TOP SEO-Secrets Part III: Submitting Your Site to Search Engines

1. A Step-by-Step Submission Plan

Submitting your sites to search engines so that they are optimized to their maximum potential can seem complicated but it really is not. Here is a step-by-step plan of action to help you get it done painlessly.

1. Make sure your site is functional before you submit that URL.

It doesn’t matter how many people you attract to your web site if, once they get there, they are frustrated by links that don’t work, images that don’t load and worst of all, a malfunctioning merchant account! Also if your site gets glitches or errors you don’t want the search engines encountering a blank page because you have taken the site offline so you can fix things up. Always make sure your site is as complete as possible before you upload anything.

2. Make short keyword optimized titles and descriptions about your site for the search engines.

Before you end up manually submitting your site try to make sure that you are ready with the lists of keywords, phrases and titles (also search engine optimized with keywords of course.) Make sure your site is easy for humans to read but also make sure it is easy for search engine robots to find as well. This involves adjusting your page title, meta tags and first paragraph so that they are presented in the best possible manner so that when you do submit keywords to the major search engines they will be able to match up the content on your page with the keywords you have submitted.

3. Submit to the major search engines as soon as you can.

Unfortunately it can take anything from three days to six weeks to six months for the major search engines to list your site so they should make submitting to them a priority. The big ones are Google, Yahoo, Exact Seek, and MSN.com.

4. Submit your URL to the major directories.

Take the time to supply a hand done, search optimized submission to Yahoo and Overture. These are probably the three most important places to have your site listed on the net because a listing in these directories can help boost your overall search engine rankings everywhere on the net!

5. Submit to the general indexes.

There are many less efficient indexes on the Internet that are worth submitting to too. General indexes fall into a number of categories including country subject specific indexes, international indexes and special purpose indexes. Typing in your prime keyword plus the word directory or index can help you find which directory is best for you to submit to.

6. Consider using Pay Per Click engines.

The good news about listing in the search engines and indexes is that it’s free. The bad news is that it doesn’t bring you targeted traffic. There are, however many search engines, such as overture.com that provide you with targeted traffic The idea is that you pay a couple of cents for each click on a targeted keyword. However keep in mind that this entire process can be very frustrating especially if you choose the wrong keywords. More then one enterprising beginning Internet marketer has gone broke by choosing to use keywords that are too general in a pay per click program. This is because those clicks do not always translate into being sales. A good example is the person selling tarot readings that are attracting people who are shopping for tarot decks (by using the popular general search word “tarot deck”) and are all readers themselves. In this case they simply do not need a reading from you and are the kind of disappointed frustrated window-shopper that can be led to your site if you are not careful.

2. Determining Profitable Key Word Phrases

The shortest route to coming up with profitable key phrases is ask yourself “what would someone trying to find me type in the little box when they search?” Make a list of what comes to mind and then try them out on the search engines and try them out yourself. See if the key phrases that you are thinking about actually lead you to a service or product that resembles your own. This can be a very education pursuit as often the results are not exactly what you expected.

Another thing to keep in mind is that if your business is restricted by geography your key phrases should reflect for this. If your business is geographically restricted, then your key phrases should reflect this. For example, if you are a waste removal expert in New Orleans, Louisiana then the key phrase “waste removal expert” is a waste of time; instead, the more specific phrase “expert waste removal in New Orleans, Louisiana” is what you want to be thinking about.

Another technique for inspiring titles is to think variations on the key phrases and write them down. Once you use a keyword search inventory tool it might turn up the following searches:

Waste management louisiana

Waste katrina Cleanup

Waste removal New Orleans

Waste and garbage New Orleans

Help with waste New Orleans

New Orleans – clean up garbage waste

You can then match what you find on the keyword to create very effective search engine optimized titles.

On Overture ‘s free suggestion page, you just type in a very general topic and it tells you all of the more specific keyphrases that relate to that keyphrase and how many hits they got. You can also use the Google keyword generator, which is also a free tool.

The Internet is also loaded with all sorts of keyword generator that can be had for free or that you can buy. WordTracker is commercial software that you can buy that helps you develop lists of relevant key phrases, ranked by their popularity. It then queries the major search engines to determine which key phrases are the least competitive.

Still Your best course of action is to use the Overture search engine tool or the Google Keyword generator for now because both are free and more than adequate when it comes to inspiring keywords.

3. Creating A Title Tag

At this point, you know what your best keyphrases are because you have looked them up on Google. Your next step is to create a Search Engine Friendly Title Tag.

This is an out of context title, meaning that is has to be good for search engines, not for people. For instance a title such as Max Smith New Orleans Waster Remover is not optimized. The most important thing to remember is that: All your most important keyphrases should be in the TITLE tag.

This means that you have to create your title out of your most important key phrases and then sandwich them inside an HTML title tag. Also, keep in mind that browsers only display the first few words of a title tag (whatever fits into the title bar of the window). So while the first sentence of your title tag should be “human friendly”, the rest can be just a list of key phrases.

Try to keep the title between 15 and 20 words. But you might want to try longer title tags on some of your pages, just to see what happens! So Max Smith might have a title that looks like this:

TITLE>Waste Removal in New Orleans, - Katrina clean up, toxic mould, waste water pump, mould removal

The reason for this is that the three most important places to have key phrases and phrases are your title tag, your meta tags, and your first paragraph. You want them to all contain the same important words; this increases your key phrase density and improves your rankings in the search engines.

4. Mastering Meta Tags

Mastering Meta Tags is crucial because on many search engines, the page title is often cut off and the Meta Description tag is the only thing that gets displayed in the search engine pages.

Meta tags go in the section of the HTML page (the same section as the