Learning How to Promote My Websites

Yesterday and today I’ve spent most of my time bookmarking my 2 sites, www.WebCalcSolutions.com and www.BizCalcs.com . I had created a spreadsheet grid so I thought it would be easy and not take much time – I was wrong.

We added the AddThis bookmarking tool to the sites a week or so ago and I decided it was time to use it. Having AddThis on the sites made it easier to bookmark them, but it’s still harder than you would think. Another big advantage we should get from having AddThis on our sites is that it makes it really easy for our site visitors to bookmark us. That’s really the reason to add it to your site.

So why a little trickier for me and not for my site visitors? A valid question.

One reason is that most site visitors are using one social bookmarking site (del.icio.us, digg, reddit, etc.) while I’m bookmarking to a dozen or so. Each one of these bookmark sites asks for different information and some do a better job of getting what they can from the meta tags on your site. Also you have to log in to each one as you go.

I had a hard time deciding if I should bookmark the same page everywhere or jump around on my sites so I could bookmark everything to one social bookmark site. I did some of both – I don’t think it made much difference.

I got the slight advantage of not having to log in so much if I jumped around on my sites and bookmarked them all to that bookmark site, plus I already knew what fields would be required.

On the other hand, I got the advantage of copying and pasting the same information until I was done with it when I bookmarked one of my pages to all the places I wanted it, meaning less chance I would copy and paste the totally wrong thing.

Many of these sites feature the newest submission too. So it’s to your advantage to feed them slowly so that something of yours is staying featured in the just sumitted sections. If you wait a few hours or til the next day, you’ll probably get in front of some different people instead of flooding the ones that happen to be there when you start submitting.

Another reason bookmarking is harder than you might think is that I’m bookmarking several pages from my site to get them into topics that are more specific. Plus I hear that deep links are supposed to be good. I have pages that are good under personal finance, health, and parenting. I went a little deeper and bookmarked my indivicual calculator and assessment groups too. That makes close to 25 submissions to each of the dozen social bookmark sites.

How did I decide which dozen (of the several dozen) social bookmark sites to submit my site to right away? I pretty much just looked for the ones I had heard of before then hovered over the AddThis link on my site to see which ones show on the popup window without having to click the “more” link. They matched up pretty well (surprise, surprise).

I’ve also submitted my site’s Google Gadgets page (http://www.bizcalcs.com/GoogleGadgets.asp), this blog, and my article (http://ezinearticles.com/?Interactive-Website-Content—A-Total-Makeover-(or-Just-Some-Makeup)-For-Your-Webpage&id=646359). I start from scratch when I submit these since I don’t have an AddThis link for them, so it takes a little longer.

I’m keeping a simple NotePad file so I can keep my titles, descriptions, keywords, etc. for use when I submit these same pages somewhere else down the road. I think it’s easier to capture it as it’s created than to keep trying to find it later when I need it again. This file has already proven valuable since, after the first couple of bookmark sites, I don’t get asked for any new information now.

It’s quite a job – I hope it yields some positive results in exposure, traffic, and links.