Promotion is critical to your site's success, and a nice design certainly helps, but both of those things (promotion and design) are useless without appealing content. So the first thing you have to ask yourself is: what am I saying here? The answer to this question is the key to the next one: to whom am I saying it? The answer to this second question will dictate how you promote your website.

Promoting a personal page that has a couple of family pictures is entirely different from promoting a serious online business. While both of these examples are extreme, they serve to indicate that, when it comes to site promotion, there is no universal strategy.

What's the difference between a search engine and a directory? Well, a directory is organized by category, and it is usually edited using what many believe to be an obsolete technology: people reviewing and evaluating each site.

Search engines are not too picky about the sites they feature, getting listed is usually free and reasonably fast. Directories, on the other hand, are highly selective, they take quite a while to list a site, and they may charge a fee to even consider a site (as much as $600.00 a year!). While it is true that directories currently provide most of a site's traffic, this fee is now turning some of them into a sort of elite commercial guides. The fact is that, while non commercial sites may find a way to get listed, these directories are out of the question for small businesses.

There are plenty of free search engine submission services out there, that automate the process. Use them.

If you want to try to get listed in a directory, the ODP (Open Directory Project) may be your best bet. It's free, and it's used by a number of important providers such as Google, Netscape and AOL.

Also, and this is a long shot, you may want to try to get listed in about.com. They reject most sites, and they are very selective, but if you can get in, it's worth it.

The other major directories are Yahoo! and LookSmart. For the most part they charge a fee to even look at your site (and this fee does not necessarily mean that you'll get in, just that they'll take a look). If you have a non-commercial site you may be able to get into LookSmart through Zeal.com. Getting listed in the main directory of Yahoo! pretty much requires a miracle, but you should give it a try anyway.

I mentioned above that getting listed in Yahoo! or LookSmart can be both expensive and difficult, but the fact is that, even if it weren't, for small sites a general directory is not necessarily the best choice. You may be better off with a good listing in one of the major directories that specializes in your particular area of expertise, than buried at the bottom of the structure in Yahoo!... and these directories are unlikely to charge you for the privilege of having them take a look at your site. To find these directories you may want to use Yahoo! to find important sites in your general category.

It is important that you find places where you could gain exposure to your kind of audience. Exchange links with other sites that attract a similar crowd... in short, target your efforts to those places where you are more likely to succeed.

In this world everyone wants to be paid for their troubles. While this is a good idea in principle, you must keep in mind that not all payments come in the form of dollars and cents.

What I'm trying to say is that building a name for yourself is a must if you want to establish yourself as a recognizable presence. Don't be an arrogant brat! Contribute something for free to an important forum, it may take you a long way and provide you with the exposure you need, even if you don't get a check at the end of the day.

And you thought getting people to take a look at your site was hard... well now try getting them to come back to your site after their initial visit. This is the most difficult part. To do this you have to update your site at least once a month. Add new content, even if it's only in the form of a couple of links. Let people know that your site is alive... and yes, that does mean that your site will never be *finished*.

Unless you are a professional site designer, or you can afford to hire one, this is a relevant question. No matter what you do there are only 24 hrs. in a day. So how do you manage to keep your site updated?

Here you have a couple of pointers:

- Don't try to build a site dealing with something you are totally unfamiliar with. If you have a good grasp of your main subject, you may be able to update from information you already have, so you won't have to spend hours doing research, looking for something you won't use ever again.

- Add a little every day. If you can dedicate a couple of hours a week to add a new item, at the end of the month you will have enough material for a reasonable update. If you have a lot of new material, you may want to consider dividing it into a couple of smaller updates.

- Promote a little every day. Just like with the updating process, you shouldn't try to do all your promoting in a single day. Post a notice here today and another there tomorrow.

You need a way to keep track of your site's traffic. You need a way to know whether a page is working or not, how are your visitors finding your site? Where do they come from? These questions are important, so you'll need to find some answers. There are plenty of options to get stats out there. Use them, they really can't hurt.