain
The learning domain primarily involves a computing environment and knowledge to
comprehend the learning modules and implement them appropriately. These include, but
not limited to, using computers, Internet, Internet browsers, search engines, sending and
receiving emails, and knowledge of hypertext markup language and some scripting
languages. For developing ad banners, some knowledge and skills to create and edit
images using image processing software and use of scanners, digital photography
equipment for acquiring digital images.
Goal Analysis
The goal is to promote the web site. To achieve this goal, four main steps have to be
taken and they are listed below.
1. Display in search results by Search Engines when a user searches the Internet
2. Display of Ad Banner in some other web pages served by Ad Servers
3. User intimation to a friend about the web site
4. Site (randomly or by specific selection) pointed by a member site in a web ring
Goal: Website Promotion
Main Steps
Display by Using “Tell a Friend” Pointed by a member
Display in Search Results
Ad Servers Script to intimate in the Web Ring
1
2 3 4
Identify Search Engines Design the Ad Customize the Identify Web Rings
Develop Meta Tags
Banner script for your needs
Sub Steps
1.1 1.4 4.1
2.1 3.1
Select Search Engines Add Meta Tags inside Submit the banner Add the script
Select Web Ring(s)
the tag to Ad Servers in your page
1.2 4.2
1.5 2.2 3.2
Submit URL Submit URL
1.3 4.3
Sub Skills
Describe Describe Demonstrate use of Describe how to Describe
Using Search Meta Tags Image Proc. Software download Web Rings
scripts
Demonstrate use
of Scanners
Behavior
Entry
Demonstrate using computers, Internet browsing and knowledge of HTML programming
Learner Analysis
The entry behaviors identified are very reasonable as any one developing a web page
might know about using computers, keyboard, mouse, some type of Internet browser,
email client and little HTML programming knowledge. They need not be a professional
programmer to learn the skills to promote their website. They should have fair ideas and
concepts behind each steps by gaining listed sub skills such as knowledge of search
engines, Meta tags, image processing software, image acquisition software and
equipment and downloading popular scripts. By following the steps explained in the
instructional module it would be easier for any novice web site developer to find ways to
promote their web sites. As everyone wants them and their products to get noticed and
appreciated by others, there is enough motivation and enthusiasm by learners to acquire
necessary knowledge and skills to promote the web pages they develop. The
achievement in the learning potential is translated directly by the increase in number of
hits to their web pages.
Context Analysis
The users and web site owners should be aware of the fact that promotion may not
necessarily means an increase in profit. Also, following the proposed steps to promote
the web site may not bring a desired level of traffic over night. In addition, before
attempting to promote a web site, the developer and/or owner should make sure that their
web servers are ready for the increased traffic.
The downside to an increased traffic is it could lead to increase in security issues, as the
presence of such sites becomes well known to hackers. An increase in traffic will also
have to be handled and would require additional customer support. The web page also
should have to be current and periodic updates are required to get the customers return to
the site repeatedly.
Performance Objectives
1.1. Given access to the Internet and a popular browser, Identify most popular (top ten)
search engines. For example they could include google, altavista, hotbot,
metacrawler, go, etc.
1.2. Select your field specific search engines from the list of identified sites.
1.3. Submit your website's root URL using the appropriate forms from those search sites.
There are sites available that will submit your URL to multiple search engines such
as http://www.smart-web-promotion.com/submissionform.htm.
1.4. Use automatic Meta Tag generators (http://vancouver-webpages.com/META/mk-
metas.html) or Meta Tag generating software.
2.1. Design the ad-banner using your choice of image processing software. The size and
file type of the banner image depends on the ad-server specifications.
2.2. Select the ad-server that targets your site specific audience.
3.1 Customize the script to suite your situation. For example you might be able to select
the type of information to be displayed in the body of the email, the URL or the
whole page as part of the email, notification to the web master about the transaction
and logging options.
4.1. Identify web rings that suite your interest (you can search from
http://dir.webring.yahoo.com/rw). If you cannot locate a web ring to suite your
interest, Yahoo allows you to create your own web ring.
Sub Skills Details
1. You should know the names of major search engines and the procedure to use them.
In addition it would help to know about how robots, crawlers, and spiders work in
getting the search information.
2. You should know Dublin Core Standards of Meta Tags. Especially, you should be
familiar with Keywords and Description.
Assessment Tools
Overall, the continued increase in web traffic to that particular site is the measure of how
successful the learner has acquired the skills to promote their web sites. We can also
examine the learner's achievement of each step by conducting on-line quizzes or
descriptive tests. Pre-course survey on the basic behaviors and required sub-skills will
help the learner identify the required skills before commencing their learning. The
questionnaire could include their choice of browsers, popular search engines, their field
of interest, choice of image processing tools, and their scripting preferences. Following
is the specific assessment instruments for various steps.
For Step 1: Search results from the submitted search engines will include the particular
web site the learner is trying to promote. With the appropriate use of Meta Tags, the
particular web site should come to the top level in the search results.
For Step 2: Appearance of ad-banners in web sites served by the ad-server. As this
occurs at random, you need to rely on the log provided by the ad-server and also by
looking at your web logs for the sites redirecting to yours.
For Step 3: By using the log option for "Tell a friend script" you will know how this
feature has been used in promoting your web site.
For Step 4: By using the log option for redirected information that comes through web
ring you can quantify the success of using web rings.