Search Engine Gurus?

[Graham]

Hello folks,

Anyone out there fancy themselves a search engine guru? I am going to be submitting my site in the next week or so, and I want to do it right the first time. I know the basics, no spam on the meta keywords, use 'alt' text for images, include relavent text in the body. Im just wanting some tips from those who've been successful ranking in the top on the big ones. I wonder if any of those companies that offer to do it for you are really worth it? Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Graham

[steven]

While I'm not a search engine guru, I have managed to get my site some very prominent and top listings on almost all of the popular search engines. Here is a list of the top 10

Yahoo! For obvious reasons(an editor needs to approve your site for inclusion)

DMOZ - They supply netscape, aol, google, hotbot, and a bunch of other search engines their database information(an editor needs to approve your site for inclusion)


Looksmart- Supplies altavista and microsoft search, as well as excite, and some smaller search engines. Awesome directory #1 in sending traffic to my site(an editor needs to approve your site for inclusion)


Google-Awesome directory where sufers find the most relevant information pertaining to their search

Altavista-Fastest search engine indexer, your site will be in their database in a week, or so.

AlltheWeb/Lycos-another heavily trafficed SE

Excite-Takes a long time to add your site to their database.
Very slow to index your site.

These last three also send a fair amount of traffic as well.
AOL Netfind-

HotBot

Go/infoseek(an editor needs to approve your site for inclusion)


I recommend submitting to these sites manually, not with a program like submit-it.com, or submitwolf, or webpositiongold. The reason is search engines are banning this kind of submission software, and quite possibly could ban your site from their database.(A kind of Blacklist)

Now for all the other smaller searchengines and directories, you can use any of the programs I mentioned above. Search engine ranking depend on a variety of things. Link popularity is one of them. Link popularity is simply how many other sites link to your site. If a lot of other sites link to your site, and you have good keywords/description, and a high click through rate, then you will be at the top.

I really have mixed feelings about companies that guarantee search engine results, as no one can guarantee them. So I would suggest that you stay away from these companies, and use submit-it or submitwolf.

But search engine rankings are only a fraction of the traffic that your site should get. If your site provides users with fresh uptodate information and is easily accessible, they will keep coming back and tell their friends, co-workers, etc about it. And that is the key to traffic. Word of mouth is the best form of advertising.

Let me know what you think.
Hope this helps, if I have any more thoughts, I'll post again.

Steven