Submit your site to as many search engines as you can. Here are some of the popular ones you can start with:
Google AltaVista Yahoo Alexa AllTheWeb
AOL Euroseek Exactseek Excite Inktomi
Kanoodle Lycos Moteurderecherche National Directory SearchIt
Teoma What-U-Seek DMOZ
Use a favicon.ico - see below.
If you have a Christian Website, be sure to submit it to all the Christian Directories. We have a list of about 50 of the most popular Christian Directories here.
Have Dynamic content on your site - Message Board, Links Directory, Guest Book, Online Search, Picture Gallery, Quote of the day, News items, Site Search, Links Engine ... It all makes for a more enjoyable experience for your visitors ... and happy visitors come back.
Make sure you don't have broken links on your site! There is nothing more annoying when one clicks a link and it does not work. There are hundreds of places you can go on the internet that will check your link validity. Use them.
Make sure your META TAGS are done right. Learn how to do this here.
Submit your site to as many privately run Link Directories/Search Engines as you can find. These will not generally boost your traffic in any major way but will help to maintain steady stream of qualified visitors.
Use Banners with care. See below.
Subscribe to the Usenet groups and advertise there. A good place to start is Google Groups
Be sure to submit your site in appropriate groups!
Be sure to signup with a backup email or you will get onto every spammers database!
Be sure you don't SPAM -- only submit a write up of your site once to any given group.
OK, I DID EVERYTHING YOU SAY ON THIS PAGE BUT MY SITE STILL DOES NOT SHOW ON GOOGLE, YAHOO ETC. WHY NOT!!??
No one knows exactly how many sites there are on the whole of the internet but there are millions! And thousands more are being added every day! Let's say, you make worship dance banners/flags. A search on Google showed the following results:Search for Google results
banner 55,000,000
banners 15,000,000
banners and flags 1,500,00
creative banners and flags 189,000
creative banners and flags worship dance 129,000
canvass creative banners and flags worship dance 4,200
creative sewing designs worship-dance flags only 87 results!
The chances of your brand new website featuring anywhere in the list for the keyword "banner" are infinitesimally small - that means you have NO CHANCE of your site featuring anywhere near the top in a search.
OK, great. So how do you get your site to show on Google?
Firstly, don't try to compete with a keyword "banner" - as one in 55,000,000, you don't stand a chance.
Think "phrases" instead of "words". Look at the table above; as you add more words to the search, you get less results. If your page(s) contain the words "canvass creative banners and flags worship dance" in a sentence like this for example:
Our canvass banners and flags are creative in their design and are ideal for use in Worship dance"
Remember, a search engine cannot read pictures on your site. Even if they are very descriptive. Your text must say it all. Search engines index text.
Your page rank is critical. The site that ranks #1 on Google for "banner" has a very high page rank and that's why it is #1. Page rank is a VAST subject and it is not possible to cover it in any detail in a few paragraphs. If you want to know more about Page Rank, here are some handy links: Description Link
We have written a handy little application
you can use right here to check the
Google Page Rank of your site.
http://
Check the Google page rank of any site by entering it above
Page Rank Explained - a page by Google
that will help you better understand how
page rank works Page Rank Explained #1
Page Rank Explained #2
Page Rank explained with examples - a bit
technical but well worth getting your head
around if you can. Page Rank
So how much page rank is good and how much is bad?
Basically, the higher your page rank is, the more the search engines will favor the text on your site when people search them for those words. (It's actually a lot more than just that but for the purposes of this example, it's close enough). Obviously, you should have as high a page rank on your site as possible with 10 being the highest you get. Generally, anything above a 3 or a 4 is considered good. A page rank above 6 is very good and 7 or 8 is exceptional.
It is important to understand that page rank is NOT linear but logarithmic. (Actually only Google knows the real formula as it is a closely guarded secret). It works something like this:Page Rank Actual ranking
0 No one has ever heard of you.
All sites begin here
1 very low
2 very low
3 low in top 100,000,000
4 moderate in top 10,000,000
5 In the top 1,000,000
6 In the top 100,000
7 In the top 10,000
8 In the top 1,000
9 In the top 100
10 One of the top 10 sites period!
From the above, you can see that there is a vast difference between page rank 3 and 4 or between 4 and 5. As your site moves up in rank, so the competition becomes more fierce. For example, if you have a page rank of 6 you may be one of the top 100,000 sites. To get to a rank of 7, you need to be one of the top 10,000 sites. To have a page rank of 8 would mean you are one of the top 1,000 sites (in the whole world remember) - a huge difference.
FAVICON.ICO - HUH? WAZZAT??
Bookmark this page now. Now go look at your Bookmarks. You should see a bookmark that looks like this -
How to get traffic to your site the right way
The image is neat because it makes the site stand out in the Bookmarks no?
Some cool browsers - like firefox - also support this tag in the section:
This allows you to use an animated gif -- called favicon.gif in this case -- to replace the static favicon.ico
Here's how you do it (for a static .ico file):
Make an image of 16 * 16 pixels.
Save it as an ICON file (.ico) extension with the name favicon.ico in the root folder of your Website. (The folder with your index.html file)
Done. It's that simple.
To also allow browsers that support animated gifs, add the following line to the section of your HTML:
and, of course, make the gif file and place it
in the root folder of your site.
When someone bookmarks your site, the Browser looks for a file called http://YourSite.com/favicon.ico. If it finds a file it uses your file instead of it's default file.
There is lots of software out there that can save gif or JPEG images as an .ico file. A good free one is Irfanview.
AUTOMATED SUBMISSION SOFTWARE AND "WE SUBMIT TO 1,000,000 SEARCH ENGINES FOR $25" COMPANIES
In our experience, it's generally not a good idea to use them -- some are good but many are out to simply make a quick buck and couldn't care two hoots about you or your website.
There is a simple reason why these "automated" and paid options don't work - Category Targeting.
Put very simply, Category Targeting is all about submitting your site to the right categories in the right search engines and directories.
For example, say you have a site on Corvettes. At one search engine, they may only have a category for Cars. However, at another one, there may be a sub-category from cars called Sports Cars. Only you would know to submit your site to the Sports Cars category -- automated software or someone else would simply bang it into cars and sports car enthusiasts would never see you link let alone click on it!
Another example would be the description you give your site in one place may be entirely different to the one you choose in another.
For example, on a Teen Centered link engine you may use words like funky, neato, boss, ppl, cu, l8r, 4u, and so on to describe your site because it's part of the language teens use. On an O-So-Serious search engine catering mostly for retired folk you would not dare use these words because no one would understand you! :) Automated software simply cannot do this!
There is absolutely no benefit if your site is in 1,000,000 search engines but no one clicks anyway. It must say the right stuff and it must be in the right category. As the person who creates the site only you have the knowledge to do this right. Don't waste your money on automated software submission software. It doesn't work.
BUY TRAFFIC TO YOUR WEBSITE
There are thousands of sites out there that will sell you hits to your website. The big ones you may know are Google, AltaVista, Overture etc. However, these are mostly overpriced as they work on a bidding system where you bid against others on keywords. For example, if you type "Christian Web Hosting" on Google you get all those links on the right and the top. These are paid advertising links. Every time you click a link, the advertiser pays ... up to $50.00 for a click! I don't know about you but I certainly won't pay that kind of money for a click. The more "valuable" the word or phrase, the more you have to bid in order to get your site near the top. Crazy huh?
Then you get the smaller advertisers. These are usually small companies or individuals that run some kind of paid advertising scheme. In my opinion, this is where you will get the best value for money. But beware, some are good and some are outright crooks! Be very careful!
Examples of this kind of advertising include those who sell you paid niche market indices, pop-under ads, pop-up ads, pay per click ads, banner adds and redirected traffic. From experience, we have found only some of them are worth it. The rest are dodgy investments at best.
niche market indices
There are several Christian sites -- big and small -- offering this kind of advertising for a price. Shop around to find the best one for you. They come in two flavors:
Pay per click
Pay per month/year etc. (Recommended if the site has qualified traffic and enough hits).
Pay per month is obviously much easier to budget for as your cost is fixed but it will depend on how much traffic a site gets. You may find the one better than the other. It's very much a trial and error thing and you have to try it for a month with a given advertiser to see which works best. We offer this type of [button/banner] advertising on some of our high traffic sites here.
This kind of advertising, although it can be a little more expensive, if often the best since you will be drawing your visitors from a source that is related to your site. For example, advertising your yacht business from a banner on a large yachting message board will guarantee your visitors are mostly yacht enthusiasts.
pop-under and pop-up advertising
The name is exactly what it sounds like. The first one hides the popped-up page behind your current browser window and the second is a more "in your face" approach where the popped-up page is on top. Many people use pop-up killers these days and the trend is for more and more people to use software that blocks them. It's a good form of advertising and the cheapest but shop around to find the best one for you and read the general warning below.
redirected traffic
A relatively new development is redirected traffic reselling. How it works is that people buy up old domain names -- sometimes by the thousands. These are all kinds of domains. For example, companies that went bust, old websites that were abandon by the original owners etc etc. These domains still get traffic simply because they are listed in the search engines and they come up from time to time when people search for certain words.
You go to a company or individual who bought a whole bunch of these domains and they set them up to redirect the traffic that would have gone to the old domain to your site instead. In principle this is a great idea but in practice it's a failure. Don't buy this kind of traffic.
Why not? You ask. Simple - you have no idea what kind of traffic is being sent you you. Let's say you have a site which sells second hand antique furniture. What value would traffic intended for a manufacturing company specializing in the manufacture of rocket fuel have for you? No matter how many rocket fuel visitors you get, it is highly unlikely any would be interested in your furniture. Traffic must be targeted if it is to be of value.
General Warning: Regardless of which type of traffic you buy, be very careful of who you buy from. There are several companies and individuals out there who will send you thousands of unique IP address hits to your site (which you can verify in your logs), but no one will ever see your page/s! There are several techniques for doing this and you could land up being scammed. (Some of the techniques involve things like opening your whole page in a 1 * 1 pixel window for example. You get the unique hit but no one saw your page ... not unless they had x-ray vision like superman!)
What works best?
It depends on several factors -- your site, the sellers site and many more. Fixed text link and fixed banner advertising are always the best. Why do I say that? Two reasons:
Because you are not only getting the traffic from the sellers site but you are also getting a fixed link from the sellers site. This will boost your ranking in all the major search engines and will do so for as long as your link/banner is on the sellers site. If the seller's site is highly ranked in the search engines, your site will benefit greatly! Read what Google has to say about this here.
Provided you have some means of knowing how much traffic the page gets your banner/link is on it is also the safest form of advertising -- you can go to the sellers site anytime to see your link or banner. With any of the other methods, you have no guarantees at all that anyone even went to your site.
Bottom line: You get what you pay for. If someone is offering you 100,000 hits for $25.00, think carefully before you spend your money because that is a price that is way too low and it might just be a scam. For pop-up/pop-under advertising expect to pay around $0.01 to $0.10 per page view and for banner advertising in the same order for monthly advertising and $0.20 and up for click through advertising.
RECIPROCAL LINKS
You put a link on your site to mine and I'll put one on my site to yours. Sounds fair doesn't it? Ha! but there's a catch!!
What if you are an honest Joe like me and believe the person on the other side is honest and you do your bit by adding the link to the other guys site but ... back at the ranch ...
S/he never adds the reciprocal link back to you. You've been had!
OR
S/he sends you and email saying "here's the page with your link ..." but the page with your link is not linked from anywhere else on this person's site! You get it? Your link is on the other site but the page it is on can never be found on that site ... you've been scammed!
OR
S/he waits for 2 weeks then removes your link but you still link to him/her. Scammed again!
Reciprocal links are great and work very well because of the way search engines rank sites. However, they open to abuse. Use with caution.
HOW OFTEN TO SUBMIT
Once you have submitted your site to a search engine be sure you find out from the FAQ's listed (sometimes) on that particular Search engines site, as to how it works. For example:
Some search engines will automatically drop your listing after a preset time. Others won't.
Some search engines will penalize (even permanently 'ban' your site) if you re-submit it too often.
Bottom Line - make sure you find out these things about the search engine you are submitting to and then comply with their rules.
WHERE NOT TO SUBMIT TO
Be aware and focused on who your target audience is. If you have a site on the merits of paper recycling you are far more likely to find a receptive audience with the earth lovers than with the trucking union!
Be selective of where you submit your site to. For example, don't submit your Windows MS Access site to a MYSQL forum. All you will get is a lot of rude replies telling you how lame Access is! Often Website owners neglect to take this very important aspect into consideration - you are likely to do more harm than good to yourself and your website by submitting it to inappropriate places.
GRAMMAR/SPELLING
Makwgh shwkefr yokep spkllpf corrgprtly!! A page full of obvious typos won't get you far. With all the spell checkers out there these days, there is no excuse for poor spelling. But spelling is only one part of the problem. The other major part is grammar. Carefully read the two sentences below. Both are identical except for the placement of a single comma:
Here lies my dearly departed Martha. In heaven is she, not in hell, this I know well.
Here lies my dearly departed Martha. In heaven is she not, in hell, this I know well.
While on the subject of spelling and grammar, don't forget that English is not spelt (or spoken) the same all over the world. There is a vast difference between American English and British English spelling for example. It is not really important which spelling you decide to go with provided you are consistent.
Always keep in mind your intended audience when adding text. For example, the word 'Ketchup' is a common word in America but someone in South Africa won't know what that is because they call it 'Tomato Sauce'. There are hundreds of words and phrases we take for granted that either mean something completely different to someone from another part of the world or has no meaning at all.
SENTENCE STRUCTURE
Search engines are mathematical marvels that read the text on your site and combine it (not all of them) with your META TAGS. Some even integrate other HTML tags like the
