Other Ways

Awards, trophies, web "Oscars"?!

There are a large number award services that assess and rate websites. The idea is that good websites should be awarded. Such websites are then published on the awards site under "Recommended by the editor" or "top 100 sites".

An award can dramatically increase the traffic on your site. However, there is obviously the problem that it is very difficult to obtain an award from any serious award-giving organization. Only accept awards that are not subject to certain conditions! A highly amusing story is told on the homepage of Ralf Sturm (alias "Schlingel"), whose webpage "Webhexe" has won 38 (!) awards! The only odd thing here is: the website that has obtained these awards does not exist! The whole idea of such dubious award pages is to place their banner on as many pages as possible. And giving away fictitious awards is a simple way of achieving this!

For links on this topic go to page "Links: award sites".

Find a webring!

Webrings can bring visitors that share a specific interest to your site. The idea of a webring is simple: visitors of a website that is part of a webring can click the "Next" or "Previous" button and are automatically brought to linked sites within the same webring. By simply continuing to use these buttons, the visitor will eventually end up on the homepage. There are webrings on any conceivable topic.

For links on this topic go to page "Links: webrings".

Hit counters ...

Hit counters are websites that provide webmasters with statistics on visits to their sites. Most of these hit counter pages also include a list of particularly popular websites. Visitors are for example shown a list of the top 1000 websites. Beside a link, the number of hits of the respective site is shown. Also this system works with links (or banners) that you must place on your website and that point to the counter page. This link ensures that all visits to your site are included in your hit count on the counter site.

Although hit counters are normally only a good business for their owners (some sites have high subscription fees, and participants must carry free advertisement on their pages) and only websites that make into the top 10 or top 100 list (i.e. sites that already have many hits) actually benefit from the scheme, you should consider carefully whether participation would have any advantages for you. This could for example be the case, if your website is already highly popular and you are therefore sure that it will be listed among the top pages.

For links on this topic go to page "Links: counters".