Web Site Promotion

"Promoting Your Site Using Search Engines and Links "

First off, a Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) in the newsgroups and newsletters I read is whether doing it yourself or using multi-submit service is the best way to list a site. Judging by my personal experience and what I have read, the submission services pale in comparison to doing it yourself. I have used one of the services a few times and the best rate of success that they achieved was about an 80% success rate of getting the site listed. After using the service I was able to get the site listed on my own within the time that the search engine said it would take. One thing to remember about the services is that they use generic questions to do the multi-submit and this causes problems at some of the directories which use categories (notably Yahoo!).

Some FAQ's About Search Engines Placement From the Lists I Watch

Another FAQ is about the pay services. Once again you come across the same problems as with the free multi-submit services. I have never used one but that is basically because they use technology and I don't believe the results can beat what I can do by hand myself. Some offer what they lead you to believe is a hand submitted service but I am skeptical of these because the fees seem too low to do a good job! Before you use one of these services be sure to check out the article in the reference table by Mitchel Hayden and Jim Wilson. He is in the business and gives some pointers on how to check to make sure that they do what they say. The tutorial by Mr. Hayden is located on the Virtual Promote site where Jim Wilson is rating some of the pay services as well. There weren't many possibly because these companies don't want their services scrutinized too closely. This isn't a fact just an assumption on my part!!!

The last FAQ is which are the best engines, directories and pages to submit a listing to. Easy answer is, all that you can fit in the time allocated for this. To start though I would suggest that you rank these by importance. How do I do that you say? Subscribe to the newsletter by Danny Sullivan! He sends out periodic updates about what is going on in this field. His most recent letter had several clues if you think about how and where people access the engines. Very few people have what you would call a preferred search engine or one that they can access quickly. So the most commonly used method is to click the internet search button in their browser. This makes the search page at Netscape's' home site the most important. Why's that? Simple, about 75% of the netizens are using Netscape products. Using this model MSIE would be next in importance with about 20% so knowing what is going on at these two locations is evidence of what 95% of the users are accessing search wise.

Strategies for Site Promotion and Search Engine Placement

In the latest newsletter Danny has passed on some valuable information about changes to the netscape search page. Netscape recently changed the page drastically changing the method by which a search engine is accessed. Currently the search engines are rotated and appear as default search engines. Starting in May, the Premier Providers will be Excite, Infoseek, Lycos and Yahoo! and the fifth spot will be occupied by a choice of several Marquee Engines. One of the most significant changes will be the ability to choose a default of your choice. In a sense you choose the default! This will make information in regards to the traffic to the various search sites very important for the promotion of sites. Personally, I believe the traffic to Yahoo will benefit from this as many people prefer Yahoo but just use whatever comes up without really thinking about it.

MSIE gives you a choice of several of the most popular however I think this will change because The Open Text engine was recently purchased by one of the other majors and is currently not excepting URLs. It has missed a few of the announced re-launch dates and may be just folded into the one that purchased it . You choose the engine here so any traffic reports you see for this site will give you a clue as to how things may change at the Netscape page. Yahoo!, Alta Vista (the engine used by Yahoo for a net search rather than a category search of Yahoo!), Lycos, Excite, Megellan and Infoseek are the engines to choose from here. There are also listings for the Electric Library and a Microsoft selection but I don't know much about these if you do I would appreciate an e-mail from you with any info you can supply. To end this part of the discussion Excite was recently adopted as the search engine for Netfind the search page for AOL users. When you list with Excite you will be included on this page as well so skip Netfind!

Judging by what we have learned so far the engines to concentrate on for your weekly visits are Yahoo!, Alta Vista, Excite, Lycos and Infoseek there are more but we'll start with these. When you go to these sites keep in mind that Yahoo! can't be Manipulated for a higher ranking in the category search however, it can be Manipulated for a net search by Manipulating your ranking in Alta Vista. Excite is very tough to manipulate because it penalizes "spam" so use the techniques on the tips page.

So lets quickly review what I have discussed so far before we move on!

1. Have a plan and STICK TO IT!!!!
2. Be sure your document is ready to be viewed and indexed.
3. Prioritize your submission list and concentrate on maintaining and
   upgrading your ranking on the search engines where this is possible.
4. Do it yourself and you'll improve as you go.
5. Link to sites with common or related information and try to get a reciprocal link.
6. List with the free for all link pages, this may be where you can use some of the
   multi submit pages on the site promotion reference page.

So far, I've kind of laid out a search engine and site promotion game plan and it is now time to run the plays that move you towards the goal line for the major score! I am implementing this plan at this time and there will be follow up articles to let you know how I'm doing and what works best!

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