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Search EnginesRequirementsBefore you spend any time or money submitting your site to search engines you should read and follow the guidelines in the articles on Keywords and Description tags and Website Best Practices. Search engines look for these keyword tags and expect proper formatting, if you fail in these areas, the money you spend on getting a search engine's attention will most likely be flushed. Broken LinksAlso make sure you have as few broken links as possible. Broken links will lead a search engine to believe that your site is relatively old or at the least, not well maintained. Forwarding PagesDo not use forwarding pages (the code is also know as meta refresh tags). These types of forwarding are usually discouraged and can make you take a hit on your search engine rankings. Instead use a server side include, so that to the serach engine the page now appears in both locations. Submittal CostsYes, submitting to search engines cost money, especially for the popular ones that everyone knows about like: Yahoo, MSN and Ask Jeeves. Some other search engines, like AltaVista, give you an option for a free submittal but that is not very reliable. Google however, only offers free submittals to their search engine, they also provide other services (see below).Ineedhits.com is probably the easiest place to submit your site to search engines that charge a fee. There you can submit your site to the two main search databases Inktomi and Teoma and to the AltaVista search engine. Google (one of the most popular search engines) has its own database. Submittal to Google is free. Just browse to http://www.google.com/addurl.html and enter your site information. This is a great way to get started with Google, but what really helps your listings in google is to have links to your site from other sites. You can also directly advertise on Google using a Google search ad and pay on a per click basis. These ads are a great way to be displayed on a specific search term especially when your site shows up really low on the search results. Google ads can be placed at www.Google.com just click the link 'Advetise with Us'. Yahoo, MSN, and Ask JeevesInktomi is probably the best of the two databases to invest your money in. That is where Yahoo and MSN get their search info. Submission to this database currently costs about $200 for business websites and $39 for informational sites. A submission to Teoma (for the Ask Jeeves search engine) will cost you $30. AltaVistaIf you are really into Free stuff, a free submission to AltaVista is what you need. Keep in mind that a free submission can be a shot in the dark, you loose out on regular indexing (where the seach engine will check your site for updates) and you have no guarantee when or if your site will actually get indexed. To submit your site for free, go to their website and click "Submit a Site" at the very bottom of the page. On the submittal page you can get a 'Basic Submit' for free. An Express Inclusion (basically a paid submittal with updates) will cost you $39. You can do this submittal from from Ineedhits.com. Software
Free SubmittalsNow that I scared you with the costs, let's talk about the free stuff. Going back to the website I mentioned earlier, Ineedhits.com, you can submit your site to about 30 other search engines for free, and for a few extra dollers use the link on the right and you can get submitted to over 300. This is a great way to get started, but keep in mind that these search engines are not as popular and are usually found in web portals or specific areas of interest. DMOZProbably the best free method of getting your site out there is submission to DMOZ.org. This is basically a non-profit Open Directory/Search Engine whose goal is to list all the valid websites in various categories. This is also a great place to get recognized by Google and get indexed there. This website, NetworkClue.com, for example, fits in several computer categories such as: Since DMOZ has so many categories, there are volunteers who manage a category or even several. So when you find a category that suits your site and you go to submit your site to that category, there is a person on the other end that will eventually approve or deny your request. Each submittal is a bit time consuming so be sure to submit only in the most specific and valid categories. To place a submittal in DMOZ, just browse through the categories until you find what you are looking for. Then click the "Add URL" button at the top right corner of the webpage. If there is no "Add URL" button, then you have not found a category that is specific enough. Finally, there is a charge for submissions to business categories, only submissions to the informational categories are free. Free ToolsYou need some good tools to monitor the popularity and growth of your site. Alexa provides a great tool that shows your site's rank and even a toolbar that blocks pop-up windows. Below is our site's traffic ranking, by signing up on Alexa (this is free) you can have your site monitored automatically.
Google also provides a toolbar where you can rank pages. It is in testing mode but eventually might have an effect on how a site ranks on their search engine. This toolbar also has a built-in pop-up blocker. Finally there are some amazing collaborative news websites like www.digg.com if you have a section in your website that is interesting enough to make it to the front page of digg.com you will recieve an amazing amount of traffic. Deciding a BudgetYou should plan to eventually submit your site to both Inktomi and AltaVista. It will take time, but to score high in Google, it must come across links within other search engines and directories. Having links to your site from other sites is key to get Google's attention. I encourage businesses to spend money on search engine submittals. It is a whole new arena of business marketing. With a search engine, the customer was looking for something and chose to come to your website. With an advertisement the customer was watching TV or listening to the radio and was forced to listen to your ad. Now the customer must remember some information in the ad for your advertisement to be useful. Not to mention, advertisements are expensive (and most are cheesy). A different approach to paid Internet marketing is direct search engine ads via keywords such as Google's AdSence. This allows you to drive traffic to your site based on specific keywords that you are bidding on within Google. The cost for each keyword can be as cheap as 5 cents. That is a small price to pay for ecommerce sites that make large markups. The money is spent fast so I recommend that you start slow to get a feel on which keywords bring ou the best response and the most profit. ResultsDo not expect to see immediate results. Free search engine submittals can take up to a few months before your site is even indexed. The new website activity from paid search engine submittals will mature in about 3 months. To keep your rankings though, you should update your site often and be sure to have as few broken links as possible. I submitted this site to both InkTomi, Teoma, and Google. The biggest response I got was from Google and the Inktomi Database. At $39 for a whole year it is cheap on the marketing costs and way cheaper than advertising. References: www.searchenginewatch.com www.digg.com Article last reviewed: 04/11/2006
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