6. Submitting To the Big Indexes
Maximizing your SEO just doesn’t have to do with search engines. It also means submitting your material to the big indexes. The big players are indexes such as Yahoo, Open Directory and About.com.
The problem with applying to these indexes is that they don’t just take anybody. Applying to be listed in them is a bit of a pain because they can be so fussy. Still despite their labor-intensive applications, proper submission to these indexes is crucial because there is a pronounced trend towards using “human-edited” indexes in search results.
One of the most important indexes that you can submit to is the Open Directory Index that is edited by humans. This is because many of the major search engines are starting to use Open Directory index listings in their search results, making it the second most important place to list your site, right behind Yahoo’s directory. In fact if you are listed in Open Directory you are also likely to have a better search engine ranking on Google so it is worth it to take the time to do their hand submissions.
Another thing to consider is that the ranking of your site depends on how many other pages link to yours, and how essential the search engine thinks these links are. That means that a secondary benefit of getting a link on major indexes is that it can improve your ranking on some search engines. For example, getting your site listed in Yahoo! and Open Directory can seriously boost your page rank on Google.
Before you go to submit to one of the major indexes, please take the time to find and read their submission guidelines, advice and limitations/
Here’s how to optimize your search engine listings for all the big indexes:
Yahoo
There are a couple of types of listings on Yahoo and it can get confusing. The big splurge is the $300 a year directory listing. However don’t get too excited. Despite the high price it can still take a couple of months for you to get listed or at their discretion – not listed at all!
There are three types of Yahoo; the main (original) Yahoo; the international Yahoo sites; and the regional (city) Yahoo sites. The original site is by far the toughest to get into, so if your site is in, or relates to, a country or region served by one of the other Yahoo indexes, you should first try to get listed in them first. Once you are accepted by one Yahoo index usually it is infectious and you eventually end up being listed in all three.
Whatever you do don’t try to sneak multiple listing into Yahoo. If they catch you trying to make a free application into a category that should be paid for Yahoo will ban your site!
If you wish a listing in the Shopping & Services or Business to Business sections (either main or regional) of Yahoo, you now must use Yahoo’s “Business Express” submission option. You pay $299 ($600 for adult sites) and get a quick yes or no to your application. Once you are accepted keep in mind that you have to come up with the same amount of money every year to remain in the directory. Also to make this more expensive, paying money does not guarantee a listing! That is why it is so important that you craft a good submission.
Note that you can still submit non-commercial sites to Yahoo for free as long as you don’t submit them to the Business to their Business or Shopping & Services sections of Yahoo! However when it comes to Yahoo you get what you pay for – there is no guarantee that your site will appear on the engine correctly!
You can also use Yahoo Business Express to submit non-commercial sites, Business Express buys you is a faster decision from Yahoo. However if a free submission is properly submitted according to Yahoo’s guidelines, you should get in anyway (if you want to wait six months!)
In addition, Yahoo also offers Sponsored Listings for between $25 to $300 a month, depending on the listing category. Sponsored listings are rotated randomly at the top of category pages of their search engines. In order to get a sponsored listing, you must first get a listing in Yahoo, then you can apply for a sponsored listing in the category your listing is in. You can’t use this function to change your listing title or description, by the way; it just helps to improve your ranking
To apply for a sponsored listing visit the Yahoo category page that contains your listing and click on the “what is a sponsored listing?” link.
Also, don’t consider submitting to fussy old Yahoo if your site is not 100% functional. That “under construction.” Page is death on a platter when it comes to submitting to Yahoo. A site with a clean basic design and lots of good content (is more likely to get listed on than a site full of bells and whistles.)
Whatever you do, do NOT bombard Yahoo with submissions. If you apply more than once a month, they’ll take this “cry for help” as their big cue to ignore you. Another good way to get snubbed by Yahoo is to submit a site to a regional index that has nothing to do with that region, or isn’t really a regionally limited site.
How to Apply to Yahoo
Assuming you are not already listed in the index your first step is to find the category page that best suits your site. At the very bottom of this category page will be a small “Suggest a Site” link. Click on it to get to the site submission page. If there is no “Suggest a Site” link, then the page you are on does not allow listings to be added to it, most likely because it is a very general top-level page. Keep searching until you find your right niche category!
When searching for your niche category try to find one that reduces your chances of being buried alive by other site listings. This usually means choosing a very specific category.
You must follow Yahoo’s instructions to the letter. They will ask you to be factual and not use promotional. This might seem crazy, especially in a business that seems to be all about promoting yourself but Yahoo will frown on any title and description that reads like promotional ad copy. What Yahoo wants is a descriptive title and description without any hype (and this includes phrases such as “the best”, “supreme” or “the #1” as adjectives for describing your business.
Also you improve your chances of acceptance if you can keep your meta tag description to about 15-20 words. You might as well edit it down now before Yahoo does it for you!
As Yahoo lists its sites alphabetically, it might also benefit you to choose a name that is among the first five or six letters in the alphabet. If you can come up with a suitable title for your site that starts with A, B or C then use it. For instance, “buy a house” is a better title than “real estate agent” because it starts with a b and the word real will have you listed at the bottom of the page
The Open Directory Project
The Open Directory Project, is an “Open Source” directory much like Yahoo, but is edited by volunteers. The big risk here? As they are volunteers you don’t know what their agendas are or if the editor might reject your site simply because his or her business competes with yours.
As ODP is now the directory-listing source for many search engines (in particular, Google), it’s a must-have listing! A listing in ODP boosts your Google page rank almost as much as a Yahoo listing does! Better yet, it is free!
In terms of SEO, the Open Directory Project is different than yahoo as it only performs WORD searches not KEY PHRASE searches. So much for your sophisticated keyword embedding techniques. So your description for OP should avoid pluralized words unless they are likely to be in search queries. On the plus side, Open Directory allows you longer descriptions than on Yahoo, but the category editor (who is very human in this case) may decide to trim your promotional language3.
Like Yahoo, Open Directory asks that you only submit your homepage URL, to the most appropriate category.
How to Apply to the Open Directory Project
Go to the Directory. Type a simple query that is likely to be used by someone searching for the contents of the page you are submitting. For example, if your site sells designer dog collars try searches like “fashions for dogs” or “rhinestone dog collar.” Find the category that is most appropriate for your site and then click on submit a site at the bottom of the page. This should bring up the submission form.
The “official” waiting period for Open Directory is 3-6 weeks. If you don’t get listed within a reasonable amount of time a polite email to your category editor might help nudge the process along and maybe even result in an email advising you on how to get selected.
About.com
About.com is a very comprehensive index that combines site listings with reviews and editorial content. An editor or guide runs each category, and they are the individuals that you have to appeal to in order for your site to be lists. The easiest way to get their attention is a direct email, as opposed to using the “Feedback” link on the pages.
Tips For Getting Into About.com
The guides at about.com are looking for what they call deep links. This may not necessarily be your homepage, but rather an article that you have written from an “expert” point of view.
Your best plan of attack is to:
• Pick an “about” category that suits your site.
• Submit an article that you have written on one of your domain pages.
• Offer a link back. Put a link to their site even before contacting them and said, “I find your site such a great resource that I’ve listed you in our links page.
As you can see becoming completely search engine optimized can be a great deal of work. Your success level might depend on the number of hours you are willing to put into writing search engine optimized words, titles and metatags and the amount of care that you are willing to put into the process of search engine submission. Why are you doing all this again? It is because getting listed in these directories can boost your rankings in Google and other search engine directories!
7. How To Be Ignored By The Search Engines
It is very easy to accidentally offend a search engine. Here is a compendium of the common mistakes that first time URL search engine submitters make. Committing any one of these SEO crimes that can get you booted from the system or just gets your listing ignored.
• Although it is important to have your most important key phrases entered more than once, it is possible to go overboard. Try too keep repeats of your key phrases to less than thirteen per submission or a search engine may consider you to be a spammer.
• Search engines don’t like affiliate sites with same or similar content (even with a different site design). This includes most “virtual” sites.
• Search engines also discard Mirror sites. Submitting mirror URLs to different categories is also considered spam. Multi-lingual sites are acceptable as long as the URL resolves to the appropriate language.
• Sites that use redirects to another site. Using frames to cloak a real URL, is also be considered spam under some circumstances, so avoid doing it unless you have no choice.
• Sites whose sole purpose is to drive traffic to affiliate links or sites that contain these types of links and no information or products of their own. This is why it can be so tough to be an affiliate or multi-level marketers.
• Sites without original content. The search engine can penalize you by submitting content that is plagiarized from another site.
• Sites that are repeatedly resubmitted (over 5 times) without being changed or ever accepted almost always end up as being shunned for good.
• Web pages that are built primarily for the search engines and not your target audience, especially machine-generated pages are particularly offensive to the search engines. Your URL could be ignored forever if the search engines suspect that you are trying to get an unfair advantage over others by using a shortcut.
• Pages that contain hidden text and hidden links that are too shameless about self-promotion.
• Pages that ramble on and on and say a lot about nothing while at the same time including nothing but a collection of keywords.
• Sites with numerous, unnecessary host names (i.e. worktools.com/wrench, worktools.com/screwdriver, worktools.com/ etc.).
• Excessively cross-linking to sites that have nothing to do with the content of the site – stick to specific keywords that relate to your customers.
8. Free Online Keyword Tools
Here are the best free keyword tools that you can use to find the keywords that can help you find the right phrases and words to supercharge your website with optimized content.
• http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion. This is an online keyword suggestion tool that reveals the results of your keyword search from both Overture and an independent keyword tracking consultant company called Wordtracker. It helps you find out how many times a keyword phrase is searched for and get suggestions for alternate words at the same time.
• http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/. This search suggestion online tool is offered up by Overture. Type in your word or phrase and find out how many times that particular word was searched for last month. It also lists any related searches that include your term.
• https://adwords.google.com/select/main? This online tool is a courtesy “think” gadget developed by Google AdWords. Type in your phrase and you’ll be shown a list of other possibilities. A slightly modified version of this tool is available at http://www.masteringadwords.com/resources/google_tool.asp
• http://www.espotting.com/popups/keywordgenbox.asp. This is a keyword generator that how many times your phrase has been searched for in the previous month.
If you’re interested in creating “niche sites” and want to see the top ten lists and top 50 lists that describe what people are interested in on the Internet check out these:
• Lycos 50 Daily Report: http://50.lycos.com/
• Kanoodle: http://kanoodle.com/spy/
• MetaCrawler: http://www.metacrawler.com/info.metac/searchspy
These keyword sites can help you decide what is hot, not only in terms of products but also in terms of creating an informational site.
Remember that you want to use the keywords that are used the most often by web users. The number of times a term is searched in a month is defined as keyword popularity. The reason you want to use the most popular keywords is to generate the most possible traffic to your web pages.
These tools can help you determine the potential popularity of your niche keywords. If your keywords are too general and your pages don’t have a high ranking in search engines, people typing in the more general keywords are NEVER going to find your pages. They will find the sites that have those general keywords in their URL.
9. Should You Hire An SEO Company?
There are thousands of companies on the Internet that will offer to do your SEO for your. There are also hundreds of ways that a site can be both ethically and unethically optimized by these companies.
You want to be very careful that you don’t hire an unethical firm to do your submission for you as their tactics might be so guerilla in nature that they might actually be illegal. Some of the tactics used by some companies are so unfair that some search engines have actual gone so far as to write articles that warn you of the possible consequences of using less than ethical methods to promote your website. Google in particular is very concerned about unfair or overly aggressive viral marketing practices and how you could be utilizing these in your web site without even knowing it because an SEO firm deployed the method for you.
One of the things that most search engines do at the point of their free manual submission is request that you type in a code before you can proceed. This forces you to manually submit each URL that you have one by one. This secure practice was added to many search engine sites after it was discovered that automated submission programs were skewing the accuracy of information displayed on search engine pages.
Most SEO companies offered optimization services. These include writing keyword-enhanced text, changing the design and layout of the site and the finding of relevant directories that the site can be submitted to.
Beware of thee aggressive marketing companies use SEO strategies that can get you ignored for life by all of the major search engines. These include such techniques as cloaking, creating doorway pages and keyword stuffing. If you are not sure about an SEO company that you have hired to optimize your website, make sure you query them about exactly what types of techniques they will use to optimize your site. If they can’t provide clear answers about this issue then you should probably not deal with them.
Obviously, before you sign any kind of terms of agreement you need to find out exactly what the search engine optimization company will do to you.
Here is a rundown of the types of service that you can expect an SEO firm to offer you. Some of these services can be obtained as a package deal but the best SEO companies will offer some of these services “a-la-carte” to better serve your needs.
Services typically offered by an SEO company are —
Changing the layout or design of your site
• Redoing the architecture of the site including site menus and navigation tools
• rewriting and editing all visible content on your pages so that it contains a healthy mix of targeted keywords
• inserting targeted keywords and commonly searched phrases into your HTML tags
• building an index of links — finding appropriate web sites and obtaining links from their site to yours
• submitting your site to search engines and guaranteeing that you will have a certain placement within a certain amount of time!
Another big consideration before you hire professional SEO survives is time. Keep in mind that some SEO companies take forever to do their job, sometimes as long as six weeks to six months! This can be a long hard waiting period, especially if you can’t wait to get your site up and launched. It is crucial for you to read the fine print of any agreement that you have with an SEO company to make sure that they do not have a leeway of years for completing your site. Make sure that you set a firm deadline with them and then insist that they give you a generous discount or complete refund if they don’t meet it the agreed upon date.
It is does not usually take a lot of time after your newly search engine optimized website is up and running to figure out whether or not the SEO company’s services have done anything to enhance your business. However keep in mind that you should see an immediate increase of traffic to your site if they are doing their job. You should experience this even if you don’t see your actual pages climb up in terms of rankings.
Most SEO companies will also provide you with some kind of tool or measure that can help you measure your success. As part of their SEO package of services many of them will also send you reports about how your web site is doing in terms of positioning, click-throughs and rankings.
Sometimes the profits that are to be seen from search engine optimization take a few months to kick in. For instance, at first it might not seem like that search engine optimization company did all that much for you but usually within a year most clients notice that they have experienced some type of boost in business such as in increase in additions to their mailing list, a rise in affiliate income, more membership conversion or even a doubling of their income!
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SOURCE : TOP SEO-Secrets Part III-2: Submitting Your Site to Search Engines
Maximizing your SEO just doesn’t have to do with search engines. It also means submitting your material to the big indexes. The big players are indexes such as Yahoo, Open Directory and About.com.
The problem with applying to these indexes is that they don’t just take anybody. Applying to be listed in them is a bit of a pain because they can be so fussy. Still despite their labor-intensive applications, proper submission to these indexes is crucial because there is a pronounced trend towards using “human-edited” indexes in search results.
One of the most important indexes that you can submit to is the Open Directory Index that is edited by humans. This is because many of the major search engines are starting to use Open Directory index listings in their search results, making it the second most important place to list your site, right behind Yahoo’s directory. In fact if you are listed in Open Directory you are also likely to have a better search engine ranking on Google so it is worth it to take the time to do their hand submissions.
Another thing to consider is that the ranking of your site depends on how many other pages link to yours, and how essential the search engine thinks these links are. That means that a secondary benefit of getting a link on major indexes is that it can improve your ranking on some search engines. For example, getting your site listed in Yahoo! and Open Directory can seriously boost your page rank on Google.
Before you go to submit to one of the major indexes, please take the time to find and read their submission guidelines, advice and limitations/
Here’s how to optimize your search engine listings for all the big indexes:
Yahoo
There are a couple of types of listings on Yahoo and it can get confusing. The big splurge is the $300 a year directory listing. However don’t get too excited. Despite the high price it can still take a couple of months for you to get listed or at their discretion – not listed at all!
There are three types of Yahoo; the main (original) Yahoo; the international Yahoo sites; and the regional (city) Yahoo sites. The original site is by far the toughest to get into, so if your site is in, or relates to, a country or region served by one of the other Yahoo indexes, you should first try to get listed in them first. Once you are accepted by one Yahoo index usually it is infectious and you eventually end up being listed in all three.
Whatever you do don’t try to sneak multiple listing into Yahoo. If they catch you trying to make a free application into a category that should be paid for Yahoo will ban your site!
If you wish a listing in the Shopping & Services or Business to Business sections (either main or regional) of Yahoo, you now must use Yahoo’s “Business Express” submission option. You pay $299 ($600 for adult sites) and get a quick yes or no to your application. Once you are accepted keep in mind that you have to come up with the same amount of money every year to remain in the directory. Also to make this more expensive, paying money does not guarantee a listing! That is why it is so important that you craft a good submission.
Note that you can still submit non-commercial sites to Yahoo for free as long as you don’t submit them to the Business to their Business or Shopping & Services sections of Yahoo! However when it comes to Yahoo you get what you pay for – there is no guarantee that your site will appear on the engine correctly!
You can also use Yahoo Business Express to submit non-commercial sites, Business Express buys you is a faster decision from Yahoo. However if a free submission is properly submitted according to Yahoo’s guidelines, you should get in anyway (if you want to wait six months!)
In addition, Yahoo also offers Sponsored Listings for between $25 to $300 a month, depending on the listing category. Sponsored listings are rotated randomly at the top of category pages of their search engines. In order to get a sponsored listing, you must first get a listing in Yahoo, then you can apply for a sponsored listing in the category your listing is in. You can’t use this function to change your listing title or description, by the way; it just helps to improve your ranking
To apply for a sponsored listing visit the Yahoo category page that contains your listing and click on the “what is a sponsored listing?” link.
Also, don’t consider submitting to fussy old Yahoo if your site is not 100% functional. That “under construction.” Page is death on a platter when it comes to submitting to Yahoo. A site with a clean basic design and lots of good content (is more likely to get listed on than a site full of bells and whistles.)
Whatever you do, do NOT bombard Yahoo with submissions. If you apply more than once a month, they’ll take this “cry for help” as their big cue to ignore you. Another good way to get snubbed by Yahoo is to submit a site to a regional index that has nothing to do with that region, or isn’t really a regionally limited site.
How to Apply to Yahoo
Assuming you are not already listed in the index your first step is to find the category page that best suits your site. At the very bottom of this category page will be a small “Suggest a Site” link. Click on it to get to the site submission page. If there is no “Suggest a Site” link, then the page you are on does not allow listings to be added to it, most likely because it is a very general top-level page. Keep searching until you find your right niche category!
When searching for your niche category try to find one that reduces your chances of being buried alive by other site listings. This usually means choosing a very specific category.
You must follow Yahoo’s instructions to the letter. They will ask you to be factual and not use promotional. This might seem crazy, especially in a business that seems to be all about promoting yourself but Yahoo will frown on any title and description that reads like promotional ad copy. What Yahoo wants is a descriptive title and description without any hype (and this includes phrases such as “the best”, “supreme” or “the #1” as adjectives for describing your business.
Also you improve your chances of acceptance if you can keep your meta tag description to about 15-20 words. You might as well edit it down now before Yahoo does it for you!
As Yahoo lists its sites alphabetically, it might also benefit you to choose a name that is among the first five or six letters in the alphabet. If you can come up with a suitable title for your site that starts with A, B or C then use it. For instance, “buy a house” is a better title than “real estate agent” because it starts with a b and the word real will have you listed at the bottom of the page
The Open Directory Project
The Open Directory Project, is an “Open Source” directory much like Yahoo, but is edited by volunteers. The big risk here? As they are volunteers you don’t know what their agendas are or if the editor might reject your site simply because his or her business competes with yours.
As ODP is now the directory-listing source for many search engines (in particular, Google), it’s a must-have listing! A listing in ODP boosts your Google page rank almost as much as a Yahoo listing does! Better yet, it is free!
In terms of SEO, the Open Directory Project is different than yahoo as it only performs WORD searches not KEY PHRASE searches. So much for your sophisticated keyword embedding techniques. So your description for OP should avoid pluralized words unless they are likely to be in search queries. On the plus side, Open Directory allows you longer descriptions than on Yahoo, but the category editor (who is very human in this case) may decide to trim your promotional language3.
Like Yahoo, Open Directory asks that you only submit your homepage URL, to the most appropriate category.
How to Apply to the Open Directory Project
Go to the Directory. Type a simple query that is likely to be used by someone searching for the contents of the page you are submitting. For example, if your site sells designer dog collars try searches like “fashions for dogs” or “rhinestone dog collar.” Find the category that is most appropriate for your site and then click on submit a site at the bottom of the page. This should bring up the submission form.
The “official” waiting period for Open Directory is 3-6 weeks. If you don’t get listed within a reasonable amount of time a polite email to your category editor might help nudge the process along and maybe even result in an email advising you on how to get selected.
About.com
About.com is a very comprehensive index that combines site listings with reviews and editorial content. An editor or guide runs each category, and they are the individuals that you have to appeal to in order for your site to be lists. The easiest way to get their attention is a direct email, as opposed to using the “Feedback” link on the pages.
Tips For Getting Into About.com
The guides at about.com are looking for what they call deep links. This may not necessarily be your homepage, but rather an article that you have written from an “expert” point of view.
Your best plan of attack is to:
• Pick an “about” category that suits your site.
• Submit an article that you have written on one of your domain pages.
• Offer a link back. Put a link to their site even before contacting them and said, “I find your site such a great resource that I’ve listed you in our links page.
As you can see becoming completely search engine optimized can be a great deal of work. Your success level might depend on the number of hours you are willing to put into writing search engine optimized words, titles and metatags and the amount of care that you are willing to put into the process of search engine submission. Why are you doing all this again? It is because getting listed in these directories can boost your rankings in Google and other search engine directories!
7. How To Be Ignored By The Search Engines
It is very easy to accidentally offend a search engine. Here is a compendium of the common mistakes that first time URL search engine submitters make. Committing any one of these SEO crimes that can get you booted from the system or just gets your listing ignored.
• Although it is important to have your most important key phrases entered more than once, it is possible to go overboard. Try too keep repeats of your key phrases to less than thirteen per submission or a search engine may consider you to be a spammer.
• Search engines don’t like affiliate sites with same or similar content (even with a different site design). This includes most “virtual” sites.
• Search engines also discard Mirror sites. Submitting mirror URLs to different categories is also considered spam. Multi-lingual sites are acceptable as long as the URL resolves to the appropriate language.
• Sites that use redirects to another site. Using frames to cloak a real URL, is also be considered spam under some circumstances, so avoid doing it unless you have no choice.
• Sites whose sole purpose is to drive traffic to affiliate links or sites that contain these types of links and no information or products of their own. This is why it can be so tough to be an affiliate or multi-level marketers.
• Sites without original content. The search engine can penalize you by submitting content that is plagiarized from another site.
• Sites that are repeatedly resubmitted (over 5 times) without being changed or ever accepted almost always end up as being shunned for good.
• Web pages that are built primarily for the search engines and not your target audience, especially machine-generated pages are particularly offensive to the search engines. Your URL could be ignored forever if the search engines suspect that you are trying to get an unfair advantage over others by using a shortcut.
• Pages that contain hidden text and hidden links that are too shameless about self-promotion.
• Pages that ramble on and on and say a lot about nothing while at the same time including nothing but a collection of keywords.
• Sites with numerous, unnecessary host names (i.e. worktools.com/wrench, worktools.com/screwdriver, worktools.com/ etc.).
• Excessively cross-linking to sites that have nothing to do with the content of the site – stick to specific keywords that relate to your customers.
8. Free Online Keyword Tools
Here are the best free keyword tools that you can use to find the keywords that can help you find the right phrases and words to supercharge your website with optimized content.
• http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion. This is an online keyword suggestion tool that reveals the results of your keyword search from both Overture and an independent keyword tracking consultant company called Wordtracker. It helps you find out how many times a keyword phrase is searched for and get suggestions for alternate words at the same time.
• http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/. This search suggestion online tool is offered up by Overture. Type in your word or phrase and find out how many times that particular word was searched for last month. It also lists any related searches that include your term.
• https://adwords.google.com/select/main? This online tool is a courtesy “think” gadget developed by Google AdWords. Type in your phrase and you’ll be shown a list of other possibilities. A slightly modified version of this tool is available at http://www.masteringadwords.com/resources/google_tool.asp
• http://www.espotting.com/popups/keywordgenbox.asp. This is a keyword generator that how many times your phrase has been searched for in the previous month.
If you’re interested in creating “niche sites” and want to see the top ten lists and top 50 lists that describe what people are interested in on the Internet check out these:
• Lycos 50 Daily Report: http://50.lycos.com/
• Kanoodle: http://kanoodle.com/spy/
• MetaCrawler: http://www.metacrawler.com/info.metac/searchspy
These keyword sites can help you decide what is hot, not only in terms of products but also in terms of creating an informational site.
Remember that you want to use the keywords that are used the most often by web users. The number of times a term is searched in a month is defined as keyword popularity. The reason you want to use the most popular keywords is to generate the most possible traffic to your web pages.
These tools can help you determine the potential popularity of your niche keywords. If your keywords are too general and your pages don’t have a high ranking in search engines, people typing in the more general keywords are NEVER going to find your pages. They will find the sites that have those general keywords in their URL.
9. Should You Hire An SEO Company?
There are thousands of companies on the Internet that will offer to do your SEO for your. There are also hundreds of ways that a site can be both ethically and unethically optimized by these companies.
You want to be very careful that you don’t hire an unethical firm to do your submission for you as their tactics might be so guerilla in nature that they might actually be illegal. Some of the tactics used by some companies are so unfair that some search engines have actual gone so far as to write articles that warn you of the possible consequences of using less than ethical methods to promote your website. Google in particular is very concerned about unfair or overly aggressive viral marketing practices and how you could be utilizing these in your web site without even knowing it because an SEO firm deployed the method for you.
One of the things that most search engines do at the point of their free manual submission is request that you type in a code before you can proceed. This forces you to manually submit each URL that you have one by one. This secure practice was added to many search engine sites after it was discovered that automated submission programs were skewing the accuracy of information displayed on search engine pages.
Most SEO companies offered optimization services. These include writing keyword-enhanced text, changing the design and layout of the site and the finding of relevant directories that the site can be submitted to.
Beware of thee aggressive marketing companies use SEO strategies that can get you ignored for life by all of the major search engines. These include such techniques as cloaking, creating doorway pages and keyword stuffing. If you are not sure about an SEO company that you have hired to optimize your website, make sure you query them about exactly what types of techniques they will use to optimize your site. If they can’t provide clear answers about this issue then you should probably not deal with them.
Obviously, before you sign any kind of terms of agreement you need to find out exactly what the search engine optimization company will do to you.
Here is a rundown of the types of service that you can expect an SEO firm to offer you. Some of these services can be obtained as a package deal but the best SEO companies will offer some of these services “a-la-carte” to better serve your needs.
Services typically offered by an SEO company are —
Changing the layout or design of your site
• Redoing the architecture of the site including site menus and navigation tools
• rewriting and editing all visible content on your pages so that it contains a healthy mix of targeted keywords
• inserting targeted keywords and commonly searched phrases into your HTML tags
• building an index of links — finding appropriate web sites and obtaining links from their site to yours
• submitting your site to search engines and guaranteeing that you will have a certain placement within a certain amount of time!
Another big consideration before you hire professional SEO survives is time. Keep in mind that some SEO companies take forever to do their job, sometimes as long as six weeks to six months! This can be a long hard waiting period, especially if you can’t wait to get your site up and launched. It is crucial for you to read the fine print of any agreement that you have with an SEO company to make sure that they do not have a leeway of years for completing your site. Make sure that you set a firm deadline with them and then insist that they give you a generous discount or complete refund if they don’t meet it the agreed upon date.
It is does not usually take a lot of time after your newly search engine optimized website is up and running to figure out whether or not the SEO company’s services have done anything to enhance your business. However keep in mind that you should see an immediate increase of traffic to your site if they are doing their job. You should experience this even if you don’t see your actual pages climb up in terms of rankings.
Most SEO companies will also provide you with some kind of tool or measure that can help you measure your success. As part of their SEO package of services many of them will also send you reports about how your web site is doing in terms of positioning, click-throughs and rankings.
Sometimes the profits that are to be seen from search engine optimization take a few months to kick in. For instance, at first it might not seem like that search engine optimization company did all that much for you but usually within a year most clients notice that they have experienced some type of boost in business such as in increase in additions to their mailing list, a rise in affiliate income, more membership conversion or even a doubling of their income!
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SOURCE : TOP SEO-Secrets Part III-2: Submitting Your Site to Search Engines
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