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Are you researching your family history? A great way of generating interest that may lead to further
nformation is to create a web site of your family tree and family history information. Many of the
better Genealogy Software programs provide the opportunity to do this. Alternatively, submitting your
GEDCOM file to the numerous (and free) genealogy sites gives your name and history a presence on the
World Wide Web. Another alternative is to use a free hosting service, eg Yahoo GeoCities where you can
create your own web site. However these free hosting sites often have restrictions on how much you
can display and are often difficult for the first time user.

The best way to design, develop and publish your own personalized family tree website is to use a
HTML Editor like FrontPage or one of the many (sometimes free) HTML editors available on the internet.
You will need to purchase a domain name and web hosting.

The following tips will help you create a family tree web site:

Title. The correct title to your web page is critical. It helps search engines identify your
page, and searchers to find your page. Something like "The History of the Jones Family in Alabama? or
"The Ancestors and Family History of Robert Jones in Alabama? is far better than "My Family Tree?!.

Header. The first paragraph, or header, should contain the surnames of the principal families
researched and displayed in your family tree. Again, not just a list of names, but proper sentences
which include key words such as family, family tree, ancestors, genealogy and family history.

Content. Visitors and search engines are looking for quality content, particularly on the home
page of your web site. Just a list of names being researched is not enough. Compose a few paragraphs
briefly describing your family history, with links to your other pages for more detailed family
information. Limit your images on the home page to perhaps to one family photograph, again with links
to your other photographs.

Navigation. Good websites have good navigation which allows visitors and search engines to find
there way around the web site. Navigation buttons or text links must be on all pages. Particularly
important is a Home link on each page.

Meta Tags. Meta Tags are essential on all web sites. Without Meta Tags web sites will be hard
for searchers to find and will rank very lowly in many search engine listings. There is no point in
having a web site that cannot be found. Do it soon to improve your ?findability? and search engine
ranking. A later article on Meta tags will help further.

The Importance of Links. If you have a family tree web site, having other genealogy web sites
linking to you is a proven way of generating traffic and improving your page rank in search engines.
?Link Popularity? is measured by the number if inward links you have to your sites. Inward links
should be from quality genealogy sites. A links page on your web site is essential. Links can be
obtained by inviting webmasters from similar sites to exchange links with you, or by joining a link
exchange site. Do not exchange links with inappropriate sites eg gaming and porn! On your links page
invite other web masters to contact you for an exchange. So that the search engines and visitors can
find your links page, ensure that there is a link on your home page to the links page.

Contact Details. So that visitors can contact you it is important that you display your email
address prominently. To avoid email harvesters show your email address as an image or use a free email
account, eg hotmail.

Observing the above tips will help you build a web site that proudly represents your family tree.
Later articles will cover other issues relating to family tree web site design.