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Genealogy Web Page Tutorial

Promoting your Web Page

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Why Promote Your Web Site?

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To bring your site to the attention of the thousands of genealogists on-line, that's why! You've worked hard and you are proud of your web page. Now you would like other genealogists to visit. You can publicize your web page using search engines, web directories, other web pages, banner exchanges, surname registries, web rings, usenet (newsgroups), and mailing lists. Your web page 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 page exists.

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Double Check

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Before you submit your site to any of the registration pages, conduct a thorough check of your web pages. You can check for Browser Compatibility, Link Validity, Load Time, Search Engine Readiness, Spelling, HTML Design at the validator Bobby, Site Inspector and Doctor HTML. 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 page)
• Check to be sure that you have no orphan pages! (Those for which you have not supplied a link)

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Submit Your URL

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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 the search engines categorize your page.

Search engine submission pages:

• DMOZ
  A lot of search engines 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 page URL. Look for the Submit URL link. It takes about 2 weeks or longer after submission for your web page 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.

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Genealogy and Surname Submission Sites

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

• Ancestry Connections
  Surname Registry
• Connect with Surnames
  Surname Registry
• Family Tree Maker
  Submit your web page address to the Internet Family Finder search engine.
• Gendex
  Submit your gendex.txt file to this 5 million surname index. Most surname to HTML programs produce a gendex.txt file.
• Genealogy's Most Wanted
  Submit your "most wanted" (or brick wall) surnames to this popular search site.
• Genealogy Pages
  Submit your website to the "world's premier genealogy portal".
• Heartland Genealogy Society
  For members of the GeoCities Heartland Genealogy Society up to 8 surnames may be registered.
• Heartland Select
  Register your web site by category.
• 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.
• Surname Springboard
  Register up to 16 surnames. Genealogists can search by surname or soundex
• Surname Web
  Register your major surnames. The Genealogy Web Project of Surname Resource Centers (With a searchable Registry, consisting of over 50,000 surnames links!)
• US GENWEB Project
  Most states have a query or surname registry. Add your surnames and your URL.

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

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WebRings

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A WebRing is a collection of web sites of a single topic such as genealogy which are linked together to allow visitors to move to the next site in the ring, a previous site, a random site or in some cases, to a list of all the sites in the ring. The idea is that if you click on the "next site" link long enough, you will eventually wind up where you started. WebRings offer a great way for people interested in genealogy to visit related sites.

You can search for WebRings at RingWorld. using genealogy as a keyword. There are over 120 genealogy WebRings. Some are geographic or ethnic specific. A few of the more popular general ones are:

• GenRing
  The largest genealogy WebRing is GenRing with over a 1400 members. However, GenRing's rules do not allow you to join any other genealogy WebRing.
• Heartland Genealogical Society
  GeoCities Heartland Genealogical Society has its own popular WebRing. The ring is not exclusionary, and allows you to join other WebRings..
• GenePool
  Popular and fast-growing. Also not exclusionary.

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URL Minder

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If you want visitors to be notified when you update your web site, the URL-minder at Net Mind will notify those interested every time you make changes--it's a clever way to alert visitors when you add new data and also a clever way to get people to revisit your site. Be sure to mark what you have added with some type of NEW notation, so repeat visitors don't have to eyeball your whole site trying to find out what you have added.

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E-Mail Signatures

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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 page. 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 page.

• 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. Mailing address for postings is new-gen-url-l@rootsweb.com. To subscribe send the word "subscribe" (without the quotes) as the only text in the body of a message to new-gen-url-l-request@rootsweb.com (mail mode) or new-gen-url-d-request@rootsweb.com (digest mode).

It is perfectly acceptable when sending a legitimate post to a mailing list or newsgroup to add your web page URL to your signature - in effect advertizing your web page. Many people promote their web page effortlessly by adding the URL of their web page 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 Resources on the Internet.

Some mail programs allow you to automatically append a signature to every e-mail you send. A signature should usually only be 2 lines - your name and webpage address

And comes at the very end of the e-mail after the question or information that has been posted. Some mail programs automatically hypertext the URL so that a reader of the post has only to click to get to your web page.

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