Tell others about your webpages

Your website is up and running, now what?

Many people make a great website, submit it to the search engines, and then... do nothing else.
One of the most important things you can do for your website is to tell others about it. Do not restrict yourself to the visitors that may or may not see you in search engine results. Ideally we would all love to just submit a site and then sit back and wait for the money to start rolling in but that is not usually the reality. This guideline is basically saying...

"Hey, do something."

The best thing to do after your website is done is to increase the visibility of your website by telling others about it.

Tip: See if anyone has mentioned your webpage with our social count tool.

Who should know about my site?

There is no checklist that you can refer to that answers this. You know your market best. Will your competitors link to you? Probably not. But you might be surprised at what happens if you interact with people in your field. The sites who should know about yours are all run by people. Talk to those people, send them an email. Say hello and that you exist, this may not result in a million people linking to you site, but it can lead to a much more important thing... interaction with people in your field. That seems a waste of time, and what is so great about interaction anyway? Talk about impossible, this site is about Google stuff so I had to tell Google about it.
I just put this website up. I had not really put any thought into marketing it. The only reason I made this website was to refer to it when people had questions about some of the things I knew about the guidelines. I wanted one resource that I could point them to so I didn't have to type things over and over again in forums.

I am now telling people about it. Some respond, some don't. Who should know about this website? I thought about it and decided the best people to tell about would be Google, webmaster forums, and directories of webmaster resources. That is what I started with.

How do you tell Google about something? Seems hard, but it isn't. I went to the Google webmaster central help forum (where I am an active participant) and I made a post that was titled... How to follow the Google webmaster guidelines.

In that post I briefly described that I have made a resource, here is what it is, and so on and I linked to my site. I also contacted the Google blog via email. I sent an email that again briefly detailed what my site was about...

The Google response to my communication

Okay, so Google has not responded yet. But I told them. Time to move on to telling others. Just because someone doesn't respond doesn't mean you have wasted your time. In my attempt to tell Google in their forum, I received dozens of emails from people who had seen that post and had questions. From those people, I encountered a new network. I have learned about many forums, blogs, and other Google references that I did not know about before. This means I have learned more about the field of my website and can make my website even more useful to visitors. It has resulted in links and traffic.

Interacting with others is a key factor to what makes a website successful or not.

If my website was about cats, I would tell cat resources about it, I would tell veterinarians about it, I would tell cat groomers about it, and pet stores. I would go to the local resources physically and meet the owners and say hello and if there was a community board, I would put a note about my website on it.

If your site is a quality website about a subject, many people will want to know about it. Some will thank you and tell you how great it is, some will tell you to buzz off, some might even ask you "What is a website?" but the bottom line is the more you interact within your field, the more knowledgeable you will become, the more contacts you will have and the more informative your website can be.

I don't want to do that, sounds like work

You do not have to, but those who do will have more popular websites that have more visitors.

Key concepts

Tell people about your website.