SEO Lesson 4

Search Engine Inclusion/Rankings

by Ryne C Allen, WebPaws.com

Have a new website and need to get it on the boards?  After creating your new website, instead of waiting for the Search Engines (SE) to find you, you can speed things up by submitting your primary index page (website root directory) to some of the major search engines to start the ball rolling.  Normally, depending on how well linked your website is from other websites, blogs, social networks, etceteras; your website may not be indexed for several weeks to months by the major search engines.  If you’ve generated a lot of backlinks to your website by various internet marketing strategies, then you may not need to do direct page (site) submissions to the search engines because they will find you through your well indexed backlinks and you are off to a very good start. However, if you’re not listed in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) then you should manually submit your page (website) to some primary search engines so they become aware of your presence and start indexing your content for inclusion in their SERPs.

Let’s start with the 5 top search engines and get your site submitted for indexing by the search bots.  The ranked*  list below gives you the top 5 major search engines and their free submission links for you to use in your site submission.

1. Google
   Free Submit: http://www.google.com/addurl/
2. Yahoo! Search
   Free Submit (need to sign in): http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit
3. MSN Live Search
   Free Submit: http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx
4. AOL Search – Powered by Google
   Submit: http://www.google.com/addurl/
   AOL’s search engine and the AOL directory are just copies of search engines and directories found elsewhere on the web.  To be listed on AOL SE you just need to be listed on Google, as Google provides the results to AOL searches.  The AOL directory is mentioned below in “Other Sources”.
5. Ask – Powered by Teoma
   FAQs: http://static.wc.ask.com/en/docs/about/webmasters.shtml#18

* Rankings provided by: http://www.hitwise.com/datacenter/main/dashboard-10133.html

Additionally, there are submission services to hundreds of other search engines (primary and second tier), directories, FFA page links and the like.  Below is a list of a few of these second tier search engines for your convenience in submitting your website.

1. AltaVista – Powered by Yahoo!
   Free Submit: http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit
2. Fast (AlltheWeb.com) – Powered by Yahoo!
   Submit: http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit
3. Gigablast – Real time spidering, really!
   Free Submit: http://www.gigablast.com/addurl
4. Netscape Search – Powered by Google
   Free Submit: http://www.google.com/addurl/
5. Snap.com – Portions powered by: Gigablast, Smarter.com, SimplyHired.com, X1 Technologies, Inc. and Enhanced by Ask.com
   Submit: http://www.snap.com/

Free-for-all links list can help you get many backlinks to your website in a short time.  You can find services that will submit your website to hundreds of these FFA sites for increased temporary exposure.  Most FFA sites keep your information for about 30 days, others last as long as their cut-off list number will hold over time and may need to be re-added within days or weeks.

Other Sources of increasing SE rankings

There are many other sources of creating exposure for search engine crawlers (“spiders” or “bots”), to find and index you and to increase your rankings with them.

1. Creating mutual links (inputting your website’s link submission to “like content” websites with mutual links going back to their site).  In some search engines (e.g., Google) this does not merit much if any weight – they sort of cancel each other out.
2. Creating backlinks which are one-way links from “like content” websites only going back to your website.  The more weight these external sites have (better rankings with Google PageRank, Alexa Traffic Rank, Compete Rank,  etc,) the more important it becomes to the search engines algorithm and to your website’s ranking.
3. List your site on dmoz – Submission to the Open Directory Project (dmoz) must be done manually and with care.  To get listed on the Open Directory (dmoz) which is the AOL directory go to: http://dmoz.org/add.html Please note that AOL Time Warner owns Netscape, and therefore “owns” the Open Directory.
4. Local Directories such as Google Local (http://local.google.com/), Yahoo Local (http://local.yahoo.com/), Live Search Maps (http://maps.live.com/), etc. are very good ways for businesses to get free listings that bring top local search results for their websites/businesses.
5. Blogs – having a business blog helps a lot in expanding your relative content and spilling it into the web pool.  Active blogs have quicker turn-around times in becoming listing in the SERPs and are good places to place backlinks to your main site as well as providing good fodder for social networks and other related blogs and websites to use or link to your blogs (if the message is a well crafted and popular one) leaning toward a viral campaign.
6. Social Networks – are alternative places to solicit friends to help spread or promote your business messages, services, products, ideas and other communications that help expand your brand awareness, product or service offerings, etc.  Make sure that you focus on one-way backlinks to your main website and that you attend to your social media page/site to keep it current and keep your friends interested (in propagating your word).  Some social networks worth considering are: www.myspace.com, www.facebooks.com, www.twitter.com, www.plaxo.com, www.linkedin.com, etc.
7. Information Website Websites such as www.Alexa.com, www.aboutus.com, www.domaintools.com, www.compete.com, etc.  Visit these websites and wikis and build your domain presence by editing, modifying and keeping track of your standings in these websites.

How is your website doing?  Check your website rankings at http://popuri.us/.  Need to improve this?  WebPaws.com is a full service Internet Marketing company.  We will improve all your rankings for your website with our unique techniques and SE insight having worked for Google and perform SEO to every website we touch.  It is magic!  Contact us today for a free quote.

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