Registering with search engines

Draco

Do you have to register your site with search engines? Or can you assume that their robots will pick you up?

Draco

Trojan

If somewhere else which is registered links to you they'll get it eventually, otherwise they won't.

Best bet is to reg it.

Al.

PJ Hunt

3 things that ensure search engine placement..

• Meta tags
• Meta tags
• Meta tags

Get these right and your lafin...

It's best to submit by hand i.e go to each engine and hit the submit url link

Or try http://www.jimtools.com/submit.html

It's pretty good and the robots come within a week or so..But I'd advise doing it by hand.

Don't expect to get into ones like Altavista for a month or so...

For the latest news check out http://www.searchengineforums.com

Engine placement has become a job in its own right these days...and a loadsa money job at that !!

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‡PJ‡

Kali

not just meta tags.
if you wnat high placement for a particular search you have to add the chosen phrases within your body tag, within comments, alt tags etc.
altavista is actually the fastest engine to get a placing on, around two-three weeks it took me after submitting it.
infoseek/msn etc take a hell a lot longer.
i'd have to disagree with the "its best to submit by hand" there.. use a program like webposition or position weaver.. these are excellent for creating gateway pages, appropriate meta tags, submitting, showing where your page ranks on various engines etc.

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http://www.filmsoc.com

PJ Hunt

Granted..I use WebPositionGold most of the time ...

But with it's need to download the appropriate updates and stuff I just feel more secure doing it by hand...

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‡PJ‡

Sprant

Many people are new to the web and there doesn't seem to be much help out there for us. Most articles and advice columns seem to be aimed at the experienced net user
and not much use if you are just starting out with your brand new
business web site.

We all know that site promotion is the key to successfully building up your business on the Internet so here are ten tips for newcomers that don't cost any money and which I wish someone had told me when I
started.

1. Submit site to search engines
Here I have learned to avoid autosubmit software programmes and that best results are obtained by submitting *manually* to the top 10 engines. This way you can accommodate each one's quirks and foibles.

Some engines, for instance, will only allow you a certain amount of characters when listing your site description and/or key words. If you had gone over this limit using an autosubmitter, your site would have
been rejected out of hand. Even worse, you would not know it had been rejected and may wait in frustration for your listing to appear. Worse still, you might not feel comfortable resubmitting your site as some
search engines consider multiple applications to be 'spam' which may
lead to your site being permanently rejected from that engine's database. Manual submission is time consuming but definitely worth it.

2. Submit site to Directories
These are different to search engines in that they have their own categories within which enquirers can find a listing of the sites that interest them without necessarily using a search button. In my view,
this is the way Joe public will look for his information in the future and, in my opinion, directories will soon outstrip engines in terms of usage. Pay attention to getting your site listed on as many directories as possible, especially the Open Directory Project http://www.dmoz.org
as their database is used by many of the top search engines and directories.

3. Web Rings
These are associations of web sites with similar focus. If you join one, you will get a web ring logo at the bottom of your site which will allow your visitor to move on to browse all other sites within the ring.
Similarly, this will allow visitors to other sites within the ring to find your site and increase your traffic. Some of these rings are huge and others quite tiny. It depends on what sphere you are operating in
but, either way, it is another good way to gain additional traffic for your site.

4. E-mail discussion lists
I started one for people interested in starting their own web business (which is what my company does) and which can be joined from my site. This is rigorously kept spam free by me (anyone posting ads to it is
ejected without trial) and allows venture capitalists, angels, incubators and entrepreneurs to find each other and discuss common experiences and solutions. Sig files are allowed on my list and I have had good hits from my own, especially as the members of the list are, by definition, my target audience. (Sig files are signatures that your emailer can automatically add to the bottom of any email you send - this
normally consists of your name, business name, one line description of product and website address but can be any size you want.)

5. Word of mouth
I have told everybody I know what I am doing and there are an enormous number of redundancies occurring in my former industry (and everybody else's). These are all bright people with pockets full of money. They look at my site and like what they see - they tell their friends.

Don't feel shy about spreading the word, after all you have something good to offer, right? Lose no opportunity to let others know about it. Take your business cards everywhere and give one to everyone you meet.
Leave them everywhere you go - even in the cloakrooms at sports games or bars. Drop some on the counter in public libraries (with permission of course).

6. The press
I refuse to pay for unfocused advertising which nobody looks at, even in
specialist magazines. My advice would be to call the editors up and tell them that you are doing something that nobody else is doing (in their field) and that you have included a free link to their publication
as an information service on your site. Would they be interested in doing a small write-up of your site for their next issue? If you can get them to do this, you will get much better traffic generated than a
standard advert and for free! They won't always do this for you but hey,
nothing ventured, nothing gained.

7. Reciprocal links
I offer a lot of links to other sites on my own pages and I have called them all personally to ask if they would include a link back to me.
Normally webmasters are quite good at this and will try and accommodate you. This is especially advantageous if the site you link to has high traffic. Information sources are amongst the best of these - find a
high traffic site that covers your area of commerce and link to it/get reciprocal links.

8. Banners
My experience says forget it - when's the last time you clicked on one.

9. Be Discrete
I belong to lots of e-mail lists and, occasionally, someone asks for help on a topic that I think my website would be useful for. I don't send a whole sales pitch in to those lists but send in a very low key reply addressing their specific question and mentioning my URL as an
additional resource. This has paid dividends and has not upset any of
the list members.

10. Write an article for an opt-in list or bulleting board such as this one! All publicity is good publicity and if you can help others by sharing your knowledge
with them at the same time, all the better.

Happy marketing!

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Byron Hunte
Insurance and Resources for eCommerce Startups
http://www.sprant.com

2040

Thats some first post!

Bard

3. Web Rings
(etc.)

I don't agree that Web Rings are a particularly good/useful idea - there's a certain degree of tackiness to them that they just won't ever shake.

8. Banners
My experience says forget it - when's the last time you clicked on one.

Um... yesterday, actually.

I clicked on a banner ad on a search engine. Of course, banner ads on search engines are now cleverly placed and generated and usually, as was the case yesterday, relevant to the search which has been performed, so this was akin to just choosing one of the links on the list of search results...

On the side- that was an excellent, very helpful and informative first post,- may there be many more to come!

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Bard

home page

LoLth

wow,

Sprant continues to post that much and I would *hate* to see HD of Cl-archive every post for future remembering-oud's computer!!!

good post though. Well handy.

bfg

Most of the Web is untrawled by the search engines. After all, the Web stretches beyond 800m pages; it's just too big to crawl.

It's also filled with a lot of dross.

If you want to stand out among the masses, get inward-pointing links to well-written material, register with the majors, and track your progress. You gotta know that some listing databases go wobbly and you can get chucked out of the search engine when that occurs. This has happened to me in the American AltaVista and in the Australian HotBot in 1999.

Search engines differ from search directories. Many paying customers come from directories, if only because they encounter fewer extraneous bits of info when trying to find what they want. Most of the visitors I get from AOL, MSN and Yahoo are using directory approaches to find their way.

Writing for high placement in search engines (key phrase: search engine optimization) is part of the art of copywriting. Translating those well-written pages into hordes of people who find you on the Web will require you to extend your reach beyond the screenscape--into print and traditional advertising.