Getting in the search engines

We get a lot of requests about search engine optimization and submissions.

And we have had fair success at getting our clients in the search engines quickly. However, we make no claims to guarantee results, rankings, or inclusions. The players and the rules in search engine optimization change frequently and nothing can be guaranteed except that it will change.

Free information

First of all, here are a few recommendations, that we make to clients all of the time. We do not benefit in any way from making any of these recommendations (we don't get a commission from Google, ebay, Kanoodle, SiteProNews or selfpromotion.com; we recommend them because they work).

We use Google Adwords, for web design (on and off), canadiana souvenirs (www.daveanddenise.com), etc., and are finding that we are pleased. It's fast (you can usually have ads running in about 15 minutes), and you can set daily and monthly budgets. And you only pay when visitors come to your site.

We also find that selling our web design or products on ebay is a good deal for our advertising dollar (even if we don't make a lot of money on our web design auction; people often want more than the auction package and so we make additional money). We get 35-100 clicks for One Dollar Twenty Cents, which is a lot better than we can do on pay-per-click search engines.

We also have used www.selfpromotion.com. It is free and he has fabulous, unalderated advice. Not search marketing hype. Common-sense, and knowledgeable advice. He accepts donations from people who think his service was worthwhile. We have donated money to him because we thought it was a good service, and so have a number of our clients.

Subscribe to SiteProNews. It's the only newsletter Denise takes the time to read everyday; it is full of information and often links to other resources we use. Here's one of the best issues, we think. Also, take a look at their archives; in particular, look for the "Don't Put All Your Promotion Eggs In The SEO Basket" By Gary McHugh (June 22, 2005). There's a wealth of information in the archives and in subscribing to the newsletter.

Consider this special offer from Kanoodle. They give you $10 to try their service. It's a great way to get inside of a pay-per-click search engine and find out how they work. It's not the biggest search engine in the world, but it will give you some experience, and you will very likely get visitors from using it, and their service is friendly and easy to use..

More Free Search Engine Optimization - Just a little boost!

When we create a site for a client, we automatically include basic keywords and a description to your site. We also link to your site from ours.

Effect: Fairly short term

Purpose: Search engine spiders that come to my site will follow the link to yours. As of February 15, 2004 so far, there have been 7 search engine spiders on our site this month. Google last visited our site on February 15, and has been there three times so far this month. If we link to your site, Google can follow the link to find your new site. This does not guarantee that they will index your site, or include it in their rankings, but it will be able to find it, and often gets your site in google within a month.

One more piece of free advice - from a colleague

First of all, don't fall for any of the "Click here to submit your website to 10 Billion search engines!" offers. At best, you'll simply lose your money.

Next, get some high quality links into your site from other sites, which will let the major search engines "find" your site on their own. This method is by far faster (and you'll get higher rankings) than submitting. You NEVER need to submit a site to Google.

Next, submit your site to the major directories, starting with the Open Directory Project (www.dmoz.org). I don't recommend paying Yahoo's evaluation fee. That $299 IMO is much better spent on other website marketing strategies.

Finally, seek out smaller niche search engines and manually submit your URL (Re-read the first paragraph).
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RLROUSE Webmaster & SEO Resources - Free step-by-step guides and articles on Search Engine Optimization and webmaster issues.

Reality Check from Internet Marketing Guru Glenn Canady, author of Gorrila Website Marketing

If you depend on search engines for the majority of your traffic, you are fighting a battle that you can NEVER win!

Free search engine advice from Google

Free Advice from Google on optimizing your site for their search engine

NEWS FLASH: Effective 18 February 2004, Yahoo abruptly quit using Google as a search partner. Yahoo's search services are now wholly operated by their own search facilities. Yahoo replaced Google's results with its own Yahoo Search Technology, which combines an array of recently acquired search technologies, such as Inktomi and commercial search provider Overture Services. Overture also owns AltaVista and the Web search technology of Fast Search and Transfer. This appears to drop Google's percentage of reach of internet users by approximately 28%, and increases Overture's and perhaps Inktomi's influence for the immediate future. However, the numbers may change. For more info: check out Search Engine Watch and Ecommerce Times.

"I want to be #1 in all the search engines."

The problem, of course, is that EVERYONE wants to be #1 in all the search engines. This deserves more space and time than we can give it, but here is some information to manage your expectations.

No one on the internet can guarantee first page results. And everyone on the internet can guarantee first page results. If I go to Yahoo.com and search for 'officeswithoutwalls.ca' (my website), I get to be #1 on Yahoo, http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=officeswithoutwalls.ca&ei=UTF-8&fr=fp-tab-web-t&cop=mss&tab=. However, almost no new customers would search for the name of my company, so that #1 ranking does me no good to attract new customers. I need to be able to rank well on search terms that visitors actually do searches for, and that is tougher and can't be guaranteed. Why can't it be guaranteed?

(a) Because every search engine has a different algorithm. You're almost always going to do better on one engine than another because the algorithm matches your site characteristics better.

(b) because search engines change their algorithms. Google does on a regular basis, and they change their indexes. It's called the 'Google Dance' and it effects their search engine rankings everytime they do it, and they do it regularly, http://dance.efactory.de/. Yahoo majorly changed their algorithm on February 18, 2004, and it rocked a lot of search engine rankings, http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3314171.

(c) because a lot of search engines results are determined by bidding on ranking, and your competitors can outbid you. We can get you in the first page for many search engines, but it requires consistent work to STAY there because your competitors may continue to outbid you. And eventually it doesn't make economic sense to bid on that phrase. On Overture.com, if the phrase 'web design' costs about $1.50 per click. If it takes 100 clicks to make a sale and my average revenue per sale is $80, that doesn't make economic sense, so I must look at alternative ways to attract customers.

(d) because for one major search engine (dmoz.org), humans decide who gets in and not. I can submit your site, and submit it well, but have no real control over when or if it is included.

There are a number of things that we can do to make your website palatable to search engines. We also have a lot of free information about search engine optimization above on this page and our costs for certain SEO work are below. We warn you against anyone who PROMISES certain results in the search engines; and we will be happy to work with you in this matter if you would like for us to.

Alternatives to search engine advertising

Just like in the 'real world', where you have the choice of newspaper, radio, business card at the bulletin board at the library, word of mouth, referrals from various suppliers, etc., on the internet you also have various options for advertising. Search enging rankings are one of them.

One client doesn't care about search engine rankings. She makes horse trailers, built a website, painted it on the side of her own horse trailer, and goes to horse shows. This is effective for her, and she doesn't spend time/money trying to rank on search engines.

In our case, web design is a very competitive search phrase, and we rarely pay to be included in search engines on the phrase 'web design'. We will bid for 'affiliate software' (something we sell), or 'spinning popup generator' (something else we sell) and find that ALSO attracts web design clients to our site.

We also make a lot of use of banner exchanges, click exchanges, and ebay. Ebay doesn't bring clicks to our site, but we do sell web site packages, and often develop long-term relationships with the customers who buy one package from us, initially through ebay.

I'm not advising any client to ignore search engines. But, just as I would not recommend you ONLY advertise on radio, when perhaps newspapers and flyers would also bring you customers, I am reminding you that there are a number of advertising alternatives in addition to search engines. You may find these a great ADDITION to the traffic you are able to get from search engines, or as a great replacement while you are working to get search engine rankings.

Search Engine Optimization Fees for service

Here's what we can offer for search engine optimization, and what it costs. If you have any questions, please feel free to Email Offices Without Walls

1. Keyword research and labelling ALT tags on your site

Effect: short and long term optimization.

Purpose: To determine the best set of keywords (for you) for you to market in order to get traffic to your site. We need you to give us the 5-10 words or phrases that you think are best for your site, such as:

dogs,cats,pets,dog grooming,pet sitting,pet supplies

We will then do research to determine what other phrases are commonly searched for on the internet, that perhaps hadn't occurred to you, or relevant keywords such as your locale (i.e., Airdrie, Alberta).

-for instance, various spellings and misspellings of your keywords that are commonly used by accident on the internet (in this case, say, 'petsitting' in addition to 'pet sitting'). It is also very common for users to type 'web desing' instead of 'web design'.

We will also do research to determine what keywords your competitors (even if they are a petsitting website far away, they are a 'competitor' for search engine ranking)

We will do one of research and report back to you and include those words in your site.

If you want to do this yourself, take a look at

- http://instantmarketingsecrets.com/keyword.htm :
compares results of keyword searches from Overture and Wordtracker and displays them side by side.

- http://smtek.info/cgi-bin/keywordtool.cgi :
allows you to find relevant hot keywords with a single click... very cool, very useful.

Labelling ALT tags. First, what are ALT tags? They are the words which describe pictures. Search engine spiders can't see a picture. ALT tags are words inserted to tell the spider what the picture is. It is common to use a lot of keywords in these decriptions, to help the search engines index your site.

2. Submit your site to these major engines

There's no point in using those 'submit to millions' services as only a few search engines really matter. Using those services may actually cause your site to be penalized by these major engines.

However, you may want to submit by hand to these directories and search engines:

Ask Jeeves
Mamma.com
Open Directory
Google
Yahoo
All The Web
Inktomi

3. Create a Google Adwords account and bid on the keywords previously identified

Effect: short term. Traffic will be driven to your site within about 15-20 minutes

Purpose: To get some immediate traffic to the site. We recommend an initial budget of $35/ month, carefully watched for 2 weeks, to see how successfully the ad is working. If the ad is not working successfully, then change it, or ADD another campaign and run them both simultaneously.

Our fee: We can open this account for you, and set everything up for a fee. However, we will need you to go into the account and put your credit card number, as google will charge you each month for the advertising cost. It is too much accounting for us to have us pay and you reimburse us. We used to do that, but it requires too much bookkeeping. We're usually so busy designing that the billing for reimburseable expenses falls behind.

However, please understand that you *can* do this work yourself if you prefer.

4. Create an account at selfpromotion.com and submit to as many accounts as possible.

Effect: Long term

Purpose: Submissions to these search engines and index will take some time (months) to take effect, but should be done. You can do this submission yourself, but we offer it as a service, because some clients prefer not to.

5. Submission to dmoz.org

Effect: Long term

Purpose: Dmoz.org is human-run and will take some period of time to review your site. Acceptance and ranking at this search engine index is valued by other search engines and will result in other search engines ranking you higher (as well as driving some traffic to your site).

6. Open an account at goclick.com ($10 to open, 1 cent per click minimum to bid; very reasonable) and kanoodle.com.

Effect: nearly immediate

7. Directory links, particularly for local clients

Effect: long term

There are lots of local directories on the internet. airdrieonline.com, dallas.net, foundlocally.com, nycvisit.cm, proudtobecanadian, and hundreds, if not thousands of others. Usually, it costs nothing to be included in these directories. One simply has to know the directory exists and ask to be included.

If you are a member of your local chamber of commerce or business breakfast club, inform them that you have a website and ask them to link to your website.

Getting in these directories may bring traffic to your website from their visitors. It will also help search engine spiders FIND your site because there is a path from someplace else on the internet to your website. However, it may not help you RANK well because generally search engine spiders don't value highly the linking of a website from these sites.

Our fee: We generally don't do this work. It can be fairly time consuming and, thus, costly for you to pay us to do. And often owners know their local area well enough to know which online diretories they want to be on. If you would like for us to do it for your site, please Email Offices Without Walls and we will negotiate a price.

8. After we have tested the Google Adwords, goclick, and kanoodle and we have a better idea of click-thru-rate, clicks-to-sales-ratio, etc., consider opening a similar, click to bid account at overture.com

Effect: short-to-mid term (account takes a few days to open, but it is mid-term because we are not recommending to open it right away)

Ongoing expense: as with google, we will need you to fund this account directly for ongoing expenses. However, we would only recommend this account after we have done some test marketing with google, as this account is often more expensive per click and they require a minimum of $20 US per month be spent after the account is open (if you don't spend it, they simply subtract it from your account). Also, they have a stricter editorial process (they turn down more keywords), including a LOCALITY issue. They really prefer that you have a LOCALITY (i.e., California), but for products that are national or international, this is tougher to do. It just requires a little more experience with your site and keywords than google, in order to make decisions.

9. Try to capture the email addresses of visitors to your website, so you can do other marketing (notice of sales, newsletters, etc.)

Effect: mid-to-long range

Purpose: Collect email addresses of potential buyers.

Offer something: ebook, industry advice, free sample, something, in order to get visitors to give your email to them.

10. Submission to MSN

Effect: short to mid term (buying Inktomi gets you spidered for MSN within 2 days, 'tweaking' your site to rank better will take some time)

To be in MSN AT ALL you have to rank really high at pay-per-click search engines, or pay INKTOMI $40 per year, or pay LookSmart an per-click fee. We should seriously consider inktomi for you. Paying Inktomi does not guarantee a good ranking in MSN, but it does guarantee inclusion.

NOTE: Effective February 18, 2004, this option is no longer available. Inktomi was purchased some time ago by Yahoo, and suddenly ceased this service on February 18, 2004. We are researching an alternative recommendation for MSN advertising (other than Overture).

Update: Click Here to submit to MSN