This article was downloaded by: [The University of British Columbia]On: 18 November 2014, At: 22:10Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH,UK

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Publicizing Your Web Resourcesfor Maximum ExposureKerry J. Smith MLS, MA in English a b ca Indiana University , USAb Western Kentucky University , USAc Mississippi State University Libraries , Mississippi,MS, 39762, USAPublished online: 12 Oct 2008.

To cite this article: Kerry J. Smith MLS, MA in English (2001) Publicizing Your WebResources for Maximum Exposure, Community & Junior College Libraries, 10:1, 35-39,DOI: 10.1300/J107v10n01_05

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1300/J107v10n01_05

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Publicizing Your Web Resourcesfor Maximum Exposure

Kerry J. Smith

ABSTRACT. In the competitive environment of the Web, aggressivepromotion is vital for new resources and services to our constituents aswell as to our colleagues. Libraries may not be able to compete withslick ad campaigns and multi-million-dollar marketing budgets, butthere are actions we can take that are relatively cost-free. Our servicesand resources are becoming increasingly Web-based, and there are afew basic promotional methods that all libraries can afford to apply:submitting sites directly to search engines, informing appropriate list-servs, and sending announcements to relevant news and current aware-ness services. [Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth DocumentDelivery Service: 1-800-342-9678. E-mail address: <getinfo@haworthpressinc.com> Website: <http://www.HaworthPress.com> E 2001 by The HaworthPress, Inc. All rights reserved.]

KEYWORDS. Promotion, promoting, advertising, publicizing, an-nouncing, resources, services

INTRODUCTION

You’ve built it; you’ve tested it; you’ve tweaked it. You have pro-nounced it good. Now you crave visitors, a steadily increasing count-er, the thrill of use and citation, the satisfaction that others appreciateand rely upon your contribution. You must publicize, and recognitionby the Scout Report wouldn’t hurt.

Kerry J. Smith (MLS, Indiana University; MA in English, Western KentuckyUniversity) is Assistant Professor and Library Instruction Services Coordinator atMississippi State University Libraries, Mississippi State, MS 39762.

The author would like to thank Amy Murphy, Laura Daniel, and Deborah Lee fortheir assistance with this paper.

Community & Junior College Libraries, Vol. 10(1) 2001E 2001 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved. 35

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COMMUNITY & JUNIOR COLLEGE LIBRARIES36

In the competitive environment of the Web, aggressive promotion isvital for new resources and services, to our constituents as well as toour colleagues. Libraries may not be able to compete with slick adcampaigns and multi-million-dollar marketing budgets, but here’swhat we can do:

TELL THE SEARCH ENGINES

Don’t rely on spiders to find your sterling contribution to the Webwhen they get around to it. Perform a pre-emptive strike: Add metada-ta to your pages, and then submit your site directly to the engines.

ADDING METADATA

What is metadata? The simplest explanation is that metadata ex-plains the content of your pages; it is data about the data on the page.In HTML, the ‘‘meta’’ tag defines the specific information about ourpages that we want search engines to pick up on. Metadata is notvisible to those who view your page; it’s a behind-the-scenes codingthat search engines can recognize and make use of for their indexing.

The two most important meta tags for our purposes are the ‘descrip-tion’ tag and the ‘keywords’ tag. The description tag holds a briefsummary of your site’s content that can replace the search engines’automated abstract, which is often unhelpful and undesirable. Thekeywords tag contains keywords, or synonyms, if the keywords do notactually appear on your pages, for the search engine to use whenindexing your site. When deciding on keywords, think like the user.What would you type into a search engine to find sites like yours?

For example, here is typical coding for the meta tag portion of aWeb page:

<HEAD>

<TITLE>phenomenally Useful Page</TITLE>

<META name=‘‘description’’ content=‘‘Provides informationfor librarians about x,y, and z.’’

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Kerry J. Smith 37

<META name=‘‘keywords’’ content=‘‘librarian, librarians, li-brary, x,y,z’’>

</HEAD>

If you do not hand-code your Web pages, HTML editors make iteasy to incorporate this information.

Remember: Metadata is not a panacea. It will not make you betterlooking, it probably will not bring you enormous wealth and it certain-ly will not guarantee a top spot for your page in the results list.Furthermore, if your pages contain the keywords somewhere in thetext anyway, meta tags won’t add significant value. But if you proceedas described above, adding metadata definitely won’t hurt, and insome cases, especially with synonyms that searchers might use, itmight give you a slight edge.

SUBMITTING TO THE ENGINES

You could stick your site out there for all to see and as bait for thespiders to eventually find, but why not be more aggressive? Aim at theheart of the beast. Submit your site directly to the engines.

Most, if not all, search engines offer an ‘‘Add your site’’ or ‘‘Addyour URL’’ feature. However, after a little reading, you will discoverthat many engines draw their data or appropriate their searchingtechnology from other larger sources. For example, HotBot’s mainresults come from Direct Hit. WebCrawler is powered by the Excitedatabase. Yahoo uses Google as its default search engine. NetscapeSearch and AOL Search utilize Open Directory’s content. Lycos oper-ated on FAST’s platform. So what do these facts mean to you? Findout the progenitor of the data and submit there first, and you willbenefit from the subsequent diffusion.

Search engine submission page examples:

Direct Hit

http://www.directhit.com/util/addurl.html

Excite

http://www.excite.com/info/add_url_form

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COMMUNITY & JUNIOR COLLEGE LIBRARIES38

FAST Web

http://www.ussc.alltheweb.com/add_url.php3

Google

http://www.google.com/addurl.html

Northern Light

http://www.northernlight.com/docs/regurl_help.html

Open Directory

http://www.dmoz.org/add.html

TELL THE LISTSERVS AND DISCUSSION GROUPS

Other than location, location, location, the best way to ensuresteady traffic is positive word of mouth. Since location is not an issueon the Web, you must propagate talk. Get the ball rolling by making anannouncement on appropriate listservs and discussion groups.

Be mindful, however, that listserv denizens as a rule do not appreci-ate unsolicited announcements that are not related to the list’s purpose.If possible, check the group’s posting etiquette and new user state-ments for background information. Then, if you are confident thatyour site would interest the majority of a group’s members, spread theword. For moderated lists, the moderator will decide if your submis-sion is appropriate.

For collections of library-related listservs, see Directory of Scholar-ly and Professional E-Conferences at www.n2h2.com/KOVACS/ orLibrary-Oriented Lists & Electronic Serials at www.wrlc.org/liblists/.

TELL THE MEDIA

Another way to get the word out is to contact related current aware-ness services and trade news sites to suggest they review your resourcefor possible inclusion. Although your site may not fit with the editors’visions, and although many of these sites rightfully have their ownagendas and their own biases about what they will and will not list, it’sworth a shot. Some examples of these sites follow:

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Kerry J. Smith 39

librarian.net

www.librarian.net

Librarians’ Index to the Internet: New this Week

www.lii.org/search/file/mailinglist

Library Juice

www.libr.org/Juice

LISNews.com

www.lisnews.com

Neat New Stuff on the Net

marylaine.com/neatnew.html

ResearchBuzz

www.researchbuzz.com

A SWELL BONUS

Praise is pleasant, but criticism is crucial. Feedback may be one ofthe most rewarding aspects of publicizing your work. Take all criti-cism as constructive, and that optimism will find its way back intoyour resource-as long as you remember to include your e-mail addresson all your pages.

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