I-Primer (continued)

AOL is not good for a business. While their interface has improved, they still provide a browser (that’s the software people use to view your site- others are Netscape and Explorer) that is not fully compliant with Internet standards. It also stops you from promoting your site with every e-mail (see above).
Having your own site doesn’t mean you have to give up your AOL account and the many features you may like. You can still chose to access the net through their modems, or you can use alternative access like DSL or cable, but then chose a "bring your own access" plan that is less expensive. For $4.95 a month you can keep your aol screen names with limited access as you start switching your friends over to your own proprietary e-mail address. One of the nice things about leaving AOL – less junk mail in your inbox.
With your own domain, you can set up different e-mail addresses and boxes for multiple people or even forward all your e-mail to another address.
The last part of having your own site is promoting it. Since the web doesn’t have one central index, people use search engines to find your site if they don’t have an ad, card or other prompt in front of them. Some of our favorites are google.com, hotbot.com and dogpile.com. These engines search by "crawling" the net and reading content on your page. Most are prompted to index your site by things called "meta tags" You can see a sites tags by calling up the page and then doing a view:source where you will see the actual code for the page. Meta tags and page descriptions are included on any well-designed site. All of our sites have them, and our hosting package includes a control panel to submit your page to search engines. We also have an advanced software package that we use to optimally tag your site and submit it to even more directories as an added service.
Yahoo is a different type of directory — an index that requires a manual submission. We do not do Yahoo submissions, but advise you to do it yourself. You can pay them for higher positions and faster submissions- we feel this model will fall by the wayside over time.