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#4 Search Engine Readiness

There are thousands of pages written about meta tags and keywords and search engine placement.   These items still have relevance and the procedures must be followed.   Times have change.  The algorithms used by each search engines robots and spiders changes constantly.   

First of all, if you want to have any chance of getting a decent ranking for any keyword or keyword phrase, you need to have your own domain (not an affiliate or free web site) and a site with a large amount of content that is relevant to your keyword or keyword phrase. If you do not have both of these, the odds are stacked against you.

This is not to say that you cannot have some success from a free service like Tripod.   Free services have a role to play in you total Web promotion strategy.   BC Ventures recommends a multi-tiered strategy to our clients.  We will discuss this further in the section on Pointer Sites.

There are also a couple of myths that go along with search engine promotion and I want to state them here....

2 Big Search Engine Myths

1.  Multi Submission Services Work!

In short, STAY AWAY FROM THEM!  There are only a handful of engines that will boost your traffic (less than 20) and I'm sure you've seen these services that advertise they will submit to 6,000 engines for some "small" amount of money.  No matter how "small" the amount, you are still getting ripped off.

Many engines (Excite/Looksmart, etc) have turned to the directory style (like Yahoo) and in order to successfully submit your site, you must do it manually because you will be asked specific questions about your web site.  

These companies use submission software to handle the multi submissions so there is no way they can handle directory submissions properly.

For example, Excite is now run by LookSmart. (Once you're in Looksmart, you'll eventually be listed in Excite) In order to get into Looksmart, you must pay $199. Yes, Excite still has a free submission area but there is also a note that says, "free submissions are not guaranteed." To sum it up, that means if you don't pay, your chances of getting in are slim to none.  

They don't come out and say that but try submitting your site and you'll see what I mean.  I finally had to pay to get one of my web sites listed.

Always....and I do mean ALWAYS submit your site manually.  Go to each search engine manually and read the guidelines on submitting and do it yourself. Don't ever pay someone to do it for you.

You can find companies that offer comprehensive manual submission services. BC Ventures offers this.  Services like this are by necessarily labor intensive.    There are other companies that offer this service as well.  If you simply do not have the time to manually submit your site your self then shop around for a manual submission service.   Make sure that when you find a service that they provide you with verification of each site submitted and that they DO NOT rely on automatic submission software.

2. "The more times I submit, the better...."

WRONG.  In fact, it's just the opposite.  If you keep submitting over and over again, your web site could be banned altogether.  You certainly don't want that to happen.  If you don't see results after 6-8 weeks, then try submitting again but please don't submit day after day after day.  That does NOT speed up the process.

One element of search engine placement that still holds true for robots and spiders is reciprocal links.   The algorithms for each spider is different but it is a basically true statement to say that the more links into and out of you site the higher your site will be indexed.  Of these the most important is links into your site from other indexed sites.   We will discuss how to achieve this in later sections.

Links out of your site seem easy and most sites have several "links: pages.   This is a double edged sword.   Bad links hurt your site far more than good links.   Do not place hundreds of external links on your site if you do not have the times or intention of maintaining them and ensuring that they are still valid.

Rather than going into detail on how each engine ranks web sites (they change so often that it's difficult to keep up these days), I've decided to refer you to some of the best resources I've found on the web to help you out. These people literally study the engines on a weekly and sometimes daily basis so the info you will find will be up to date.

Search Engine Watch - This is the best site in my opinion. Danny Sullivan has everything you could possibly want to know about how the engines were built, how they rank, how many visitors they receive, and so much more about the popular search engines. I highly recommend you start here for a good overview.

Nothing But Net - I was impressed by this e-book.  It's a downloadable guide in which Michael Campbell explains (step by step) how he earned $750,000 in less than a year mostly from the search engines. He gives very specific details on how to make the search engines "love your site" and much more.  You can tell from reading the book that he keeps track of the engines on an almost daily basis.  These days, you have to.

SelfPromotion.com - You'll find a great guide to getting into Yahoo here.  Only 20% of the people that attempt to get into this directory actually get their sites listed.  A lot of this is due to the fact that people don't submit properly. This site has some great tips on submitting to Yahoo and other search engine tips and tools.

If you would like BC Ventures to assist you please see Our Services section. We can help with numerous services to get you site optimized and submitted..