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THE
TRUTH IS OUT THERE!!
The days of free search engine listings are
all but gone, most search engines now have some form of pain inclusion
program. Please report any links that are now paid inclusion to me.
Thanks!
Below is a quick mini-guide to submitting your site to the search engines. Outlined are a few submission URLs, guidelines and tips for getting listed in each of them, along with the average time it takes for a site to become listed, tips to make Your Web Site Search-Engine Friendly, and how to use keywords.
Click here to visit our free submission page.
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Engine-Specific Guidelines and Tips AltaVista http://doc.altavista.com/addurl/ With AltaVista, rely on the use of links to get the pages in your site indexed. Unless you've made significant changes to your pages, don't resubmit them. Instead, let AV's spider find those changes during its next spider run. Try submitting your pages using "www" and not using it in the URLs. AV won't index a site submitted as an IP address. A rep from AltaVista explains, "The spider is doing reverse DNS loopups when an IP site is submitted. You must be registered with Internic and have DNS running to be indexed by the spider." Does AltaVista have a limit to the number of pages from a particular domain that can be in its index? AV answers, "In reality, the whole site could be indexed with no restriction on depth, except that we have size limitations and stop the spider once the index of the site has a certain size." In other words, they aren't saying. (Is this surprising?) To check to see if your pages are in the index, enter your URL in the search box like this: url:yourdomain.com (reveals every page under the root domain) url:members.prodigy.com/yourwebsite/ (narrows the search to pages within your site, if you're under someone else's domain) url:members.aol.com/yourwebsite/yourwebpage.htm (finds a specific page at your site) Excite http://www.excite.com/info/add_url Submission Limit per Day: 25 (to be on the
safe side) At times, Excite will only accept the main page of your site through their submission process. Other times, it will accept interior or doorway page submissions. There's no doubt about the fact that Excite definitely prefers main pages over interior/doorway pages, however. Therefore, make use of visible links to all of your important pages off the main page of your site, and give the engine something to index. With Excite, there's an unwritten "rule" that generally only 25 pages from a domain can be in the index. Of course, like most search engine rules, this one is broken all the time. However, don't be surprised if your site is limited to having 25 URLs in Excite's index. Because of this rule, pick and choose the URLs yourself by making use of robots.txt files. Though PositionPro recommends submitting only 10 URLs a day to Excite, Jim Reinhold, Engineering Manager of Excite, says "Our limit is 25 URLs per domain per day." To check to see if your pages are in the index, enter the URL without the http:// prefix, like this: www.myveryownwebsite.com/webresources.html You can also search for the root domain to find many pages from the same site at once. Enter your root URL, such as: Google With Google's supplying Yahoo!'s supplemental index, submitting to Google has become even more important. Submit all of your important pages to Google.
However, with Google's unique way of indexing, your links should
be picked up by this engine with no problems. But, why take a
chance - submit your important pages. You can submit up to 10 URLs to Google a day and be safe. "Google doesn't have a number per se," says Stob. "When I first approached them, they asked me to keep it low so we started at 2 per day. They were in the middle of building a new index. Since then we have brought the count to 10 per day." Stob continues, "Could I submit 50 a day? Probably. Would I consider doing it on a large site? Probably." With Google, be sure to have other sites link to your Google pages, or those pages may not be picked up in the index. To check to see if your pages are in the index, search for your domain name like this: www.yourdomainname.com Then, click on "Find web pages that contain the term." From there, you can choose "Search within results" to narrow down the search to particular pages. HotBot/Inktomi Engines http://hotbot.lycos.com/addurl.asp (Free) Submission Limit per Day: 50 Note: Your best bet for submitting to the Inktomi engines is to go through their pay inclusion program. For more information, visit: http://www.positiontech.com. If you don't want to pay to submit, your next best bet is to submit to Inktomi through Canada.com. As you know, Inktomi supplies results to HotBot, Canada.com, iWon, GoTo, MSN Search, and many more search services. To get your site into the Inktomi engine faster, use their pay inclusion program, or try submitting to Canada.com or Anzwers.com instead of through HotBot. Be sure to submit all important pages of your site to HotBot. Try submitting the same page using different variations of the page. For example: http://www.HereIAm.com You may find that your sites using the "www" are ranked slightly higher than those without the "www." When you submit a site to Inktomi, have you noticed that it may be appear in the index for a month or two, then be dropped? Jim Stob explains what might be happening. "Inktomi will analyze a page for inclusion in their index. It may show up for a month or two and then be dropped. It is dropped because Inktomi has not seen it come up in a search and has determined that it doesn't have any value." So, if the page doesn't get accessed through a search engine, it will be dropped from the Inktomi index? Stob answers, "Yes for Inktomi, no for AltaVista. Inktomi has two indexes as you probably know. Have you also noticed that your rankings fluctuate in HotBot or other engines? Stob explains, "Rankings will alter by the hour with some engines. If you lose the spot for more than two weeks, you should be concerned." To check to see if your pages are in the index, use their Check URL form: http://www.hotbot.com/help/checkurl.asp Or, visit HotBot's main page and choose the
"Advanced Search" button, which is on the left-hand side
of the page. The SuperSearch page will appear. |
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Lycos/FAST With both Lycos and FAST, you can safety submit all of your important pages, even though both engines are "deep crawlers" and should find the links on their own. Try omitting the "www" when submitting your pages to Lycos. To check to see if your pages are in the index, search for your root domain, such as: thisismysite.com Some of your pages will usually be listed. If not, search again, but leave off any suffixes, such as ".com" or ".edu" like this: thisismysite Northern Light Though Northern Light prefers that you submit just one page to the engine, you can submit your interior and doorway pages, and you should. However, as with all engines these days, make good use of hidden links on your main page to other important pages of your site. To check to see if your pages are in the index, search for your domain like: yourwebsite.com Then, choose More Results from this Site. In conclusion When submitting to the search engines, play it safe. Don't submit over and over again, and look at each engine's submission guidelines carefully. If you're going to err, err on the side of being conservative. "The moral of the story is, don't trick
them. Give them content." |
DMOZ (directory)
---------
Submission URL(s):
http://dmoz.org/add.html
(How To Add A Site)
Submission Guidelines and Tips:
Be careful of your submission here as an ACTUAL PERSON will be reviewing
it. A great site with great content is the key.
Indexing Time:
Usually within a few days.
Make Your Web Site Search-Engine Friendly
These days, search engines can pull in a huge audience for your web site. Now that half of all North Americans are online with millions in other countries logging on the Internet each week, search engines are becoming the Yellow Pages of Cyberspace.
What a lot of people don't know, however, is that not all web sites are equal in the eyes of a search engine. Some sites are more "Search-Engine Friendly" than others. These sites will be better represented by the search engines, and will therefore get more hits from users.
Luckily, this isn't just a matter of chance -- you can (and should) control how well your site is tuned for search engines. There are companies that dedicate themselves to helping your search engine placement, but if you want to do it yourself, there are three areas you should focus on: Your title, your meta tag, and your copy.
YOUR TITLE: Make sure your site gets listed by having a Title that appeals to search engines. Engine computers often place the most emphasis on your Title -- that line that appears in a box at the top or bottom of your browser screen.
Think of the word or words most people are going to use to search for a site like yours. Include that most important word in your Title twice if you can. Also try to make that important keyword the first word in your title. For example, if your most important keyword is "bacon," your title might be:
Bacon Center features the world's best bacon
If your most important keyword is "marketing," your title could use two forms of the same word: Market your business with these marketing ideas.
A Title that says "Welcome to our site," or "Joe's Barber Shop" may look OK to visitors, but it offers very little for search engine robots that are thirsting for some way to classify your site.
YOUR META TAG: Meta tags are another key ingredient that search engines look for when deciding how to list your web site. You can't see a meta tag while looking at your page. It is a simple code in the HTML behind your page.
Your Meta Tag goes near the top of your page's HTML between the <HEAD> and </HEAD> tags. Click the right mouse key (for PC users) on any good web page, then choose "view source," and you will see the HTML code.
The Meta Tag should look something like this:
<META NAME="description" content="Bryan Ottalini-One of the Net's top business consultants provides lots of tips on marketing, media, on-line marketing, and the Internet."><META NAME="keywords" content="marketing, advertising, ads, Internet marketing, press release, copy writing, web site design, small business assistance, newsletters, web site promotion, selling on-line, ezines, home based business opportunities,">
This is the simple Meta Tag I use on my ez-powercart.com site. Some experts use fancier ones, but this works fine for getting you listed on search engines that emphasize Meta Tags. Feel free to copy it, inserting your own description and keywords.
Here's a trick. Go to a site like yours that ranks tops on search engines. See which keywords they are using in their Meta Tag. Work some of their good ideas into your own Meta Tag.
YOUR COPY: Search engines love web sites with keyword rich copy. In other words, if your site title says your site is about cats, search engines want to see "cat" a lot on your page.
Unfortunately, it does no good simply to list "cats" over and over: "cats, cats, cats, cats." That's an old trick called keyword spamming. Search engine computers count off for that.
Instead, search engines like when you work your keywords and keyword phrases into logical sentences. You get extra credit if you can work these phrases into the first part of your opening page.
This is why you sometimes see sites begin with a sentence like: "We have lots of articles on web promotion and web site design with an extra helping of marketing and advertising strategies for the small business." Try to find all the common keywords in there that many people use to search for a site. These should be the same keywords that are listed in your title and Meta Tag.
I do have one caution -- For all three of these areas, make sure that you don't go overboard. Some sites are so tightly attuned to what search engines want that the site starts to sound goofy to human readers. Remember that keeping search engines in mind while you write is fine, but it's your CUSTOMERS that you are really writing for.
The Magic Keywords
What will your potential visitor enter into a search engine to find your site? If you can find these magic keywords, phrases real people will use, then optimize your pages for them, you will have taken a key step toward generating hits. If you use the wrong words, you will waste a good deal of effort and achieve next to nothing.
A friend of mine has been working with an ex-IRS agent who can be of significant help to those with tax problems. But he has decided to search for clients only in the area in which he lives, the Santa Clarita Valley in Southern California. It is a snap to get a #1 position on most search engines with such phrases as Santa Clarita Tax Expert, Santa Clarita Tax Solutions, and so forth. And he did so. But he is not getting any hits.
The problem is in two parts. Many people who live in the Santa Clarita Valley do not know that they do. Even those who do tend to feel they live in Los Angeles. Secondly, many do not know how to spell Santa Clarita. So his first place position is meaningless, unless he turns to advertising in locally circulated newspapers, magazines, and newsletters. This can cost bucks, and he could have done this without the effort it took to build his site.
Discovering what potential visitors might enter to find your site is a challenging problem, one often overlooked in advice regards position on search engines. One way to begin is to list a few words you feel will work, go to your favorite search engine, enter them, and see what comes up. Any phrase that generates a lot of unconnected listings is not likely a good candidate.
When you find something that ranks your competitors high in the list, check out the sites. Once the page has fully loaded, take the option in your browser to view the page source code. Find the keyword meta statement near the top of the page, and check those listed. Add as appropriate to your list. Also check the page content to see which keywords are sprinkled throughout it. These may be the most important ones. In particular, see how the keyword you used to get this page is handled. You may find clues as to how best to use it on your page.
When you think you have a good list, try this useful resource at Overture.com. At the very bottom of the home page, click Manage Your Account. On the new page, click Tools And Tips To Help Manage Your Account. On the new page, click Search Term Suggestion List. Enter the keywords you are thinking about. Some of the suggestions made can be added to your list, particularly those used most often. Overture.com provides this service because they hope you will find additional words to bid on (pay for high rankings in lists - another topic). But you do not need to use their service to take advantage of this resource.
At this point you have found and expanded your list to include keywords others use. So is that it?
No! To stop at this point assumes you have found what potential visitors will enter when they want a product or service such as yours. But you do not *know* these are the phrases real people will use. You do not know you have the magic keywords.
I have a suggestion. It is not a guaranteed solution, but I have used it successfully. It goes like this.
I write a good description of the product or service I want to sell, maybe half a page. I describe what it is, what it does, and how one will benefit from it. I write much as I would when producing an ad. However, I do all possible to *avoid* the keywords I feel will be used.
Next I pester everyone I know, asking what they might
enter to find this product. And I give it time; not everyone is as
interested in my problem as I am. When I have collected replies, I go back and pester these
same people with a list ranked with the most common suggestions up top,
including phrases I found that were not mentioned. I ask them to pick four
or five they feel are best.
I have found some really neat keywords in this way,
phrases I would never have discovered on my own. I hope you can make it
work for you.
I sense this is an aspect of search engine positioning
often overlooked. It is easy for me to pick a phrase related to your
business and get you top position on at least some search engines. It is
meaningless, though, unless people actually enter that phrase.
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