When you've finished building and publishing your website, you'll be ready for visitors. Depending on the kind of site you created and the contents of your pages, web users may stumble upon your site, but you can also take steps to make it easier for your audience to find you. This guide will help you get started.

Learn more about background information and key concepts.

Choose your web address wisely - or register new ones

To most effectively market your site, you'll want a web address that's relevant to your site. Choose a domain name that includes your business name or describes you or your organization.

It can be hard to register the exact name you want; the key is to choose a name that will make sense to your site visitors and anyone looking for your site. Choose a name that's relatively short, easy to spell, and easy to remember. If people can't remember your domain name, they'll have a hard time finding or returning to your site. Learn more about choosing a domain name.

You chose a domain name when you signed up for your Turbify plan. If you've thought of a better name, or the one you chose seems too difficult to remember, you can register another domain name, then set up domain forwarding. Visitors who go to your new web address will be redirected to your website.

Tip: When you set up domain forwarding, select the forwarding to a Turbify-hosted site option, and your visitors will never even see the domain name of the site they are forwarded to.

You can register as many domain names as you like and forward them to your current website.

Consider registering variants of your domain name to make sure your visitors find you: For example, you could register not only widgetdesigns.com, for example, but also widgetdesigns.org and widgetdesigns.net; or purchase widgetdesign.com as well as widgetdesigns.com. You can register additional domains with over 400 domain extension options to choose from. Learn more.

Note: You can also purchase as many Web Hosting plans as you like to manage different websites with different domain names from the My Services page. Learn more.

Set up your business email

Set up your first business email address and create additional email addresses for your domain (like info@widgetdesigns.com or feedback@widgetdesigns.com).

• Email addresses @ your domain name can help solidify your brand and can play an important role in your overall marketing strategy.
• Add a signature to all your emails, including your web address.
• Keep in touch with your audience by sending updates about your company, upcoming event, or organization.
  • Reuse content from your flyers or offline mailings.
  • Remind your audience of your presence and encourage them to return to your site.
• Look into promotion tools like Constant Contact which can help you manage your email campaigns and subscription lists.

Organize your site and keep your content fresh

A well-organized, professional-looking website will attract visitors, encourage them to stay longer, and prompt them to suggest it to their friends. Plan your website carefully so visitors can find the information they need.

Give them a reason to come back

Visitors will be more likely to return when there's something new to see, so update your content often to keep your site fresh. Add articles, customer testimonials, personal recommendations, news items, reviews; anything relevant to your site that might interest your audience and refresh the content on your home page regularly.

Add keywords and meta tags

While not as important as they once were, meta tags and keywords can still help search engines index your site.

• Don't artificially load your web pages with keywords to influence the search engines--this can backfire, and your site instead might be penalized for keyword spamming.
• Think of a few descriptive terms appropriate for your site and ensure those words appear in your meta tags and site content.

Think about the search terms you would enter into a search engine to find your site and include those in your content. Do you sell cookies on your site? Cookies, baked goods, and shortbread might be good keywords. Even better, list specific cookies you offer like sugar cookies, chocolate chip cookies, or oatmeal cookies.

Give each page of your site a concise, descriptive title. The title, which appears in the topmost bar of a browser as well as in bookmark lists, helps orient your site visitors and can positively influence your search engine rankings.

Create links

When determining your site's ranking in their results, many search engines consider not only keywords but also the number and quality of links on and to your website.

How does quality fit in?

• Content-rich sites of a similar topic that link to your site enhance your site's appearance of authority (and give people another way to reach your website).
• Links from your site to other high-caliber websites suggest that your site is a hub of information.

Like keywords, links should be a thoughtful, natural part of your site. Creating pages of irrelevant links can actually harm your search engine status. Be sure to link to websites that complement your own; though not, of course, to your competitors.

How can you get other websites to link to yours?

Ask. Find complementary, high-quality websites and send an email asking for a link exchange. You can link to each other, enhancing both of your sites' status in search engine results.

Explore Web Hosting promotion tools

You've carefully chosen a domain name and optimized your site with compelling content and relevant keywords. How else can you drive traffic to your website?

• You can sign up for ad placement programs and take advantage of email marketing tools.
• Try out tools that seem appropriate for your site and find out what works for you.

Do you run a brick-and-mortar store?

Consider Local Marketing to get customers in the door.

Monitor your success

You can promote your site using every online and offline tool imaginable, but how will you know it's working?

For WordPress users, look at reports generated by the Awstats tool in cPanel, which can help you quantify the success of your site.

1. Go to the Metrics module in cPanel.
2. Click the Awstats link to review general information about your site activity.

What can you learn from your reports?

• Page Views - Shows you how many times your web page was viewed, and by how many unique users.
• Referrer - Shows which sites and search engines your visitors came from.
• Location - Displays the location of your visitors.

By comparing your reports and following trends in your site activity, you can learn more about the effectiveness of your pages, your website layout, and your marketing efforts.

For example, you might check to see if a recent promotion or change to your site coincided with a spike or drop in your site traffic. Find out which of your actions led to the most positive results, then use that information as you plan future campaigns or redesigns.

• Look for trends in your Referrer report, like a sudden increase in traffic from a particular website or search engine. You can use this information to bring the same success to other pages.
• Data from your visitor Location report may inform your future website content decisions.

Market offline

Marketing your website through search engines and emails is helpful, but don't forget about traditional tools like word-of-mouth referrals and offline advertisements.

• Tell friends and colleagues about your website.
• Include your web address on your brochures, press releases, flyers, letterhead, product packaging, and business cards.
• Think about your target audience and tailor your marketing efforts to their needs and interests.