Search engines are Internet
directories, designed to make your site easy to find and easily accessible to
Internet users (a link to your site is included with each directory
listing). Without your listing in search engines, it would be like conducting
business in a community and not being listed in the telephone book. And, if
your website isn't located in the top-20 listings of the major search engines,
chances are your site will rarely be seen.
- According to recent users surveys, between
84% to 92% of Internet users worldwide use Search
Engines to find what they're looking for on the Web. Its been estimated
there are over 400,000,000 (four hundred million) searches performed using
search engines, daily.
- A CommerceNet/Nielsen Media Research survey reveals
search engines are overwhelmingly the No. 1
Web-navigation instrument—with 71% of frequent users saying they
find out about sites they want to reach through search engines."
(The Quickest Way to Get More Visitors to Your
Site Annette Hamilton, Executive Producer
ZDNet
AnchorDesk, July 21, 1997.)
- Numerous studies have shown the Top
Ways Websites are Discovered are:
- Search Engines: 46%
- Random Surfing: 20%
- Word-of-mouth: 20%
- Magazine ads: 4.4%
- "By accident": 2.1%
- TV spots: 1.4%
- Targeted email: 1.2%
- Banner ads: 1%
- Nine out of ten web users visit a
search engine, portal or community site each month. They also revisit
frequently, nearly five times per month. (Nielsen//NetRatings, May 2001)
Given the above statistics it should be obvious if you want
your website to be found, it's imperative to submit your
site to the major search engines.
What are the
important Search Engines to be listed in?
While there are many search engines on the Internet, getting
listed on the most popular search engines will generate
the most traffic to your Web site. An effective search engine marketing
strategy leverages the advantages of each of the major search engines and their
advertising channels including natural and paid.
Over 90% of
search engine traffic comes from Google, Yahoo, and MSN. These three
search engines provide results for many other search engines, and if you are
listed on these three search engines, your site will be listed on many other
search engines too. AltaVista for example gets their search results from Yahoo.
AOL and Netscape use Google and also get some results from Open Directories
like DMOZ.
Do you want to work hard? Or would you prefer to work smart?
The smart way is to not waste allot of time submitting to the multitude of
smaller search engines... rather focus your attention on the most popular
search engines. If there are local or specialized directories related to your
web site, those too should be targeted for your submissions.
Following are some of the most popular search engines:
 A note about Meta Search
Engines
Meta
search engines do not use their own databases and do not index websites. They
query your search from many different search engines simultaneously and merge
together the results into one unified set of results. For example,
MetaCrawler may
take your search term and compile its reults from About, Ask Jeeves, FAST,
FindWhat, LookSmart, Overture and many more. Some other popular meta seach
engines include: Ask
Jeeves, Dog Pile,
SurfWax, and
Profusion
Getting listed in a meta search
engine requires your site to have been indexed by the search engines it pulls
its results from. Therefore, it is important to get a good ranking in the
search engine databases used by the meta search engine.
How to Submit Your Site to Search
Engines
Before we discuss
the different ways of submitting to search engines, you should first make sure
your web site is READY to be submitted. Here are some suggestions for being
prepared:
- Make sure your
site is completed.
Fix all broken links. Have all pages completed.
Make sure it loads properly and quickly. If you want get another opionion on
whether it is ready to be submitted. Here is a good company that validates
websites: http://www.htmlvalidator.com/
- Find the
correct category to be listed under.
If the search engine you're
submitting to has categories, it's important to choose the right one. Although
this can be frustrating it is important to take the time to find the correct
category and sub-category for your site to be listed under. Choosing the wrong
category could result in your site being denied.
- Write an
acceptable description of your site.
You need to keep it to 2
sentences and nothing more. If you have any doubts about how to write a good
description go to your category and look at the descriptions of sites already
listed.
There are three basic models to
getting - and staying - listed on search engines:
- Do it all
yourself:
You can familiarize yourself with the major search engines,
and submit your site to them yourself. This is the least expensive option, but
it can also be very time consuming. Besides making sure you get listed the
first time, you will also need to monitor your position on the search engines
weekly or monthly to be certain you don't get bumped down the list or knocked
off completely.
You'll also want to learn a lot about the ins and outs of
search engines and directories. A good place to start is at
Search Engine Watch , a very useful source of information about various search
engines.
Use the following links to submit your site to some
of the major search engines.
TIP: A common mistake many make is
to only submit their "home" page to the search engines even though they might
have dozens of subpages dealing with a variety of subjects. Some search engines
only require you to submit your index or home page and they will eventually
spider your entire site. But, others do not. So, you want to find out if the
particular search engine you're submitting to spiders all your pages or not. If
not, you will want to submit every page. Each page in your site should have a
unique title that is short and describes the content of the page. Further, you
want to create meta tags for each page with those unique titles.
TIP: Locating and making the submissions to the search engines
will take time. And, the process doesn't stop after making the initial
submission. It is important to monitor your
placement in the search engines because for any number of reasons, your
site might be dropped from their index or your placement in their rankings is
so poor that nobody can find you. Generally speaking, you will probably want to
submit your pages to search engines and directories every month. Don't submit
more often, though, as you might be punished if the search engine believes you
are spamming them. But, once a month is generally pretty safe.
TIP: After you have submitted your site, it may take several days,
weeks, or even months before your page shows up in their listings. As much as
you might like to think of the web as being instant - when it comes to most
search engines - it ain't so - unless you know the tricks of
getting your site included
faster.
- Use an
automated submission service:
You might call this "do it yourself,
with a bit of help." Several online services will submit your Web site to
search engines for you. They can save you a lot of time and teach you things as
well. They've already done the work of gathering forms from dozens or hundreds
of different engines, and have them all in one place.
WebPosition Gold is a web marketing tool we
whole-heartedly recommend to our clients. Unlike other products out there, this
amazing tool really does help you achieve top rankings on the search
engines!
Search Engine Blaster is a very simple to
use online based service with no complicated software to learn and nothing to
download. Once you tell it what to submit, it will automatically re-submit as
often as you'de like. You don't even have to log in to do it--It's all on
auto-pilot!
There are also some free or very low cost submission
services including:
SelfPromotion.com is a
resource for do-it-yourselfers where you can learn to prepare your pages for
the search
engines, then use a sophisticated
url submission
robot to submit your webpages to all the important search engines and
directories. You'll also find tutorials about
website promotion,
submitting to
yahoo, and much more. Best of all, you can use the site for free -- if you
like it, pay what YOU think it's worth! The guy who runs it has reinvented
tipping!
HitBox Site Submission
There is also automated
software you install on your local computer which you use to automatically
submit your site.
See for example:
Exploit
Submission Wizard
- Hire someone
to manage the process for you:
If you want to avoid the time and
hassle altogether, there are firms that will manage the entire process for you
for a fee. Data Synthesis can optimize your web page and submit your website to
hundreds of search engines and directories. Two plans are offered: One can intially submit your site to
150+ search engines and directories and then resubmit your site quarterly.
Another plan will make a one-time submission of your site.
Top-10
Promotions
Read More About Search Engines
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Overture
Discriminates Against Small Advertisers
Recently Overture.com has put into place predatory editorial
policies that appear to favor its large advertisers and discriminate against
the small advertiser. Using their relativistic editorial guidelines, Overture
editors regularly reject small advertiser bids on keywords while accepting the
bids from their favored advertisers.
Along with their search
partnerships with Yahoo, AskJeeves, Lycos, InfoSpace, MSN, and AltaVista,
Overture is turning into a search empire that no longer delivers fair and
relevant content to its users, rather only delivers content that is biased
toward big corporations regardless of the relevancy of the search performed.
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Pay Per Click/Performance Search
Engines
A common strategy of search engine marketing is to bid for the
top paid search listing in Yahoo Search Marketing (formerly Overture) or Google
Adwords as a way to acquire the perceived “bread and butter” position
in the search results page.
The "pay-for-placement" or
"performance-based" model such as what's found at Yahoo.com, Google.com,
FindWhat.com, HitsGalore.com, Kanoodle.com, RocketLinks.com, SearchGalore.com,
SimpleSearch.com, and others has become commonplace. Advertisers bid in an open
auction for placement in the results for search terms that are relevant to
their sites and only pay for visitors who click on their listings.
This
is an excellent strategy to use to quickly get your website listed on some of
the major search engines and portals. If you're willing to pay the price to get
a top listing, you'll get exposure unmatched just about anywhere.
Read
more about Pay per click search engines at
PayPerClickAnalyst.
How do you get a top-10
listing?
More ways to bring traffic to your
site
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Plan
Implement
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