Promoting a Genealogy Website

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Promote Your Web Site

If you want other genealogy researchers to find your website, you will need to do a little promotion. You've worked hard and you are proud of your web site. Now you would like other genealogists to visit. You can publicize your web site using search engines, web directories, other web sites, surname registries, newsgroups, and mailing lists. Your web site is truly is an effective way to hook up with other researchers studying the same surnames. But now you have to let those researchers know your web site exists.

Double Check

Before you submit your site to any of the registration pages, conduct a thorough check of your web sites. You can check for Browser Compatibility, Link Validity, Load Time, Search Engine Readiness, Spelling, HTML Design at the validator WebXACT or Site Inspector . Submit each page separately.

In addition,

Check to make sure all your graphics work.
Check to make sure your e-mail address works. (Try sending yourself a test message from your web site)
Check to be sure that you supplied a link to all your pages.

Submit Your URL

A web site will not automatically show up in the search engines unless the URL (your web site address) has been submitted to the search engine. You may want to type up a brief description of your site, and save it on your word processor so that you can copy and paste into description fields. Also, it is more reliable to copy and paste your URL and e-mail address to be sure that you are entering it correctly.

Before you submit your URL to the search engines, you may want to add META tags to your pages to help some search engines categorize your page.

Search engine submission pages:

Google
DMOZ
A lot of search engines, including Google, draw from this directory.
Yahoo
To have your web site placed in the Yahoo directory, follow the directions on this page.

You can also go directly to each search engine's home page to submit your web site URL. Look for the Submit URL link. It takes a while after submission for your web site to appear in the search engines. You can check individual search engines to see if your URL is registered by typing the URL in the search box of each Search Engine.

Genealogy and Surname Submission Sites

You may also wish to submit your pages to genealogy and surname registry sites.

Ancestry Connections
Genealogy WebSite Registry
Family Tree Maker
Submit your web site address to the Internet Family Finder search engine.
Helm's Genealogy Toolbox
Registration form allows you to submit your site to six different places from one page.
I Found It!
A genealogy surname search engine.

The more places you register, the better chance of a relative finding you.

E-Mail Signatures

It is not considered good "netiquette" to advertise your page by posting an e-mail message that contains only your URL to most mailing lists or newsgroups. There is one mailing list set up just for the purpose of advertising your URL. New-Gen-Url has over 1000 genealogists just waiting to hear about your new web site. In addition to your URL, be sure to post your main surnames and their geographic location and any original content that you may have added to your page. This is also the place to post changes and additions to your web site.

NEW-GEN-URL - A mailing list for the posting of information on genealogy-related web sites in order to save researchers time in locating new web sites and determining the location of significant web resources. Information on web sites may be posted to the list even if the sites are not new. Postings should contain your title, full name and email address; the URL (address) of the site; and a brief description of the contents of the site. You may also include a surname list if the site is a personal web site. Go to New-Gen-Url to subscribe.

It is perfectly acceptable when sending a legitimate post to a mailing list or newsgroup to add your web site URL to your signature - in effect advertising your web site. Many people promote their web site effortlessly by adding the URL of their web site to the signature they use when sending e-mails to genealogy mailing lists and usenet posts. For a list of genealogy mailing lists, go to Genealogy Mailing Lists.

Some mail programs allow you to automatically append a signature to every e-mail you send.

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