Website Promotion - Search Engine Registration

"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."
- Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931)

Be prepared for some surprises in this chapter. Keep an open mind. Some of the things we're going to discuss regarding search engines will not coincide with what you may have already heard and read. Please keep one thing in mind. We've been in the Internet marketing field for seven years. We've learned a lot about what is really going on with the search engines.

Exactly how you register your site with the search engines will be discussed in the "SUBMITTING" section below.

YAHOO. You've heard about it and probably think that you absolutely must be registered with Yahoo. The truth is that, yes, it's good to have a registration with Yahoo but it's not going to guarantee that people will see your registration. Yahoo is so incredibly huge that your site will easily get lost in it. Yahoo was one of the first Internet search engines. What it boils down to regarding Yahoo is that a lot of Websites are registered with them but your chances of showing up in the top 10 or 20 search results are about a 100,000 to 1. If you're not in the top 10 or 20 search results, forget it. People are not going to look through hundreds of search results to find what they're looking for.

One of the best search engines available today is 'Google'. As of this writing, Yahoo has purchased Google and plans to integrate Google technology into the Yahoo system.

GOOGLE. http://www.google.com
One of the many ways that you can increase the number of visitors to your site is by putting a Google search box on your site. All you need to do is put the Google HTML code that we've inserted below on each of your Web pages.

The source code (to date) follows. You're going to need to modify the code slightly because this is a Google search box, which can either search the entire Internet or limit it's search to your Website. You'll see that there's an option to choose "Search WWW" or "Search IMC Shopping" in the example below. You need to change the code from "Search IMC Shopping" to "Search This Website" or something similar.

Here's what it will look like (to date). If, for some reason, this code does not work for you, go to http://www.google.com and look for an option with the title "Add Google to Your Site" or something similar. You can also try going to Yahoo at http://www.yahoo.com and look around for an option to use Google with Yahoo. Please understand that it is not possible to tell you exactly where these options will be located at Google or Yahoo because of the changes taking place day to day on those two search engines:

Here's the code for it:

Sure ways to get top rankings with Google

Google Adwords Program

Explanation of the AdWords Program: You set up an account with Google and put as much money into as you want to. Each time someone clicks on your ad, it is automatically charged to your account. When your account is empty, you can either add more money to it or cancel it or just let it sit for a while.

Premium service level for large advertisers

Let us take care of the advertising so you can take care of everything else. Google's client service team is dedicated to providing each large advertiser with the highest ROI Internet advertising. We'll help you manage your campaign from launch to successful finish, freeing you up for other things that need your attention. Why worry about advertising? That's our job.

Premium service qualifications

Minimum spend: $15,000 over three months, with at least $5,000 per month
Minimum spend for agencies: $5,000 per client for a minimum of one month

Experienced and knowledgeable professionals

We've gained our expertise by observing what actually works across billions of searches
Your sales rep is your single point of contact
Client service representatives are available via phone and email
Creative Maximizers optimize your creative copy and keywords
Vertical market experts offer guidance on the most effective methods of targeting by industry, from healthcare to entertainment to technology

Campaign set-up and management

Information to help you optimally structure strategic campaigns tied to your success metrics Campaign posting
Keyword expansion and targeting tools
Regular account planning and performance analysis
24/7 access to your campaigns via Google's online reporting system
Creative "maximization" service to optimize your ROI

Demonstrated success

The vast majority of Google advertisers renew their contracts

Google clickthrough rates are four to five times higher than the industry average for traditional banner ads

Creative Maximizer improvements lead to at least 50 percent improvement in 95 percent of campaigns

Customer satisfaction

"Google's advertising and operations team worked very hard and delivered outstanding service to our account. They did an excellent job rewriting [our ads] to improve performance."

- Will Watson, BizRate.com

SEARCH ENGINES

SEARCH ENGINES, CLASSIFIED ADS, FFA SITES. What you want to do is get as much exposure for your site on the Internet as you possibly can. You never know where your next customer might come from. Don't just assume that because you live in a certain country, only people from that country will be interested in your product or service. For instance, there will be people from your country who live outside your country who will want to order something from you.

There are many search engines. Some of them are very well known and used by many people. Some of them are less well known. Your site needs to be registered with as many of them as possible.

SEARCH ENGINE SUBMISSION SOFTWARE. These are programs that automatically submit your site to hundreds of search engines, and thousands of classified ads sites and FFA sites. They vary in price and usually require renewing your license with them every six months to a year. Like everything else having to do with Internet marketing and Website promotion, submission software has many 'grey areas'. Meaning you shouldn't fully believe what they claim to be capable of. On the other hand, if you're willing to take your chances, such programs may well save you time. As is explained below in the "Submitting Your Website Manually..." section, it's better to submit your Website to the major search engines by hand. You'll need to decide how much time you want to spend on submitting your site. Submission software also submits your Website to Free For All (FFA) sites and Classified Ads sites. Both will be explained in the FFA Sites section.

FFA SITES and CLASSIFIED ADS SITES: When you come across the term "FFA Sites" or "Classified Ads Sites", you should automatically think of 'reverse advertising'. It comes down to this: Almost no one ever goes to FFA sites or Classified Ads sites. The only thing the owners of FFA Sites want is your email address. That way, when you submit your site to them (which means you are requesting a listing in their FFA site) they can legally send you an email. The email will be a "thank you" for submitting to them and will also contain an advertisement for whatever it is that they're selling.

The smartest thing you can do regarding FFA sites is start your own FFA site. In other words "HOST don't POST". You do this by going to some of the FFA Websites and filling out a simple form to set up a FREE FFA site for your business. This is a good way to advertise. Every time someone posts a listing to your FFA site, a "Thank You" message with your advertisement is sent to that person. Of course, there is a catch. Anything that's free isn't going to be the top of the line product. If you want better results you may have to use one of their FFA sites that isn't free. They're not expensive and range in price from company to company. We recently found one offering a 30-day free trial. After the trial, it costs $17.00 a month.

Consider FFA and Classified Ads sites one more piece of the Internet marketing mix puzzle. You need to find that piece and place it in the correct part of the puzzle. Remember; don't post your site to the FFA sites. Start your own FFA site.

SUBMITTING YOUR WEBSITE MANUALLY TO THE MAJOR SEARCH ENGINES. Submitting by hand to the big search engines is a good idea. Doing that insures that it's definitely been done. There are a few things to keep in mind:

1. Not all search engines process your submission immediately. Some of them, such as Yahoo, can take at least six weeks to process. Some of them take two to three weeks. Some of them do process them immediately. As of this writing, Yahoo does offer an "Express Registration" service, which they charge $299.00 for. For more information regarding Yahoo's express registration offer, go to http://www.yahoo.com

2. Each search engine tends to have it's own way of letting you submit your Website. For instance, some of them put a link at the top of the page in plain sight that says "ADD URL" or "SUGGEST A SITE" or "ADD YOUR WEBSITE" or something similar. Some of them put their links to "Add a Website" at the very bottom of their pages while others put them in the middle of their pages. The point is, you're going to need to look around a bit to find the "Add Website" links . Some registrations are going to take longer than others. A few of the search engines, such as Yahoo, expect you to go to the category in their system that you want your site to appear in, before being allowed to fill out a four or five step, online registration form. On the other hand, some systems are automated and require only that you enter a title and a URL. What follows is the registration process for Yahoo:

In the sample below, Webcrawler makes registering with their search engine simple:

Here's a list of search engines, which you can submit to manually. Please keep in mind that the Search Engine companies often change their methods of submission and their policies. We cannot guarantee that at the time you are reading this, the links to the search engines below and the individual Search Engine companies' submission methods and policies are fully up-to-date:

http://www.yahoo.com

http://www.dogpile.com

http://www.altavista.com

http://www.excite.com

http://www.webcrawler.com

http://www.lycos.com

http://www.hotbot.com

Here's a list of German search engines, which you can submit to manually:
NOTE: Most Germans speak English. That's especially true of the Germans who are online.

http://www.infoseek.de

http://www.fireball.de

http://www.excite.de

http://www.aladin.de

http://www.spider.de

http://www.kolibri.de

http://www.lycos.de

http://www.crawler.de

http://www.nathan.de

http://www.web.de

http://www.dino-online.de

http://www.sharelook.de

http://www.eule.de

http://www.hotbot.com

http://www.yahoo.de