WHAT ARE WEB SITE AWARDS?

Awards are small pictures, sometime animated, with some text and cute graphics in them. They are like Internet's trophies that might make you think that they have no actual purpose, and have been placed in the site only to look good and to make you think that this is an important site.

But Awards actually have a function, though many webmasters (who sometimes display awards on their sites) don't have a clue on what are they for.

WHAT DOES AN AWARD WINNER GET?

THE AWARD'S GRAPHIC that unless you have received it from someone extremely known, it usually has no value at all. A LINK FROM THE SITE THAT GAVE THE AWARD If the linking page gets a lot of traffic, it's worth something, but if it's a low-traffic site, it won't give you too much visitors.

WHAT DOES AN AWARD GIVER GET?

A good promotion method!

Why?...

A LINK POPULARITY BOOST. With the Award he can give cut 'n paste HTML-code. That code is used to install the award to the winner's site, AND to link it back to the site that gave the award.

AN IMPROVEMENT IN SEARCH ENGINE'S RANKING The link popularity helps the person that gave the award, going up in search engine's ranking, especially if the awards are given to sites that deal with similar topics as his own site.

VISITORS The HTML-code that he gives to the winner brings visitors to the award giver. Not many, but the importance of this point depends on how many Awards you give. Can you give away 1000 awards? Can you give 5000? And what happen if they get clicked just twice a month? You get thousands of visitors!

CONCLUSION

You will benefit much more giving than receiving awards! If apply for awards, choose sites with high traffic and sites that offer a prominent link on their site for winners.

Wining smaller awards might also give you some links. The real prize is not the Award, but the link that can be gained from the site that gives it to you

WHAT DO YOU NEED?

A nice award picture Linking instructions to pass out to the "winners".

To limit the sites that can apply for your award, to the ones theme targeted with your site's content, so that you will gain targeted links that will help you with your search engine promotion efforts Visit: Award sites at: http://www.awardsites.com/menu.htm and Website awards at:http://websiteawards.xe.net and submit your award to those sites, in order to drive more award-hungry people to your site.

Written by Dr. Roberto A. Bonomi