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Search Engine Submission Hints
May 31, 2002
Michelle L. Collie - Expiry Corporation Staff Writer

Approximately 3 million U.S. businesses have a web presence online - - be it a one page site containing their contact information or a multi-page fully functional e-commerce website. As more and more businesses and individuals continue to create, expand, and enhance their online presence it becomes increasingly more difficult to be found in a Search Engine.

While existing customers may find you easily enough by typing your domain name in the Address box of their Internet browser, your website will garner much more traffic if you are situated well in the search engines.

Mystery shrouds the search engines. How do they work? How do you get listed high? What can you do to ensure people will click on your listing instead of someone else’s?

The process of fully optimizing your website for search engines becomes painstaking, especially since all the major search engines use different methods of achieving their results.

There are four basic things you need to do to begin achieving results.

1) Choose keywords and phrases that you think your potential customers or web visitors would use in a search engine to find a website with the services/products you offer.

You have to be one-step ahead of your customer! Brainstorm all the different words or phrases that a person could possible use to find your type of business/service or website online. When coming up with keywords, it is important to be specific. If you are a landscaper in Tacoma, WA, choosing “landscaping” as a keyword may be too general. A search on Google using the word “landscaping” brings up about 1,260,000 results – chances are, your site will be listed nowhere near the top.

However, if you use keywords and phrases such as “Tacoma Landscapers”, “Landscaping in Tacoma”, “Tacoma Gardening”, “Washington Landscapers”, etc. you will have a better chance of being found through the search engines.

2) Maximize your website content to utilize these keywords and phrases

Your site must be about the keywords that you choose! The search engines visit the websites and then rank them according to their relevancy to the keywords, among other things.

The words on your website will help your search engine listings. Try to avoid starting your site with sentences such as “welcome to our website” or “thanks for visiting our home online”; instead incorporate your keywords into your content. Using the example above, a good opening sentence would be, “For all your landscaping and gardening needs, Andy’s Landscaping is your Tacoma Landscape specialists. Top soil, sod, flowers, shrubs, landscape design, rock walls, etc. are our specialties.”

3) Build Link Popularity
One of the most important things you can do to help your site in the search engines is to build link popularity. Link popularity is a measure of the number of other web sites that contain links to your web site. However, it is crucial that they be links from high quality sites that have content that is related to your product or service. For example if you sell cameras, look for links from sites that offer film development or tips on photography. This will do far more good than submitting to "free for all" link sites, which contain long lists of links from unrelated sites and no valuable or informative content.

4) Manually submit your website to search engines

There are many places that will offer free-cheap mass submissions to search engines. But, in the case of getting ranked high, the old adage rings true – “You get what you pay for!” Some search engines ‘ignore’ mass submissions, while others rank sites submitted this way lower.

It is wise to choose the search engines you want to be listed in (Google, MSN, Yahoo, Lycos, etc.) and do a manual submission to their listings.

Just DON’T OVERSUBMIT. Search engines are very busy and receive thousands of submissions per day. If they recognize that the same site is continuously trying to submit they may remove your listing completely. Submit your site ONCE to the sites you want to be listed in and leave it for up to 4-6 weeks. After about 1-2 months, check the sites you submitted to and ONLY if you are still not listed under your chosen keywords, should you submit again.

Major Internet directories are also very important. Some are paid and some are free, but all act as a source of information for search engines and web surfers alike. Directory submissions, because they can highly affect your search engine listings and website traffic, should be done very carefully. Be sure your descriptions and keywords are well constructed to ensure the best results!

For more information on Search Engines or To Learn about our Search Engine Services, please contact Expiry Corporation (searchengines@expiry.com or visit http://www.expiry.com/sub/search-engines).

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