1. Introduction: The
collection of data, classification of resources and the time devoted to the
website development would be of little use unless these are publicly available
and it is of no use, unless its location is known by its primary audience. The
publicizing of a website demands of considering every channel of communication,
those are available with the developer of the website and other members of the
parent institution. Like other products as a quality oriented virtual learning
environment the website obviously a marketable product for free access and
should go for a wide publicizing through different methods, avenues, and means.
2. Pre-Publicizing Activities: The pre-publicizing activities should include the
following
a) Proof Reading:
The error in spelling can undermine the authority of the site and annoy users.
To avoid this, after developing a website proofs reading should be made.
b) Verification of Content and Design in Popular Internet
Browsers: The proof reading activity should be followed by
verification of contents and design in most popular internet browsers. The
pages should at least go through checking on Google Chrome, Internet Explorer
and Firefox. This can be done by manually loading the page(s) on the browser
locally.
c) Verification of Links: Every link on the site should be
systematically checked to ensure that it connected, both within the pages of
the website and to external sites. A few typing mistakes in URLs can be
corrected at this step.
d) Integration of Social Bookmarking: The number of
different people who have bookmarked a specific page
may add to that page’s ranking, as bookmarking is considered as a
recommendation. So, considering this, bookmarking codes should be placed in
each and every page of the site. Out of many bookmarking solution, Add This
(http://www.addthis.com) services may be preferred.
e) Documentation of URL within the Content of the Site: The <base> tag specifies the base URL/target for
all relative URLs in a document. There can be at maximum one <base>
element in a document, and it can be the first tag inside the <head>
element, so that other elements in the head section uses the information from
the <base> element. If the <base> tag is present, it must have
either a href attribute or a target attribute, or both. Kindly note that the
base tag should be included in the HTML document only when the pages becomes ready to upload otherwise, it
will causes some problem i.e. if one saved this page on the hard disk then
inclusion of this tag will causes to load the page from the base address only.
Putting the base tag helps you to gain traffic from the users who download a particular page and save it into their drive.
In substitute
of base tag <base href= “http://lislinks.com”> one can also include the <!-- saved from URL=(…) http://lislinks.com--> after
the <html> tag.
3. Uploading the Websites via FTP: To make an HTML page part of the
publicly accessible World Wide Web, one needs to transfer the HTML documents to
a web server or upload the site by using FTP to a computer that is connected to
the internet 24 hours a day. The FTP program should be available at the
workstation, i.e., the user’s PC. An FTP client program sends a request to an
FTP server asking for exchange of information and transfer files. The server in
turn verifies whether the user is authorized to send or receive files and
responds accordingly. Transferring of pages by using FTP client varies from one
network to another depending on the network structure and server set-up. If one
run his/her own web server, this procedure is simply a matter of copying the
file to the right directory folder. Otherwise one can use FileZilla, CuteFTP,
Microsoft Internet Explorer, Macromedia Dream Weaver, NerObjects Fusion, Adobe
PageMill, Netscape Navigator, etc to upload the HTML files to the web server.
One can also find many FTP program as shareware to be used for some days freely
at Shareware.com (http://www.shareware.com).
a) FileZilla:
FileZilla is free software, cross-platform FTP application, consisting of
FileZilla Client and FileZilla Server. Client binaries are available for
Windows, Linux, and macOS, server binaries are available for Windows only.
b) Cyberduck:
Cyberduck is an open-source client for FTP and SFTP, WebDAV, and cloud storage,
available for macOS and Windows licensed under the GPL.
In
Microsoft Internet Explorer, when one enter an FTP address in the address bar
of internet explorer 5, one can cut, paste, delete or rename any file or
directory folder on the web server just like as if he/she are doing in his own
computers hard disk. In such cases for transferring the pages to a web server,
the following steps need to be followed.
i) After starting
Microsoft Internet Explorer, in the address bar one need to enter the drive
letter and folder name of the directory on his/her computer where the WebPages
are there (eg: d:\lislinks) and need to press enter. One point need to be noted
here is that going to the folder by selecting File > Open won’t work.
ii) Now need to click
on the file one wants to be uploaded. One can also select multiple files by
holding down the “Shift” or “Ctrl” key as in the general case of selecting
files. The photograph or graphics files also can be select through this
procedure.
iii) Now from the toolbar
select “Edit” and then “Copy”.
iv) Now in the
address bar one needs to enter his/her own account name / site name, password,
ftp address of the site / URL and the top level directory where ones web pages
are there in the syntax as follows and then press enter.
v) Now Select “Edit”
and then “Paste” to transfer the files from the local hard drive to the web
hosting server. To delete files from the ftp site one can just do it as it is
happened with local hard drive files in a windows application.
The
publicizing of a website over intranet may or may not be same as that of over
internet. For publicizing a website on CD / DVD ROM, the only need is to burn
all the files to the CD/DVD.
4. Search Engine Submission: “Search
engine submission” or “search engine registration” refers to the act of getting
a particular website listed with search engines. To make the website known to
all, it is necessary to submit the website to search engines. It will help the search engine to know the
existence of a particular website. This will increase the hits to the website.
The submission can be done either automatically or manually. The reason for
this is that if a web page is never linked to in any other page, search engine
spiders cannot find it. The only way a brand new website – one that no other
page has ever linked to (which is highly desirable for a new website) can get
into a search engine is for its URL to be sent by some human to the search
engine companies as a request that the new page be included. The following are
the ways through which you can submit your website to the search engines.
a) Manual Submission: There are many search engines that maintain a
huge database and always attempt to catalogue as many pages on the internet as
possible. To achieve this kind of end they maintain online form to fill up,
where one need to include the address of the site with brief description and in
some case a category or list of keywords. It is good if one consider filling
out such forms manually at least to a minimum of three most popular search
engines. The following will guide one to do the same for some of the popular search
engines.
i) Submission to
Google: The simplest way to submit your new and updated URLs is
to register your site and app with Search Console.
ii) Submission to
Yahoo: Search results on Yahoo Search are now powered by Bing.
If you'd like your web site included, submit your site through the Bing Site
Submission Page
(https://www.bing.com/webmaster/help/how-to-submit-sitemaps-82a15bd4).
iii) Submission to
Bing: The submission of the website to Yahoo also does the job
for Bing search engine.
b) Automatic Submission: The best result in search engine submission
can only be achieved when one go to the individual search engine site directly
and fill up their own form to submit the website to the search engine as
because each of the site have a slight different question that need to be
answered exactly. However, there are also platform that provides one form to
fill up and which in turn automatically submits the form to all the major
search engines in addition to several minor ones. Automatic submission can be done
by using the services Add Me (http://addme.com). They provide Website
submission to the top 20 search engines and directory for free.
5. Sitemaps Submission to Google: A Sitemap is a HTML page listing the pages of a
particular website - often by section - and is meant to help users find the
information they need. The Sitemaps can be a general HTML sitemap or XML
Sitemaps (usually called Sitemaps, with a capital S). The Sitemap Protocol is a
dialect of XML for summarizing Sitemap information that is relevant to web
crawlers.
The
Sitemaps can be submitted to Google by going through the Google Webmaster Tools
(http://www.google.com/webmasters/). The submission of Sitemaps to Google helps
to better crawl the website by Googlebot. The submission of Sitemap to Google
will provide with information about the pages, including:
i) How often the
pages on the site change. For example, one might update the product page daily,
but may update the About This Site page only once every few months.
ii) The date each page was last modified.
iii) The relative
importance of each page on the site. For example, the home page might have a
relative importance of 1.0, category pages have an importance of 0.8, and
individual blog entries or product pages have an importance of 0.5. This
priority only indicates the importance of a particular URL relative to other
URLs on the site.
Sitemaps
provide additional information about the site to Google, complementing their
normal methods of crawling the web. It hopes to speed up the frequency of
crawling the site. Creating and submitting a Sitemap helps make sure that
Google knows about all the pages on a particular website, including URLs that
may not be discoverable by Google’s normal crawling process. Sitemaps are
particularly helpful if:
i) The site has
dynamic content;
ii) The site has
pages that aren’t easily discovered by Googlebot during the crawl process - for
example, pages featuring rich Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) or Flash.
iii) The site is new
and has few links to it. (Googlebot crawls the web by following links from one
page to another, so if the site isn’t well linked, it may be hard for them to
discover it.)
iv) The site has a
large archive of content pages that are not well linked to each other, or are
not linked at all.
The
Sitempas submission to Google also helps in identification of the problems that
can result poor ranking in search engine.
Google
adheres to Sitemap Protocol 0.9 as defined by sitemaps.org. So sitemaps created
for Google using Sitemap Protocol 0.9 are compatible with other search engines
that adopt the standards of sitemaps.org.
6. Badge / Headline Animator / Widgets / BuzzBoost: A
web badge is a small image used on websites to promote a particular website,
service or product. Headline Animator is an
easy way to promote the latest blog post, podcast, or RSS feed-powered content.
Widget is a small application with limited
functionality that can be installed and executed within a web page by an end
user. A widget has the role of a transient or auxiliary application, meaning
that it just occupies a portion of a webpage and does something useful with
information fetched from other websites and displayed in place. The BuzzBoost
is a simple publicity service that allows you to cross-promote the content of
your feed. The promotional materials such as badge, headline animator
(Feedburner), widgets (SpringWidgets), BuzzBoost, etc. can be inserted in other
website owned by the webmaster to spread the word about the new website.
If
some way or other, people arrived at a particular website where you have a link
to your website by way of links, badge, headline animator, widgets, buzzboost,
etc., then people can easily locate your website.
7. Promotion through Traditional Ways: All publicity programmes should be start from yourself.
The following are some of the ways through which you can publicize your
website.
a) Make Your Website Your Address: You can think of including the URL of the website in the
writing pad, visiting card, signature portion of your email address and in your
social networking profiles (Twitter, Facebook, etc).
b) Sent Direct Email to the Interested Users: You can think of sending a Broadcast SMS, direct Email
to the contacts regarding the launching of the website.
c) Reaching out to Those Who Might be Interested: You can also mention the website in the verbal
communication with the colleagues, juniors, and seniors who might be interested
in your website. Again, you should try your best to motivate your colleagues,
faculty members and students so that they feel happy to share your website
address with others.
d) Take it to Institute: Took the initiative so that the website
address finds a place (if it is an institutional website) in the writing pad,
visiting card, signature portion of the Email address of the office bearer of
the institute, notice board, newsletter or magazine of the institute and
official social networking profiles (Facebook, Twitter, etc).
e) Press Release: Releasing
press note in regional and national level newspaper or through different
journals / magazines can also be considered.
8. Exchanging Advertisement: The
webmaster should find out the website related to the one already developed and
can consider exchanging advertisement with them. It is the concept of including
a link to those pages if they agree to add a link to your website in their
site(s). Among many banner exchange network, the following are popular among
website developers
a) 1800Banners.com: 1800Banners.com
(http://www.1800banners.com/) can be
used for free banner ad exchange program. It gives a 2:1 banner exchange ratio.
This means that for every 2 banner ads one show on his/her site, his/her banner
ad gets shown once on another site.
b) Banner Ad Exchange:
Banner Ad Exchange (http://www.banneradexchange.net/) site is free to join and
allows anyone to promote their website and start receiving traffic by simply
joining the banner ad exchange network.
9. URL Redirection Service: When one prefer free domain and web
hosting, then the URL assigned by the service providers or chosen is long or
difficult to remember. In such cases one way to get away with such addresses
with a shorter or personal web address is to purchase the domain. In the event
of purchasing the domain, sometimes the free domain and hosting service provider
provide the facilities to redirect the free domain to the custom domain or the
purchased domain. If it is not the case, you can use the URL redirection
services offered by various sites. Some of these sites put pop-up ads on the
site. URL redirection can be used for URL shortening, to prevent broken links
when web pages are moved, to allow multiple domain names belonging to the same
owner to refer to a single web site, to guide navigation into and out of a
website and for privacy protection. In case of free URL Redirection Service,
.co.nr (https://www.freedomain.pro) provide good solution.
10. Publicizing the Page when Address is changed: Please don’t spoil your hard earned incoming links in the
event of change in web address (domain) or in the event of change in the
service provider (in case of free hosting). In such cases, you should put a
good pointer from the old pages to the current one, as by this time the old
pages will be popular. This procedure will hope to catch the users that already
add the site to their favorite webpage. When someone enters the previous URL in
the web browser address bar, the new page will be reloaded automatically after
some interval of time. The following tag and information can be used to meet
this end.
<center>This
page has been moved, please click on <a href=“http://lislinks.com”> http://lislinks.com</a> to arrived
at the new address or you will automatically arrive at the new address after 5
seconds. Thank you.
The above tag will help to reach the
new page by name <http://lislinks.com> after 5 seconds the user entering the previous
address. In this example, kindly replace http://lislinks.com
with your own new website address (not the older one).
11. Continuously
Checking for Broken Links: The rapid proliferation of Internet resources and ease of
publication means that sites can change often or even disappear, to reappear
under a new name. So, every external
site that had been included demand a check for the stability of the Web address
periodically.
An
automated system can save time in detecting link rot. This includes InfoMinder,
TrackEngine, ChangeDetection.com, WatchThatPage.com/, and Website-Watcher. The
website developer can also use other Link Checkers from AnyBrowser.com. In case
of page persistence it is good to see that a number of initiative have also
been taken, mentionable among them are in the United States, Brewster Kahle and
a small group of technical professional started taking a “snapshot” of web
pages found on the internet as a way of starting a project called the Internet
Archive (http://www.archive.org/). The efforts have also been put by OCLC
through Persistent Uniform Resource Locators (PURLs) (it is a record of the
website that have registered with OCLC); U. S. Department of Education, through
its InterCAT and so on. The libraries are also trying to catalogue the web
resources as they do with the traditional type of resources through MARC.
12. Avoiding from Listing Search Engine Result List: In the age of spiders or robots that automatically
indexes the site by crawling over the internet, if one try to avoid listing
some of the pages of a particular website from the search engine results list;
it is also a big question to be considered. People who don’t want to include a
page in the search engine database can include the page(s) address in his/her
robots.txt file as
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
The URL that needs
not to be indexed should be paste here
All
major search spiders then surely ignore such page(s) from including in the
search engine databases. One can also use the <meta name=“robots”
content=“noindex” /> tag in the <head> portion of the page to achieve
the same effect but this only cause some search engine robots to ignore the
page and not all.
13. Conclusion: The success of the website is largely depending on the
search engine optimization and the publicity. Website publicizing should start
from the person who develop the website and should reach to website users. The
website users should be motivated to share a particular website by the owner of
the website. The promotional awards, etc can be used to meet this kind of end.
Once the website becomes a popular among its users then also the website
publicity should be continued to compete with the newly launched website in the
arena and to be always the first preference destination for the users. The
website publicity should be a continuous endeavor to reach more and more
people.
How to Cite this
Article?
APA Citation, 7th Ed.: Barman, B. (2020). A comprehensive book on Library and Information Science. New
Publications.
Chicago 16th Ed.: Barman, Badan. A Comprehensive Book on Library and Information Science. Guwahati:
New Publications, 2020.
MLA Citation 8th Ed: Barman, Badan. A Comprehensive Book on Library and Information Science. New
Publications, 2020.
Badan Barman
at present working as an Assistant Professor in the
Department of Library and Information Science,
Gauhati University, Guwahati-781014,
Assam, India. He is the creator of the LIS Links (http://www.lislinks.com) - India’s most popular social networking
website for Library
and Information Science professionals. He also created the UGC NET Guide (http://www.netugc.com) and LIS Study (http://www.lisstudy.com) website.
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