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What is a search engine?
Web visitors generally use search engines to find sites matching their search criteria. The visitor enters words or phrases in the search area, and the search engine produces a list of related sites. The search engine provides this information after conducting a more comprehensive search using indexing software agents, often called "robots" or "spiders." These robots and spiders are programmed to "crawl" the Internet in search of new or updated web sites. The search engine becomes aware of a new site to visit and index when that site is submitted. Why should I submit my web site?
Submitting your URL to a number of search engines increases the odds of potential customers finding your site through traditional online searches. You can further increase your chances of being found through a search by adding relevant keywords to your home page title and text. Search engines are one of the least expensive and most successful forms of online marketing. If you're serious about reaching new visitors, submitting your site to search engines is essential. Why should I submit every month?
You want to keep your web site registration current. Link Pages move older links to the bottom of the list, and resubmitting puts you back on top. Search engines have a tendency to drop or lose sites from time to time. Resubmitting monthly ensures your site won't get lost. Some web sites offer "What's New" sections. Each time you submit, your site gets added to these lists.
What are the best keywords to use?
The best way to determine your keywords is to step out of your shoes and imagine yourself as one of your customers or prospects. How do you think these people will search for sites like yours? What keywords do you think they will enter into the search engines? Create a list of all of the words that apply to your business, including your business name, product names (both brand and generic names) and the names of the geographic regions you serve. You may also want to consider variations of these words (such as "dog, dogs, doggie, etc) and common misspellings of important keywords. When developing your list of keywords, you should consider all of the possible keywords your customers and prospects may use. Spend a few days thinking it over. Ask a few of your customers what keywords they would use. Build as large of a list as possible, while still keeping the keywords relevant to your business. Once you have a complete list, you can then rank the importance of they keywords to determine which are the most important to your company. Some search engines will only allow us to submit 25 keywords on your behalf. Others compute the relevancy of your keywords by dividing the number of keyword matched in a search by the total # of keywords submitted. We therefore limit your keyword list to 25 keywords to ensure that you select keywords that are the most relevant to your site and that will generate the highest ranking in the search returns.
What reports do you provide with the Keyword Research Plan?
After you have provided your initial list of keywords and we have submitted your site for the first time, we will visit the top 40 search engines to determine how your website currently performs. We will crawl 200 results within each of the search engines, for each of your keywords, saving you hours of work. An example of a ranking report can be found here. We will also provide you with information on how many times people searched for your keywords and their variations last month in the top search engines. This will help you to modify your keyword list to include popular keywords variations. For example, if one of your keywords is "limousine service ny", we will provide you with the following information:
You can learn that "limousine service ny" has been searched only 327 times during the last month in the top search engines, yet the keyword "limousine service in ny" has been used 909 times. That's almost 3 times more! So why not use "limousine service in ny", which means the same as "limousine service ny" yet has the potential of driving 3 times more traffic to your site. An example of a Keyword Research Report can be found here. What reports do you provide with the Optimization Plan?
With the Optimization Plan, we will provide you with step-by-step instructions on how to optimize your site for each of your keywords. An excerpt from an optimization report, with recommendations for the keyword "PORSCHE 944" can be found here.
When will I see my site listed on search engine sites?
After successfully submitting your web site to a search engine or directory, it's up to those organizations to list your site. Most automated directories will add your site almost instantly. Most search engines, like Excite and iWon, will send a "spider" to your site within a few weeks of submission. The spider will read and index your web site and schedule your site to be listed. While it can take as little as 2 weeks for your site to appear in some search engines, it may take up to 8 weeks for some to spider your site once we submit it to them.
Why can't I find my site on any search engines?
The most likely reason that you cannot find your site is that it has a low ranking in the search return. This may be because your site is not optimized for the keywords you entered. It is also possible that the search engine's "spider" has not yet visited your site and this is also adversely affecting the ranking and making it difficult to locate the site in the search return. If you continued to search through the search return, you would eventually find your site. The easiest way to determine if your site is in the search engine's database is to enter the full URL provided with your submission order (for example, www.your-domain-name.com). If you are unhappy with your ranking, we suggest that you optimize your site to help improve your ranking. Please remember that we are not guaranteeing a high ranking in the search engine returns. Since many of the factors that affect your sites ranking are outside of our control, we can only guarantee that we will submit your site to the search engines. How do I optimize my site?
There are many ways to optimize a site to increase its ranking in the search engine returns. We have created a guide to help you optimize your site. After you place your order, we will provide you with a link to our guide, which you can then follow to improve the search engine ranking of your site.
Which search engines and directories do you submit to?
Our service submits to many of the major search engines and directories. Some of the search engines we submit to include:
For a complete list of the sites to which we will submit your site, click here. Each month we'll send you a detailed report via email listing all the search engines, directories and links pages that your site was submitted to, so you can keep track of the submission process. Why isn't my site listed on Yahoo!?
Yahoo! is an Internet directory. Unlike a search engine, which uses an automated program to add sites to its database, many Internet directories have human editors who must review each site submission. The editors decide if the sites should be added to the directory and where they will be placed. Because of this human component, many Internet directories now charge an "express" submission fee of $100-$300 in order to guarantee that an editor will review the site. If the site is submitted without paying the fee, there is no guarantee that an editor will review the site, and even if they do, it usually takes 9-12 months for the editors to get around to looking at these submissions. We therefore recommend to our customers who wish to be listed on Internet directories such as Yahoo!, that they submit their sites directly and pay the "express" fee to guarantee that their site will be reviewed.
Why isn't my site listed on Google?
Instead of ranking sites based on keyword matches, Google ranks sites based on the number of external links from other sites that have the keywords. From Google's FAQ:
"Pages that have not been indexed yet probably haven't because not enough other pages on the web link to them — if other pages don't link to them, we can't assign them a PageRank (our proprietary measure of a page's importance) in a reasonable way. Once other links point to them, we'll pick them up. Google looks at the link interconnectedness among pages and allows the open, vast nature of the Internet to yield the most relevant search results." It generally takes a few weeks for the other search engines to list your site, and then for Google to index these other search engines before you will appear in Google's database. Also, please remember that we cannot guarantee that Google will provide a PageRank to your site. What is the difference between the submission plans?
Our Professional Plan is designed for customers who want to submit their web site every month without worry. We offer a hassle-free, "no nonsense" approach to web site submissions. If you're happy with your web site and have included the correct meta tags in your site, the Professional plan is the way to go. We also automatically generate meta tag code for your website. The Keyword Research Plan is designed to assist you with the selection of your keywords. In addition to the features of Professional Submission Plan, we will measure the performance of your site at the top 40 search engines for each of your keywords. We will also provide you with data on the number of times your keywords and their variations were used in searches on the past month, to help you identify other keywords and keyphrases that will generate traffic for your site. And last, but not least, we will measure the number of references the search engines have for other web sites linking to your site, which can have a big impact on your ranking in search engines such as Google. The Optimization Plan provides everything from our Keyword Research Plan, plus we also provide step-by-step optimization recommendations for each of your keywords. By implementing our optimization recommendations, you will be able to increase your site's ranking with the search engines. What is a meta tag?
A meta tag (or tag) tells the search engine what your site is about. The major search engines will review your site and read your meta tags to determine categories for your site. Meta tags tell the search engine your site's title, description and keywords. Without these tags, it's difficult for your site to achieve a high ranking on many major search engines.
Do I need meta tags?
Yes. If your site doesn't have meta tags, you're missing potential traffic. A web site without meta tags is tough for a search engine to place correctly.
What meta tags should I add to my web site?
1. Title: The title is probably the most important part of your site to evaluate, as it is the most frequently searched component by search engines. It should state exactly what your site is about and include your most important keywords. An example of a good title would be, "Dave's Interior Designs – Decorating the Inside of England's Homes." 2. Keywords: The Meta Tag Keywords should be those words or phrases that you think people will use when trying to look for a site like yours on search engines. You should incorporate many Meta Tags within your site's first paragraphs (50 words) and repeat them throughout the text. The right keywords for your web site should be specific enough to describe your web site's focus, yet general enough for potential customers to use as search criteria with search engines. Be sure to include your domain name, company name and product's name in the keywords. 3. Description: Your web site description should be a 20 word summary of the content of your site. This description should contain some of the keywords and should avoid marketing jargon. An example of a good description would be, "A full service provider of interior design services – decorating, painting, furniture and color schemes for your home." Where do I place the meta tags?
The meta tags should be inserted between the <HEAD> and </HEAD> tags of your document. Below is an example of how to format meta tags and where to place them: <HTML> How do I get the meta tags you create for me into my web page?
When filling out the registration form, you should use the same title, description and keywords as those specified in the meta tags included in your site's code. To ensure this process, you can use our meta tag generator. At the end of the registration process, you will receive an email with auto-generated meta tag code for your site. Simply copy and paste this code into your HTML editor and then upload the page to your server.
How can you submit my web site every month for only $229.99 per year? That sounds cheap.
You've probably noticed that other web site promotion services charge as much to submit your site only once. Most submission companies do basically the same thing we do – submit your site to hundreds of locations for you. But we'll submit your site multiple times to achieve better results. You can use another service and pay $229.99 to have your site submitted once or use our service and have your site submitted 12 times for the same amount. We've built a loyal following by offering a fair price and good service.
I've seen other companies that submit to 2,000 search engines. Why do you only submit to 400?
We've seen these offers, too. How many search engines do you go to when you're looking for something on the Internet? Submission companies that offer 2,000 submissions are simply sending your web site to small niche directories. These pages may no longer exist and in many cases were set up to collect email addresses to use or sell. Be careful if you're using one of these submission services. In the web site promotion game, quality wins over quantity.
Why does my subscription automatically renew annually?
It's important to continue to submit your site to the search engines to maintain your ranking, since many search engines factor in the length of time since a site was submitted into their ranking calculations. If you stop submitting your site on a monthly basis, your ranking will slowly drop as newer sites are added and ranked higher than your older listing. To prevent any lapse in service, we automatically renew your subscription annually. If you choose to discontinue your service, you simply need to notify us of your desire to cancel, in writing and at least 30 days prior to your annual renewal date.
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