Search Engine Optimization

Keywords, Choose Them Wisely

May 18, 2008 – 4:23 pm

By now you have likely heard that keywords and keyword phrases, are extremely important in having search engines display your website. So how do you choose them? Guess? Ask a friend? Check successful competitors sites? There is a better way!
First let’s digress. There are a lot of things that affect your ranking in search engines and ultimately how many sales you make from you website. The quality of the (and amount of) content on your site, how many links point to your site, what keywords are used, how they are used, even the age of your site can play a factor. Large companies spend thousands on getting their companies to the top of the rankings and keeping them there. If you’re a small company trying to compete with these large budgets, you are likely to come up short.
So, how can a small business with a far more moderate budget compete? Niche Marketing! People searching for information on products don’t always use the keywords you would expect them to use. And just because a competitor has a large enough budget to reach the top with a certain keyword or keyword phrase doesn’t mean you will be able to. Niche phrases are sets of keywords that people are using to search in the search engines. If you are able to rate high on these niche phrases you will see an increase of traffic. To find out what words people are using you need to use one of the word tracking sites. These sites find out from the search engines exactly what phrases your potential customers are using.
For example using Google, “used cars” turned up 36,900,000 results; if you don’t show up in the first 10-30 results it is very unlikely you will ever have someone click on your site. In this case every major car dealer and thousands of smaller dealers are competing for those same 10-30 spaces. You have a huge amount of competition. Likely though your potential customers also see this huge number and if he or she can’t find what they are looking for they will try to limit the search. If they are looking for a local dealer they may try adding a city. My office is near Redding California. By entering “used cars Redding”, I still receive 205, 000 results. That’s a lot closer and maybe I could optimize my pages to reach near the top, BUT will my efforts really produce the results I want?
So far I have only guessed that my potential customers are really using this search phrase. If I check my competitor’s site I will only be able to see their guesses. That is where word tracking comes to play. There are a number of sites that offer word-tracking services. Some are free, others charge for their service.
The advantage I’ve found of using a paid word-tracking site over the free sites is that at the free sites, you are told how many times a word has been searched for but there is little or no other information provided. These extra features are what help you to make the best decision on your keywords. These features include keyword suggestions based on your starting keyword, and most importantly the ratio of how many people use that phrase verses how many competitors are using the phrase. It takes a little time to learn how to make the best use of word tracking software, but it is well worth the effort. If you are having someone else optimize your site, insist that they find out what phrases are being used.
Using word tracking you will be able to tell how much competition you have for each phrase and how often the phrase gets used, so that you can optimize a website page for phrases that will get clicks to your site. To illustrate the point, would you rather have 0% of the clicks resulting from 1000 searches or 20% of the clicks resulting from 100 searches? If you choose keyword phrases that will put you at the top of the search engines lists you are far more likely to see results you want.
That’s the benefit of choosing your keywords wisely!
Dwayne Goerges is the owner of ADAC Programming of Shasta Lake California
Specializing in data driven websites for inventory display and client management. =Auto Mall Website

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“Google Friendly” Solutions to Graphic-Intense Sites

May 14, 2008 – 4:20 pm

We all know that the search engines can’t “see” or “read” the graphics on our pages. We also know that we need to provide text on a page, so the spiders will have something to crawl and index.
After all, we have to prove to the search engines without a shadow of a doubt that our pages are about what we say or claim they’re about if we want to achieve top rankings. That’s why I believe so strongly in focusing each page on one single keyword phrase only. As soon as a spider hits a page, I want the spider to know exactly what that page is about.
But, many sites out there are graphic intense, often by virtue of their very nature. The sites may sell prints, wallpaper, pictures, graphics, or posters. Or, the sites may sell hats, for example, so that each page is full of pictures of a particular type of hat.
Many Web site owners don’t want to add text to those pages, because they want to highlight exactly what they’re selling. They’ve created the site with their audience in mind, which is as it should be. After all, when visitors stop by a wallpaper site, they want to see loads of pictures of the different wallpaper samples. They don’t want to read about them!
So, being careful to adhere to Google’s Guidelines that prohibit hiding text, what options do we have with our graphic-intense site?
Let’s look at some possible solutions.
1. Can you put visible text above or below the graphics on the page? If so, this is your best solution, because you’re giving the engines some content to crawl.
Simply add a paragraph of content above the graphics, and then a paragraph or two of content below the graphics. Make sure the content focuses on your keyword phrase and that it describes the page accurately.
If you don’t want to add a full paragraph of content above the graphics, try adding a heading tag containing your keyword phrase. Then, add content beneath the graphics.
The bottom line is: you want to start the page with text if at all possible, not graphics.
2. Be creative! Can you add descriptive text about each graphic under or beside the graphic? Can you add little “Tips” or “More Info” boxes on the page that contain valuable information for your users and keyword-containing text for the engines? Can you include testimonials from happy customers that will add valuable keyword-containing content to your page?
3. Leave your existing graphic-intense pages the way they are, and create some new text-based interior pages that are full of valuable content related to your graphics. Pull in traffic through those pages, and provide text links to your pages full of graphics. Be sure to use your important keyword phrase in the link text that links to the pages of graphics.
Keep in mind that these new pages are interior pages, which means that they should provide a link to other pages on your site, and your site should provide a link back to those pages. If you’ve done your homework right, these new pages are providing value to your users, therefore providing value to the search engines, so there’s no reason why you wouldn’t want to link to these new interior pages.
Can you use redirects from the text-based pages to the pages of graphics? I highly recommend not doing so. The engines have never been fond of redirects for one thing. But, even if your redirects aren’t “sneaky” (as Google says in their Guidelines), if you don’t use text links with the keyword phrase in the link text, you’re missing out on one of the most valuable search engine optimization strategies available to you: using your keyword phrase in link text pointing to your pages.
4. You can leave your existing graphic-intense pages as they are, and instead concentrate on “off page” factors such as building link popularity to those pages and making sure that the pages linking to the graphics pages use link text that contains your important keyword phrase. In other words, you can work on your “link reputation.”
After all, you can compete with the big boys using almost any strategy that is detrimental to search engine rankings if your link popularity and link reputation is strong enough, and if the sites linking to you describe your site using your important keyword phrase.
By “strong” enough, I mean that the links should be from popular, authoritative sites in your topic area. Sheer numbers aren’t what we’re after here. We’re after links from popular and authoritative sites in our topic area. We’re also after links that use our important keyword phrase in the link text describing our pages.
In Conclusion
Though the best solution is to add text to your pages of graphics, sometimes you (or your client) won’t want to go that route. They may want to keep the existing pages just as they are.
In those situations, it’s important to have some “Google friendly” solutions that will give you the best chance at achieving top rankings for your pages, while making sure that you’re following the guidelines as stated by Google.
About The Author
Robin Nobles is the Co-Director of Training of Search Engine Workshops with John Alexander. They teach 2-day beginner, 3-day advanced, and 5-day all-inclusive “hands on” search engine marketing workshops in locations across the globe. She also teaches online search engine marketing courses through http://www.onlinewebtraining.com, and she’s a member of Wordtracker’s official question support team. With partner John Alexander, she’s co-authored a series of e-books called, “The Totally Non-Technical Guides to Having a Successful Web Site.” And, they opened a networking community for search engine marketers called The World Resource Center for Search Engine Marketers.
robin@searchengineworkshops.com

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Google Sitemaps Explained - How To Use Google Sitemaps

May 10, 2008 – 2:25 pm

Three Ways To Index Your Site With Google Sitemaps
[Difficult, Hard, And Easy]
Google has recently implemented a program where any webmaster
can create a Sitemap of their Site and submit it for indexing
by Google. It is a quick and easy way for you to keep your
site constantly indexed and updated in Google.
The program is appropriately called Google Sitemaps.
In order for you to best use Sitemaps, you must have an XML generated
file on your site that will transmit or send any updates, changes, and
data to Google. XML (Extensible Markup Language)is everywhere these days,
you have probably seen the orange XML logo on many web sites and its
often associated with Blogging because Blogs use XML/RSS feeds to
syndicate their content.
Today RSS is known mostly as ‘Really Simple Syndication’ but its original
acronym stood for ‘Rich Site Summary’. XML is only simple code like HTML
and it is used to syndicate your content to all interested parties.
And the interested party in this case is Google. By creating
Sitemaps Google is really asking webmasters to take charge of
the indexing and updating of their sites. Basically, doing
the Googlebot’s job!
This is a ‘Good’ thing! With the steady influx of new web sites
growing rapidly, indexing all this material will become a challenge,
even with the resources of Google. With Sitemaps, websmasters can
now take charge and make sure their site is crawled and indexed.
Please note, indexing your site with Sitemaps WON’T improve
your rankings in Google. You will still be competing with the other
sites in Google for top positions. But with Sitemaps you can make
sure all your pages are crawled and indexed quickly by Google.
There are some other big advantages of using Google’s Sitemaps
– mainly you have control over a few key variables, attributes or tags.
To explain this as simply as possible, your XML powered sitemap
file will have this simple code for each page of your site:
< url>
< loc>http://www.yoursite.com/< / loc>
< priority>1.0< /priority>
< lastmod>2005-07-03T16:18:09+00:00< /lastmod>
< changefreq>daily< /changefreq>
< /url>
Along with ‘urlset’ tags at the beginning and end of your code,
and an XML version indication - that’s basically your XML file!
File size will depend on the number of webpages you have.
Taking a closer look at this XML file:
location http://www.yoursite.com — name of your webpage
priority you set the priority you want Google to place on that page
in your site. You can prioritize your pages: 0.0 being the least,
1.0 being the highest, 0.5 is in the middle. This is ONLY relative to
your site. It will not affect your rankings. Why is this important?
You have certain pages on your site that are more important than
others, (home page, high profit page, opt-in page, etc.) by placing high
priority on these pages, you will increase their importance in Google.
last modified when you last modified that page, this timestamp allows
crawlers to avoid recrawling pages that haven’t changed.
change frequency you can tell Google how often you change that
particular page. Never, weekly, daily, hourly, and so on — if you
frequently update your page this could be extremely important.
Why do I need a XML Generator?
In order for this XML sitemap file on your site to be constantly
updated, you need a Generator that will spider your site, list
all the urls and automatically feed them to Google. Thus constantly
updating your site in Google’s massive index or database.
Keep in mind, Google also gives you the option of submitting
a simple text file with all your URLs.
Now there is already a flood of these generators popping up! Different
ways of generating your XML powered sitemap file. More are probably appearing
as you read this. But lets look at Three ways to generate your XML file.
Difficult Google’s Python Generator
That’s a relative term, if you know your server like the back of your
hand and installing scripts doesn’t scare the bejesus out of you,
you’re probably smiling at the word difficult. Google supplies a link to a
generator which you can download and set up on your server. It will cough
up your sitemap XML file and automatically feed it to Google.
Google XML Generator
In order for this Generator to work, Python version 2.2 must be installed
on your web server, many servers don’t have this. If you know what you’re
doing, this will probably be a good choice.
You don’t need a Google Account to use Sitemaps but it’s encouraged
because you can track your sitemap’s progress and view diagnostic
information. If you already have another Google Account gmail,
Google Alerts, etc. just use that one to sign in and follow directions
from there.
To submit your Sitemap using an HTTP request, issue your request
to the following URL:
www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ping?sitemap=sitemap_url
Hard A PHP Code Generator
This is a php generator that you can place on your server. This
generator will spider your site, and produce your XML sitemap file. Download
the phpSitemapNG and upload it your server. Run the generator to get
your XML sitemap file and send it to Google.
PHP Generator
Again, this is only hard to do if you don’t know your way around PHP
files or scripts.
Easy Free Online Generator
These Generators are popping up everywhere, and Google now keeps a list of
these ‘third party suppliers’ of generators on their site. Find them here:
Google’s List of Third Party Generators
One of the easiest to use is www.xml-sitemaps.com, and you can
index up to 500 pages with this online Generator very quickly and it will
give you the sitemap XML file Google needs to index your site.
It will go into your site, spider it and index all your pages into an
XML sitemap of your site. You can download this file, Compressed or Non-
compressed and make minor changes such as setting the priority,
changing frequency, etc.
Then upload this file to your site as sitemap.xml to the root directory
of your server i.e. where you have your homepage. Then notify Google
Sitemaps of your XML file and you’re in business.
Of course, the only drawback, if you constantly add pages to your site
you will need to also add these pages to your XML sitemap file.
This won’t be much of a problem unless you’re daily adding pages
to your site — then you will need something like the PHP or Python
generator to do all this for you automatically.
Google is still the major search engine on the web so getting your
pages indexed and updated quickly is the major reason to use Google
Sitemaps. If you want your site to remain competitive it’s probably
the wisest route to take.
To learn more about the different Services and Programs offered by Google click here: Google Adsense & Google Adwords
Copyright © 2005 Titus Hoskins of http://www.bizwaremagic.com
This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

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Optimizing For Visitors Not Search Engines

May 10, 2008 – 2:24 pm

Most people feel that optimizing is to target the search engines alone. In my opinion, this is not the only case. Optimization requires a balance of traffic enhancements and a user friendly atmosphere that provides clear navigation. Most will agree it would be much better to have people accept offerings from a Site, rather than masses of people who do nothing. Here are some general tips and thought to make pages user-friendly.
Focus on the Offerings
Is something being offered? Make it clear for people to see what is being offered. Give an eye catching call to action for your offers. For example, if you’re a Real Estate Agent offering, “Free CMA’s,” make it clear for people to see the offer. Use font styles or colors to give the offers prominence over the rest of the text. Give links to offers a focal point on the page. This can be done by centering the offers or putting them on top of menus.
Keep your pages concise. Many search engine optimization programs and professionals suggest keeping your pages under 750 words. In my opinion, this is good for visitor optimization as well. Focus your page on the topic at hand. As in the example above, if someone clicks a link that reads, “Free CMA,” the next page should be about free CMA’s. Don’t waste valuable space describing a CMA. Give a concise explanation, and then a call to action.
Keep your pages fast
In addition to pages loading fast, they should be fast at delivering information. Consider why people are surfing the Internet. In my opinion, the internet is used for finding and retrieving information. Because of this, pages need to be concise. If I follow a link that says, “Available widgets,” that’s what I want to see on the next page, front and center. I want to find the information I am looking for quickly and easily.
Don’t overcrowd the sub-pages. While your front page is bound to have a variety of topics and links, your sub-pages should be concise. I often come across pages that focus on several topics. In my opinion this is a bad technique. Make two pages instead of one page with two topics. This helps establish fast information retrieval.
Use Headings for clear navigation
Headings are recognized by the search engines and they provide clear navigation. Using headings will give pages an outline format. This allows people who browse your pages to quickly find the information that is relevant to their needs.
Heading tags in HTML start with H1 and range through H6. In my opinion, you should only have one H1 tag on a page. This tag should describe the overall premise of the entire page. If there are multiple subheadings, use H2 tags. If there are additional subheadings, use the H3 tags and so forth. You can also use text bolding to call attention. Try to scatter your keywords throughout the headings so search engines will know what the page focuses on, but keep it user-friendly.
Using colors
Make it easy for people to read the text on the Webpage. Designers often get the urge to make their websites appear unique. Uniqueness is good, but hard to read text is bad. I strongly urge the use of colors to make different aspects of a page stand out. However, you should ensure that there is enough contrast to make the text standout. Pages that are hard to read or pages that have hidden text, loose credibility. This gives the impression of deception and is overall frustrating. Unless your site uses an overwhelming amount of Audio, make sure people can read the page.
Making your pages user friendly has many significant benefits. Your pages should achieve their goal with a limited amount of traffic. Surfers are more likely to bookmark the site. This will establish a user base and generate a larger audience as time progresses. Most importantly, other webmasters are more likely to put links to your Website.
About The Author
Michael Medeiros is the owner of Mjmls.com. Mjmls offers free advertising for the United States.
admin@mjmls.com

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Expert Help From Google Answers

May 10, 2008 – 2:23 pm

Web users turn to search engines for answers to their questions. This is usually done through various levels of searching the engine’s database. Sometimes though, no matter how hard they try, searchers can’t find the information they need. Maybe they’re not familiar with how to narrow and focus searches, or they may not have enough background in the subject they’re researching to recognize the answer they need. Google Answers offers a solution.
With Google Answers, you hire an experienced researcher or specialist in your field of inquiry to provide answers to your questions. In a sense, this process works much like bidding on an item at eBay or hiring work done through a freelancer web site. You will create a Google Answers profile, a nickname, enter your credit card information, and when you post your questions, you specify how much you’re willing to pay for answers and an expiration date for replies.
There is a 50 cent per question listing fee, and your payment offer for an answer can range from $2.00 to $200.00 currently. Your offered price needs to be high enough to justify and compensate the time a Google researcher will spend finding an answer. Researchers receive 75% of your offered fee, and Google receives the remainder to help support the Google Answers service. Once you receive an answer, your credit card will be charged the offer amount you made for that answer.
Previously asked questions and answers are posted, searchable, and freely available at the Google Answers site. Other users may make comments on the questions and answers, to help clarify the information you receive.
Google Answers isn’t magic. They can’t answer unanswerable questions, and they won’t provide medical, legal, or financial advice. But for other tough questions that you just can’t find an answer for on your own, Google Answers may be, well, the answer!
About The Author
Jakob Jelling is the founder of http://www.sitetube.com. Visit his website for the latest on planning, building, promoting and maintaining websites.

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SEO Basics - 8 Key Strategies For Online Business Success

May 3, 2008 – 3:41 pm

The world of search engine optimization (SEO) can be a big scary place for newbies. Most SEO professional companies charge astronomical prices that may or may not guarantee success.
The search engines are forever changing the way they rank websites and what is important to achieve a higher ranking. Even with these everchanging factors, there are 8 important points that you must use with your website that are not likely to change any time soon.
1. Domain Name
It is better to register a domain with a keyword in it, unless you are trying to brand yourself (think Coca Cola or Ebay). For instance, if your name is John Smith and you sell golf items you would be better off by registering a name like www.golfproducts.com instead of www.johnsmith.com.
Unfortunately with millions of website domain names being purchased all the time, finding a related domain name not already taken can be a daunting task. Still it is worth it in the end because it will carry more significance with the search engines.
2. Title Tag
This is an often overlooked place to input keywords. Have you ever been to a website and the bar at the top of the page just said ‘untitled’ or ‘homepage’? That reflects how little the site designer knew about SEO. Always put a descriptive title on EVERY page of your website. Put something like ‘Find golf clubs, golf clothes and the latest pro golf tips’, instead of ‘John’s golf shop’.
Make sure not to go overboard and just list 10 or more keywords or long sentences in a row or the search engines will think you are trying to spam them. Think quality over quantity. The title tag should contain one keyword rich descriptive sentence.
3. Meta Tags
The importance of meta tags in today’s SEO world is still being debated. It is still advisable to include a meta tag keywords and meta tag description in your code. A lot of times the search engines will pull your description tag to show in your websites search result. If nothing is there it may not show anything at all or it may pull the first sentence off of your page which might be completely irrelevent to your intended audience.
Do not, I repeat do not list 100 or more keywords in the keyword tag. This technique used to work years ago, but the search engines recognize this technique and will consider it spam. Place no more than 10 keywords in the meta keywords tag.
4. Link Strategies
Another important tip is to include keywords when linking to other websites or pages within your own site. For example it is better to have a sentence like this ‘Find out the latest professional golf tips.’ then to say ‘click here for the latest professional golf tips.’ This also applies to any outbound links to other related websites. Include keywords on the part you want the visitors to click on.
Same goes for incoming links to your site. If someone wants to link to your site give them the code to paste in their website instead of leaving them to do it on their own. Have something like ‘Check out John’s Golf shop for the best golf clubs, golf info and golf tips.” This is much better than ‘Click here for John’s Golf Shop’. Search engines also like longer more descriptive links than just one or two words.
5. Relevant Content
Make sure that you provide only relevant information to what your actually offering or selling. If you have a bunch of unrelated info on a wide range of topics than the search engines will have a harder time pinpointing exactly what it is your site is about. So if your selling golf stuff stick to golf content, don’t throw in articles or links about scuba diving.
6. PageRank
This is still a relatively new term and applies to an algorithm that google’s search engine uses. Other search engines use similar strategies to google’s PageRank also.
Basically PageRank is used to define how popular your website is. The more relevant inbound links you have coming into your website the higher your PageRank will be. Google also has a toolbar that you can download for free that will show you a site’s PageRank. The best way to go about getting inbound links is to find related websites with a PageRank of 5 or higher. Then asking them to include a link to your site (giving them the proper code to paste in).
Another way you can receive a higher PageRank is to have a ton of content on many different pages and then linking all the pages together in a way that will raise your PageRank. With that said this type of strategy will not boost your PageRank tremendously, so if your site doesn’t contain thousands of pages don’t stress over it. It is important though to link strategically with keywords between the pages of your site.
You can download google’s toolbar at http://toolbar.google.com/
7.

This is an HTML header tag used to define size of text within the tag. Search engines place more importance on text that is placed within the H1 tag. It’s like telling the search engines that ‘hey this text is important to my site’. The problem is that it can look unsightly. There are ways around this if you know about CSS styles, but for this basic intro article just know that in the end most people won’t be bothered by how the heading looks, and it will make the search engines like you more.
8. Creating Credibility
An often overlooked part of free publicity for your website is writing free articles like this one that relates to your intended audience. There are many websites on the internet where you can submit your articles for other people to place on their websites. I even employ this same strategy for my website. It’s really a win win situation. They win because they get quality relevant content for their site and you win because your name and website info is included at the bottom of the article, driving traffic to your site.
You increase your inbound links (PageRank) and provide free publicity for your website. It gets your name out there branding you an expert in your field of expertise and provides free web traffic to your site.
Leah West
http://www.westmarketing-design.com
Providing complete search engine optimized website design and internet marketing services for your small business success.
Sign up for my Fr*ee ezine at http://www.westmarketing-design.com/ezinesubscribe.htm

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Ten Steps To A Well Optimized Website - Step Seven - Website Submissions

April 27, 2008 – 11:52 am

Welcome to part seven in this ten-part search engine positioning series. Last week we discussed the importance of human testing. In part seven we will cover the best practices of website submissions, where to submit your website to, and how to do so.
With services offering to help you get more traffic and higher search engine positioning by submitting your website to “18 Bazillion Search Engines For Just $19.95 Per Month!” and other such claims, there has grown much confusion around website submissions. In this article we will clear up many of the misconceptions around submitting your website and may even save you “Just $19.95 Per Month!” in the process.
Over this series we will cover the ten key aspects to a solid search engine positioning campaign.
The Ten Steps We Will Go Through Are:
1. Keyword Selection
(http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/articles/search-engine-positioning/keywords.htm)
2. Content Creation (http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/articles/search-engine-positioning/content.htm)
3. Site Structure (http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/articles/search-engine-positioning/structure.htm)
4. Optimization (http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/articles/search-engine-positioning/optimization.htm)
5. Internal Linking (http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/articles/search-engine-positioning/internal-linking.htm)
6. Human Testing (http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/articles/search-engine-positioning/human-testing.htm)
7. Submissions
8. Link Building
9. Monitoring
10. The Extras
Step Seven - Website Submissions
While there are definitely more critical areas of the website optimization process there is perhaps no area subject to as much misinformation and to such a vast audience. Here are some common misconceptions that are often believed about search engine submissions:
1. You need to submit your website often to keep it indexed by the search engines
2. You need to submit your website to thousands and thousands of search engines to get decent traffic
3. Submitting your website often will keep you at the top of the search engine rankings
These beliefs are all incorrect and those who can make a quick buck selling this disservice perpetrate them. If you have not recently received an email offering to “Submit Your Website To More Search Engines Than There Are Websites On The Internet For Just $19.95 Per Month!” then I can pretty much guarantee that you will in the not-too-distant future if your email can be found somewhere on your website.
An irony of this can be found in Google’s webmaster area where they note:
Amazingly, we get these spam emails too:
“Dear google.com,
I visited your website and noticed that you are not listed in most of the major search engines and directories…”
Reserve the same skepticism for unsolicited email about search engines as you do for “burn fat at night” diet pills or requests to help transfer funds from deposed dictators.
Good advice as I’m sure Google has their website submissions taken care of. Just because you receive such an email, doesn’t mean that you’re missing out on anything. Let’s first look at a breakdown of which engines are responsible for which traffic.
According to research the major search engines are responsible for the following percentages of traffic as of June 2004:
Google - 41.6%
Yahoo - 31.5%
MSN - 27.4% (MSN draws their results from Yahoo!/Overture)
AOL - 13.6% (AOL draws their results from Google)
Ask Jeeves - 7.0%
Lycos - 3.7%
Netscape - 3.0% (Netscape draws their results from Google)
AltaVista - 2.7% (AltaVista draws the Yahoo!/Overture)
Source: Neilson/Netratings (http://www.nielsen-netratings.com/)
Note: These numbers total over 100% as people may use multiple search engines if they don’t find the information they are looking for at the first one they try.
So what does this tell us? This tells us that the very vast majority of search engine traffic does not come from many thousands of search engines but rather, relatively few. This would lead to the obvious questions, “Is it worth paying to be submitted to thousands of search engines?” The real answer, “No.”
Then How Do I Submit My Own Website?
Automated search engine submission systems simply access the existing and readily accessible “Add URL” pages of the search engines and automatically submit your site. You can do this yourself simply by visiting the search engines and submitting through these same pages.
To simplify this process you can visit the “search engines” page on the Beanstalk Search Engine Positioning website (http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/info/search-engines-major.htm) where we link directly to the submissions pages of the major engines.
But What About The Other Engines? Surely They Provide Some Traffic?
Quite honestly, they may. You may get a visitor or two. Is it worth $19.95/mth or some such amount? No. You can get a better dollar/visitor ratio on any of the many PPC engines out there.
An additional point to note is that you may want to actually visit some of the lists of engines on the sites offering these services to you. You will discover a couple of important facts:
- Many of these so-called “search engines” are not engines at all but rather FFA (Free-For-All) pages and classified ads sites. They will not help your rankings, you will not see traffic from them and your listing will probably last about as long as spam in your Inbox.
- Many of the actual search engines and directories are topical. What this means is that they are focused on a single area and unless your site coincidentally is about space exploration, topographical mapping, etc. you won’t get listed. Submitting should not be confused with “guaranteed listing”. Submitting your site to thousands of engines is not the same as getting your website indexed on thousands of engines.
The Submission Myth
The truth of that matter is, submitting your website at all can realistically be considered a waste of time. Aside from a few key general directories (DMOZ, Yahoo, etc.) and a number of SEO directories, we did not submit the website www.beanstalk-inc.com to any of the major