You've built your site. You've tested it. You're ready for business.

So where are all the people?

You need to get the word out about your great site, but with limited resources and no advertising budget, you need some way to attract visitors.

What can you do?

Search engine optimization (techniques to improve how your Web site ranks in the search engines) has been called the cheapest and most effective marketing tool available.

With a little help from us you can improve your site's search engine ranking and save yourself a lot of frustration and time.

Instead of blowing your limited resources on banners and ads galore, use search engines to send motivated visitors to your site. Click through rates on banner ads continue to drop, while search engine traffic is on the rise and growing everyday.

Search engine traffic is the kind of traffic you want.

Why?

Traffic you receive from search engines is already targeted. Visitors arriving at your site from search engines have entered a keyword relevant to your site, so they are already interested in your product or service. This is the best source of potential customers you can have.

Search engines are the number one way users find new sites. Surveys show that over 85% of users rely on search engines to locate information on the Web. If you optimize your site to do well on the engines, then register your site with search engines, you should see increased traffic to your site.

Search engines are free to users and users know where and how to use them. One of the first things a novice to the Internet learns is how to use Yahoo.

Before you can position your site to do well in the search engines, you need to understand search engine fundamentals.

A search engine is a giant database that lists sites on the Internet. You access the database when you enter keyword searches and receive a list of relevant sites.

Search sites are the Internet's Yellow Pages.

Think of a search engine as a giant, automated version of the yellow pages. If you need information on "party planning" from the yellow pages, there are several steps to retrieving it.

• Go to the yellow pages and look under the alphabetized subject list for "party."
• Note the subcategories: "party planning" "party - children's", "party - rental equipment", and so on.
• Examine the companies listed under "party - planning" and decide which company best meets your needs.

You can repeat this process online using a search engine.
 

Don't wait to be discovered! Submit your URL directly to the search engine or directory.

Search Engine submissions.

There are two ways to submit to search engines and directories, manually or using an automated submission tool. Here is a summary of both methods.

• Manual Submission - Use the Add URL form from the search engine site itself. This way, you have absolute control over where your site is submitted. However, this process is that it is a very time consuming and labor intensive activity. Some search engines bury their Add URL form so far down in the site that one wonders if they are intentionally trying to thwart potential applicants.
  
   
• Automated Submission Tool - Fill in the data once and the tool automatically submits your URL to multiple engines. It is a fast, easy one step process and you only have to fill in the data forms once.
  
  There are several features you should look for in an automated submission tool.
   
  1. The number one item of importance is to make sure the submission tool does not submit to directories. If you look down the list of places the tool submits and you see directories listed, leave and do not look back! 
      
  2. The second thing to look for in an automated submission tool is to find one that allows you to pick and choose which engines to submit to. If you are doing well in one engine, but not in another, you may want to submit to the search engine where you need improvement and not submit to the engine where you are doing well.
      
  3. Find a submission service that monitors search engine spam. Because most submission services submit to many search engines, you may receive spam email by some of the smaller engines that occasionally sell their email addresses.

How often do I submit?

Your best strategy is to submit weekly until your site gets listed. Check your listing frequently. If your site disappears suddenly, you may be the victim of a search engine database omission. Search engines frequently have multiple versions of their databases and they aren't always in sync. You may be listed in one version of their database and not in another. Your only recourse is to resubmit your site.

To see if you have even been picked up in a search engine, go to the search engine's site and do a search with your company's domain name as the search query.

Directory Submissions.

Submitting to a directory is a much more involved specialized process. Don't do it in a rush and don't use an automated submission tool. The better submission tools, like Search Engine Starter, don't submit to directories.

How long does it take to get listed?

These times vary with search engines and directories. The search engines will optimistically report a very short time, but most sites get listed within the following times:

The reality is that most search engines and directories are very backlogged and slow to get listings added to their databases. Don't be surprised if you experience waits much longer than these. As mentioned earlier, you may wait over 5 months to see your site get listed on Yahoo!, if it gets listed at all.

We recommend that if your site isn't listed within the time periods above, that you resubmit your site to the search engine where you are not listed.

Is being listed in the search engines good enough?

Unfortunately no.

A listing won't automatically increase your traffic. A good ranking may. You want to be listed on the first three pages of the search engine results page. Most web surfers aren't patient enough to look more than the first 20-40 listed links. In fact there is a considerable drop off just going from the first to the second page.  

Article Courtesy : Netmechanic.com by Christine Churchill

<< Previous SEO Articles                                                     More SEO Articles >>.