Search Engine Web Site URL Submission Advice
Provided courtesy of Crimes of Persuasion
Since awareness of crime is the best defense, we have included
this section as a drawing card to get people to this site. As a
first time web site developer I have encountered many factors which
can, when condensed, save you a great deal of time and headache
in successfully launching and promoting a web site of your own,
whether it is for a business or not.
Some basic facts you should be aware of:
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there are billions of web pages
out there, |
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there are millions of web sites
out there, |
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when you search for a topic, thousands
of pages appear, |
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there are hundreds of search engines
available to help find your site, |
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unless you set up your web site
properly your clients will never, ever find your site. |
Before you even consider submitting
your site to a search engine you must do three things.
Sit down and write up a list of keywords which relate to your
industry, company or services.
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This list should contain at least
fifty words or phrases you think people might type into a search
engine trying to find you. For example we used (fraud, investments,
pyramids, MLM, penny stocks, etc). |
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Next you must prioritize the words
based on results you get when you use them to search for similar
companies. |
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Get suggestions for related words
from the major pay-per-click search engines using a small free
program from GoodKeywords, JimWorld,
or Wordtracker.
You can also figure search counts using the Google Adwords cost
calculator or Keywords.
Their word choices may historically get more hits than yours,
even though they are only slightly different. |
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Rather than scanning your dictionary
or thesaurus try Lexfn for
related words. |
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Next you want to add your company
name to the list and maybe even your competition's, although
people have been successfully sued for doing this with trademarks. |
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You should sign up with a free
counter or search engine service that tracks the keyword searches
people make, both to find you initially, and what they seek
while on your site. After each month-end add the new words
being sought to your inventory. |
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Pay-per-keyword services provide
you with reports that show which of your listing words are
hit the most. Focus on these within your budget constraints.
You may even find you have no competition for certain words,
yet. More surprising is that often the words are not what you
would pick at all yet they are extremely popular and relate
directly to your site. |
The second step is to realize that
even if you don't understand HTML programming you can and must
type into your index.htm or default.htm page (while in HTML mode)
some phrases which are crucial to success. Certain aspects of
this advice might seem overly complex to those who have never
dabbled in it. Take heart, you'll learn a little bit at a time
and soon understand all that is required to succeed at this.
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The first phrase relates to your
main page TITLE. This is what you thought you would call your
site but are not going to. Instead of ABC Company you are going
to let people, and most importantly the search engines, know
what you do by including about six of your keywords total to
make a catchy informative heading such as ABC Company - Manufacturers
of Lead Pipes and Widgets. |
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You can do this html stuff all
at once when you are organized but what you will see at the
top of the page when you view the index page in html format
is: |
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<title> ABC Company Home
Page <title> |
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You just need to edit the text
to read your new more descriptive heading then save the file.
Simple and you can now call yourself a webmaster. |
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The next step is to include two
lines directly below the title line which are called metatags. |
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<meta name="description" content="Here
you insert a readable description of your services in lower
case except for when required in name, at least 50% more words
than the title, no more than about twenty, using as many top
rated keywords that make sense in a description without adjectives"> |
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Directly below it you then type <meta
name="keywords" content="all fifty of your keywords
and phrases separated by commas, most important first, without
repetition of words, if you have two word sets like loan and
loan broker, put the least important at the end of the list"> The
quotation marks and < > things are very important. |
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Because the major search engines
will keep coming back after an initial visit you have plenty
of time in the future to do this to each page in more precise
and page relevant detail. The next step must be done now without
further delay. |
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Soon some sites will not list you
unless you have been rated for child-safe content, out of fear
that you will be displaying some perverse bestiality that will
certainly reflect poorly on them. You can get a meta tag rating
free, and based on your judgment from ICRA and Safesurf who
ask four questions, then give some html tags to insert between <HEAD> and </HEAD> right
below <TITLE>. The old standby is <meta name="rating" content="general"> |
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A good resource of links to other
sites covering the topic of Metatags is Webdeveloper. |
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To see how search engines see your
site, and what they might display about you, run a test through Delorie
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Search Engine Submission
As mentioned before there are hundreds of search engines out there
and until you get into them you will be the only person looking
at your site. There are different types of search engines but who
cares. You just need to know which are essential, which are good
and which are useless.
There are about ten major ones that you must get on, but they
are so busy taking in new sites (250,000 per month) that it can
take from three days to three months before they look at your entry.
That gives you plenty of time to sign up with some other good ones
while you wait.
Some sites just take your full URL address to sign up such as
http://www.crimes-of-persuasion.com while others want you to enter
more detailed information such as:
Site title, description, keywords, appropriate category, business
address, e-mail address and such. Luckily you have that list already
done almost. You should go into different search sites and get
an idea of appropriate category as they are sometimes vague, limited
or extremely precise.
Many search engines, especially FFA (free for all) types, are
set up to get your e-mail address and send you wonderful offers
and information like newsletters and such. For this reason you
want to have previously set up at least two free dummy e-mail accounts
to receive the deluge. Within the email service set up numerous
folders for storing the responses you get ( Search Engines, Promotions,
Banners, Affiliates, Web Design, Respond To ). Also, never give
out personal info, even correct phone numbers, unless you want
calls from customers and others, such as when you list in a business
directory or sign up for an affiliate program.
You can usually tell by looking which sites are cheesy attempts
to get you on a mailing list by the graphics used so I've tried
to suggest only the better ones, but who knows, graphics lie sometimes.
Some submission services offer to submit your site to the engines
for free, while other charge for more than a basic ten. I prefer
to submit manually to hundreds for free initially, then you don't
get kicked out of the engine for resubmitting too many times. As
long as you update your pages once every month or two you shouldn't
get dropped but I plan to resubmit about every two months until
I can narrow down my list to about thirty main and productive engines.
Note: I am soon discovering that due to the multitude
of engines out there, and the time required to submit even URLs
that I may eventually use a good quality submitter when I get too
busy.
Tip!Open and save a one page word processing
document that includes your URL, title, description, categories,
personal and company info, keywords, etc. Then just copy and paste
by switching windows from it to the submission page. Believe me,
it saves a lot of typing.
Site Tips From Other Sources
For the greatest web info visit:
Visit Internet.Works which
is an excellent publication and website from the U.K. They include
top notch, full-blown programs free with their magazine each
month, which I get at a specialty newsstand along with PCPro for
from $10-20. Compared to North American magazines which give
only demos, you can't beat this deal on a great variety of programs
which are usually only a year behind the current version at most.
Info on Search Engines Specifically
Submission Services
To make your life easier I have provided a list of over 100 quick
links to many of these sites. Having such a listing would have
saved me weeks of work but I would have made my mistakes that much
sooner. You, on the other hand are prepared with a one page submission
info list which you may even hand over to your staff to have them
do it. Keep a master list of search engines so you can cross them
off as you do them. Some other good, free, but instant submitters
are listed below for future inputs. Just be careful not to resubmit
the same url to the same ones more than once a month.
Some articles state that the search engines ignore submissions
from bulk submitters and that you should do it manually. I recommend
that you do your first submissions manually, based on the links
and criteria from DreamSubmit then
do the top ten manually as often as required ( monthly some say
) but auto-submit to as many of the others as you like if you could
even be bothered to do that. I have found the traffic from these
small sites minimal at best but having a listing there increases
your link popularity rating which is judged by the major ones.
They provide limited free submissions and great website management
tools that I'll cover later but you can also set up e-mail there
for free and use that info to get into their other services and
to direct search engine confirmations and spam back to.
Paid Submission Services
Continue on for much more info on this topic!
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