Should I submit my site to search engines and directories? Should I submit manually or automatically using a software?

The truth is search engines hate automatic submissions. They get millions of attempted automatic submissions each day and, as a result, go to great lengths to try to stop them – such as requiring passwords and/or fill-in details before the submission is accepted.

As for directories, automatic submission software has been banned by many because it cannot always place links in relevant categories. In addition, whether you hire a directory submitter or use submission software yourself, you are essentially setting your site up for failure.

Getting too many incoming links too quickly or submitting the same site to the major engines repeatedly can be seen by search engines as spamming and get your site banned entirely.

Submitting your site manually gives you control over where it will be listed. Automatic submitters may list your site with an engine you have never heard of in a country you have never even visited or even worse, they could be associating your site with sites that you find objectionable, such as those that contain pornography. When you submit your own site, you decide what category it will be listed under.

You don’t want your site to end up in the general directory or the miscellaneous category where it may never again be seen by human eyes.

Every site should be marketed differently and submitted to different engines and directories depending on its intended audience. Automatic submission does not give you the option to do this.

Finally, manual submission is the only way to choose the descriptions and keywords that you think will be most effective in the promotion of your site, as most engines and directories allow you to choose your own.

Common Myths About Search Engine Submission

1. Search engine submission requires a lot of research.

Almost every search engine and directory has a link labeled “Add a site” or “Submit URL” which will take you directly to their submission form. All you have to do is follow their rules and enter your information carefully.

2. Your website should be listed in all search engines.

If you list your website with the top tier search engines, it will find its own way into the second tier and beyond. In fact, you don’t even have to submit your website at all for it to be listed, search engine spider’s are constantly combing the web and will eventually find your site on their own if your site contains links to other sites.

3. Your website should be submitted on a weekly or monthly basis.

Actually, continually submitting your site can be classified as spamming and result in your site’s banishment from a search engine’s database. As a general rule, do not resubmit a new version of a page unless you have an unfavorable ranking.

4. Good submission is costly.

The truth is you don’t have to pay a submission service to submit your site to the search engines. In fact, submission to most major search engines is free.

What You Should Know About Search Engine Submission Services

Be particularly careful of companies that guarantee search engine positioning. These claims usually take one of three forms:

1. A guarantee of top rankings coupled with a promise to keep working on achieving top rankings until that goal is accomplished. These companies are only interested in your initial payment and have no intention of continuing to do anything.

2. Promises of first page listings on Google and/or Yahoo. These companies do not make it clear that they are referring to “sponsored results” and NOT “natural listings.” They will charge you a set monthly fee and only spend a tiny portion of it generating traffic to your site from sponsored listings.

3. “Money Back Guarantee” that a certain percentage of your keywords will receive top rankings on the “major” search engines. Their list of “major” search engines includes several small and/or outdated engines that are very easy to achieve top rankings in. Only the search engines themselves can guarantee top listings and ethically they can only do this through sponsored listings.

1. Potential site design problems

• Search engines do a poor job of indexing frames and your site is better off without them.
• Most search engines cannot or will not list dynamic URLs that contain any of the following: ?, &, %, +, =, cgi-bin, or .cgi.
• Search engines cannot index splash pages that are made mostly or entirely from Flash. Hyperlinks made with Flash cannot be spidered by the search engines. So, unless you add standard HTML hyperlinks, none of your pages will be spidered.
• Sites that use Image Maps for navigation run the risk of not being accessible to search engines because the web crawler often gets trapped in the code that makes up the Image Map.
• Search engines also cannot follow links found in Javascript.
• Any of the previous three indexing problems can be addressed by creating a site map page using standard HTML links that link to every page and adding a standard HTML link on each page that links back to the site map.

2. Keyword optimization

• To get listed correctly on search engines, each page of your site needs to be optimized. Since keywords are essential to this process, choosing the right ones is crucial.
• Try to think about specific phrases instead of just words. Competition on the internet for general terms makes it extremely unlikely that a site that relies on words or phrases that are too general to rank well in search engines.
• Put yourself in the consumer’s shoes. Think about what they would search for if they were looking to purchase your products or services. Ask friends and family members what they would search for if they were looking for a site like yours.
• Check out the competition. Do a search using keywords that you already know you want to utilize and click through to the top sites that come up. View their source HTML code and see what keywords they used in their meta tags.

3. Choosing your title tag

• Search engines and directories place a lot of importance on the keywords that are found in your title tag.
• Your title tag is what most search engines will use for your title on their search results page. Make it interesting!
• Title tags should be between 50 and 80 characters long – including spaces.
• You should include one or two of your most important keyword phrases in your title tag but it should remain as close as possible to a readable sentence.
• Place keywords at the beginning of your title tag in case it is too long for some engines. If it must be shortened, you won’t lose the most important parts.
• Every page on your site should have its own title tag with its own keywords that are related to the content on that specific page.

4. Utilizing your page copy (the actual text a visitor will read)

• Each page should contain at least 200 words if possible.
• The text on each page should contain keyword phrases but remain logical and readable.
• Use the keyword phrases that you have used in your title tags and meta tags.
• Add additional text pages to your site in the form of how-to-articles, tips, or tutorials. This will help you obtain better rankings through the use of keywords and the addition of links as other sites will want to link to useful information.

5. Using meta tags to your advantage

• Meta tags were originally created to enhance search engines ability to investigate websites by giving them information that they otherwise might have had trouble determining.
• Most people still believe that meta tags are the be all and end all of search engine optimization. However, increasing competition for high search engine rankings led to many people stuffing their meta tags with keywords in order to spam the search engines. As a result, meta tags are no longer awarded as much importance.
• There are two types of meta tags that can help you in your endeavor to improve your ranking: meta keywords and meta description.
• Your meta keywords should not exceed 1024 characters and should only include keyword phrases that you used in the copy of your page, title tags, meta description or other tags. Be careful not to use any one word more than 5 times. Be sure to include specific geographic locations, if appropriate to your site.
• Your description meta should not exceed 250 characters. Its job is to accurately describe content while trying to attract visitors to your site. The description meta should include 3 to 4 of your most important keyword phrases with the most important at the beginning.

6. Your images “alt” attribute

• Any image on your page can help your page’s ranking if they include an “alt” attribute.
• An “alt” attribute can be added to any image on your page and will show up to help those who may have images turned off in their web browser.
• This attribute should be used to describe the image and not just to use the opportunity to make a list of keywords. Limit yourself to 2 to 3 keywords per image.
• An “alt” attribute is a good place to use common misspellings for your keywords or plurals that you may not have used elsewhere. This will enable you to capture those users who search for these terms as well.

You should never do anything in your optimization that could lead the search engines to believe that you are trying to trick them into giving your site a higher ranking.

This is considered spamming and you will be penalized, perhaps by the removal of your site from the search engine’s database. These tricks include but are not limited to:

1. Listing keyword in places other than your meta tag. There are very few legitimate reasons for a list of keywords to appear in the text of a page or within the HTML code of your site.
2. Using the same color text as your page’s background color.
3. Using the same tag more than once, such as the inclusion of multiple title tags.
4. Submitting identical pages. Never duplicate a page and submit it without giving the copies different file names.
5. Submitting the same page to any one engine more than once within 24 hours.
6. Using keywords in your keywords meta tag that do not directly relate to your page content.
7. Submitting your URL more than once a month.

Webmasters began optimizing their sites for search engines in the mid-1990s. Site owners realized the importance of having their sites appear at the top of search engine results in order to ensure traffic to their sites. Most web users will not scroll down through pages of results but will visit those sites that appear at the top of the first page of results.

At first, search engines relied only on factors that were within the webmaster’s control and, as a result, they became victims of abuse and manipulation. Webmasters were guilty of including irrelevant keywords on their sites to increase the number of visits to their websites and thereby increase their ad revenue.

Webmasters also manipulated the HTML source of a page to try to improve their rankings in search engine results. In addition, inaccurate, incomplete and inconsistent data, whether purposefully included or not, led to pages ranking for irrelevant searches and failing to rank for relevant searches.

Search engines, not wanting to be held hostage to a webmaster’s ulterior motives, developed more complex ranking algorithms. They based these algorithms that were more difficult for webmasters to manipulate.

Today’s search engines use hundreds of factor to rank websites on their search results pages. The factors themselves and the weight each factor carries can change continually. The top four search engines, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Ask.com, carefully guard the algorithms they use and these algorithms can vary widely.

Search Engine Optimization Techniques

SEO is about understanding how these algorithms work and what web users are likely to search for when looking for information on a specific topic on the web. The goal is to match those users with sites that offer what they are interested in finding.

Search engine optimization may involve making changes that are noticeable to visitors or just working with the HTML code behind the scenes to optimize presentation and structure. Noticeable changes could include the use of unique content on pages or attention-grabbing titles that are easily picked out by search engines and attractive to human visitors as well.

Less noticeable changes to the everyday visitor are incorporating a definite hierarchical structure to a site or choosing a domain and URL that are more likely to improve a site’s ranking.

Search engine optimization techniques are classified into two categories: those that search engines recommend as part of good design and those that search engines find unacceptable.

The latter is referred to as “spamming” or “spamdexing.” Most reputable SEO consultants do not offer spamdexing techniques, as they can result in the banning of a site from a search engine.

There is an obvious potential for an adversarial relationship between search engines and SEOs. All of the major search engines do provide information and guidelines to aid webmasters in site optimization.

As of 2007, the top search engines do not require webmaster to submit their sites for inclusion in search results. They use technology which discovers new sites and pages automatically.

Search engines look at a number of different factors when it investigates new sites and pages may not be indexed until they gain more traffic or include more links. However, some search engines do operate a paid submission service that will guarantee inclusion but not ranking.

Do Not Depend Solely On Search Engine Optimization

A successful internet marketing campaign cannot rely solely on search engine optimization. The focus of the campaign should be not necessarily to rank the highest for certain terms in search engines but to achieve your business objectives for your website.

In order to meet these goals, you may use a combination of SEO and paid advertising on search engines. In addition, you will have to build high quality web pages that meet your target audience’s needs, address any technical issues that may keep search engines from indexing your site and set up programs to measure the success of your marketing campaign.

Algorithms used by search engines can and will change and even if you are lucky enough to achieve a high ranking today that is not a guarantee of success. Your site must be prepared to handle the increased traffic.

If it is not, your visitors will be dissatisfied with the information available and the desired conversions will not occur. In addition, your visitors will not return to your site and may keep others from doing so via word of mouth.

How To Choose A Good Search Engine Optimizer For Your Business

As mentioned previously, most of the major search engines provide information regarding search engine optimization on their websites.

The following are tips from Google that will help you determine the difference between search engine optimizers that will be an asset to your business and those that will only increase your chances of being banned from search engine results.

• Be wary of SEO firms that send email out of the blue.
• No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google. (There is no such thing as a company with a “special relationship” with Google or one that claims it will use “priority submission”.)
• Be careful if a company is secretive or won’t clearly explain what they intend to do.
• You should never have to link to an SEO company’s site.
• Some SEO firms may try to sell you the ability to type keywords directly into the browser address bar. (This requires extra software.)
• Choose wisely. (Find out how long an SEO has been in business, how many employees they have and if they religiously report spam abuse.)
• Be sure to understand where the money goes. (Are you paying for permanent inclusion or temporary advertising?)
• Talk to many SEO firms and ask other SEO firms if they’d recommend the firm you’re considering.
• Make sure you’re protected legally. (Insist on a full and unconditional money-back guarantee and don’t be afraid to request a refund if you’re unsatisfied for any reason or if your SEO firm’s actions cause your domain to be removed from a search engine’s index. Make sure you have a contract in writing that includes pricing and requires the SEO firm to stay within the guidelines recommended by each search engine for site inclusion.)

A search engine is an information retrieval system which is designed to find information stored on any kind of computer system, whether it be an office network or the World Wide Web.

A search engine allows the user to ask for desired information by specifying a word or phrase and retrieves a list of all items in its database that contain the specific word or phrase. Usually, the results list is arranged with respect to relevancy to the original search. Search engines regularly update their databases and retrieve desired information quickly and efficiently.

Without any further qualification, the term search engine usually refers to an internet search engine. These search engines store information about large numbers of web pages which they retrieve from the internet themselves.

An automated web crawler or spider is used to follow every link it sees and then analyze the contents of each webpage. The spider then determines how the page should be listed in its database for future retrieval.

When a user is researching a topic on the Web, he enters keywords into the search engine, the search engine looks them up in its database and then provides the user with a list of best-matching web pages, according to the criteria it uses to determine relevancy.

Google and most other search engines take into account over 150 factors to determine relevancy. One of these factors is PageRank, an algorithm based on citation analysis developed in the 1950’s by Eugene Garfield at the University of Pennsylvania. PageRank “remembers” where it has been and uses the number of cross-links between pages to create virtual communities of web pages.

Search engine results pages (SERPs) usually contain a short summary of each page found, including its title and parts of the text. Most search engines today allow Boolean Searches, in which the terms AND, OR and NOT are used to further narrow down a topic.

Another advanced feature available on most search engines is proximity search, which allows the user to specify the distance between the keywords that the user has listed.

Search engines face many challenges in today’s ever-changing society. The Web is growing too fast for search engines based on today’s technology to be able to keep up with it. Web pages are frequently changing or updating their content which forces search engines to revisit them.

Searching via keywords can result in false positives, as these words can show up in documents totally unrelated to the desired topic. Sometimes a search engine just cannot find what the user is looking for based on relevancy.

Some search engines rank based not on relevancy but on the amount of money they are paid by the website owner. Website owners can take advantage of the search engines and manipulate them into displaying their pages in higher results.

Secure pages pose another problem. Search engines cannot browse them for technical reasons or will not list them for privacy reasons.

Most search engines make their money from advertising revenue and some, in order to increase revenue, will allow advertisers to pay to have their site ranked higher in search results.

These search engines often do not make it clear to the user that this has happened. The more ethical search engines display advertisements or sponsored results in an area that is obviously separate from that of the algorithmically determined results.

Every time a user clicks on one of these ads or sponsored results the search engine makes money. The majority of search engines are run by private companies that use their own specific algorithms to return results from closed databases.

Most Popular Search Engines

According to Seoconsultants.com, the most widely used search engines are as follows:

1. Google
2. Yahoo! Search
3. MSN Search
4. AltaVista
5. AOL NetFind
6. Ask
7. Fast
8. Gigablast
9. Netscape Search
10. Snap.com
11. Wisenut
12. Industrial Search Engines

The first three are considered to be the first-tier search engines. The remaining engines are an alphabetical listing of what are considered to be second-tier search engines.