Marketing on the web

[michaewlewis]

Does anyone know how to do it?
A friend of mine hired someone to design a website and do all the marketing for a trilogy he wrote and paid the designer somewhere around $5k. The guy was going to send copies, or links, I don't know what, to a thousand different journalists, newspapers, editors, etc. so they could hear about it and read it. How does a guy get a list of all the people who would make a difference in the sales/hits on a website. What is a good plan to draw people to a site?

I'll take good links, quotes, books, 21" LCD Screens, articles, and anything else that might help.

thanks. :)

[Elizabeth]

There are a few media-related resources on the web, such as Media Resarch Center (http://www.mediaresearch.org/welcome.asp) , Listlogix (http://www.listlogix.com/live/listlogix/login.html) and Burrells-Luce (http://www.burrellesluce.com/) but those are more traditional print-based contact lists. B-L may have online media contacts in their database, I'm not sure-- I've never used them personally. I'm sure there are a ton others out there.

If you're talking about SEO, there is an entire industry devoted to this practice, as there is no magic bullet. My advice is to make the site content rich, avoid "link exchanges", concentrate only on Google and Yahoo (and maybe AOL & MSN), make sure your site is spider-friendly, and use appropriate titles for your pages.

Is that what you're looking for?

[michaewlewis]

What makes a site spider-freindly?
and what do you mean be concentrating only on google and yahoo? Only submit the site to their databases?

thanks

[Elizabeth]

What makes a site spider-freindly?
Certainly making sure there are no broken links within your site, and that important, relevant content is on the index page or on a high-level page... you don't want something brilliant buried down in the furthest corners of the site. Here's a better article on it: http://www.netmechanic.com/news/vol5/design_no2.htm

and what do you mean be concentrating only on google and yahoo? Only submit the site to their databases?

thanksI certainly would never pay a dime to anyone who offers to submit my site to thousands of search engines... for several reasons:
1- the majority of web users use google or yahoo, so why do I want to waste my time with the other 3% using an obscure search engine? The only exception to this would be an industry-specific search engine (like BeebleX forPHP (http://beeblex.com/))... you may want to make sure you're listed in there specifically.
2- you shouldn't really have to "submit" a site anyway, as the big ones will find you. If you're impatient you can submit it but you don't have to.
3- Many of the search engines use the same info (such as from dmoz) so once you're in one, you're likely to be in most others.

When I said concentrate on Google and Yahoo, what I meant moreso was to monitor your position there, and compare yourself with others that are above you. Try and see why they are ranked higher than you... then you can emulate what they're doing. IMHO as long as you're on the first page then you're doing ok.