Getting Listed on the Search Engines

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If your web site is making too much money this article isn't for
you.

If your web site has too many visitors this article isn't for
you.

If however you are like most webmasters and small business owners
trying to become profitable or boost sales the Search Engines can
still be the answer you need!

================
Why Get Listed?
================

I will occasionally have people argue with me that search engine
traffic is drying up or that it isn't that effective.

This article isn't being written to argue the benefits of the
search engines, the facts are many web sites generate large
portions of their revenue from search engine traffic which is
still to a certain degree free or available for a one time
payment.

The ROI (Return on Investment) on that should be fairly simple to
calculate yet too many people want to listen to the doomsayers.

When discussing the search engines we need to avoid generalizing
as some industries will benefit more than others.

An example of that can be shown by looking at popular Pay Per
Click Search Engine GoTo. (Soon to be called Overture).

Searching on "golf clubs" (78884 searches /month) versus "fishing
rods" (6529 searches /month) show that depending on the industry
the amount of volume you can expect from the search engines does
vary.

You need to do the proper research first but no matter your
industry extra traffic is always a bonus if you are serious about
making money online!

===================
Where To Get Listed?
===================

Forget paying $99 to get your web site submitted to 4000 search
engines!

No-one uses this many, almost all your traffic will come from the
major search properties: Yahoo, Google, AOL Search, MSN Search,
GoTo, Excite, Lycos and AltaVista.

==================
How To Get Listed?
==================

This varies from search engine to search engine. Full details can
be found to subscribers at Marketing Insiders but I'll
cover the major ones here:

Yahoo:
The largest and most important online directory costs $299 to
guarantee a review in 7 business days. This is a one time fee
that in most cases pays for itself if you carefully optimize the
submission for keywords.
In some cases you can try submitting to regional Yahoos to try to
get in for free but this is becoming harder and harder and the
delay is usually quite lengthy if you do get accepted.
Secondary results are provided by Google so a free Google listing
certainly helps.

Google:
Rapidly becoming the largest spider search engine due to the
relevance and cleanliness of their results.
You can submit your link for free on their site, you only need to
submit one page as their spider GoogleBot will index your entire
site.
An important note is that before they will list your site they
need to find at least one other site that links to your site.
This is a way they rank the quality of a site and explains why
many sites can't get listed.

AOL Search:
The Sponsored Listings come from the top three paid listing at
GoTo, and the rest of the results are a mix of Open Directory
listings and Inktomi listings.
The Open Directory is a directory like Yahoo where you can find
the appropriate category and get listed for free.
Inktomi is a search company that spiders the Internet and sell
their results to portals like AOL and MSN.
You can submit for free through sites like Hotbot but your site
will be penalized or you can pay $30 through an Inktomi partner
to have them spider your site and re-index it every 48 hours.

MSN Search
Listings come from a mix of the Looksmart directory and Inktomi
results.
A listing in Looksmart costs $299 like Yahoo.

Other Engines:
AltaVista, Excite and Lycos all offer a free submit. AltaVista
have added an Express submit that speeds up the process and
promises weekly re-indexing.

Most details on the SE relationships can be found at an earlier
article in cased you missed it:

Spend some time getting the facts, this is too valuable a source
of traffic and revenue for you to give up on it!

Happy Marketing!

Questions?
Send me an email: mike@surf22.com

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