If you want people to be able to find your site, you must be listed with the top search engines. You can either go to each search engine individually or you can use special software or get it done for you. There are several free websites that will submit your site to thousands of sites, but most of these will be FFA sites (see below for explanation) where your entry may only remain for a matter of hours, or obscure specialist sites which may be inappropriate. You will need to resubmit once a month to improve your rating, which can be extremely time consuming, and whilst their are many companies offering automated submission packages, these are generally less effective than submitting manually, or getting a specialist company to do this for you.

The one exception to this and the method I use, and which I cannot praise highly enough is a service from http://selfpromotion.com. You get a free trial to test the system out, and if you like it you simply send the site owner whatever sum you feel the package is worth. This can be as little as $10. If you pay, your details stay on the system and you don't have to type it out again next month, just select the sites you want to promote to and hit submit. As if that wasn't enough to recommend the site, there are also several pages of tips on improving your ranking and loads more information.

Whilst anyone request that their site is listed with a particular search engine or directory, there is no guarantee that your site will be listed, or, if it is, that it is listed in the first 2 or three pages. Research continues to show that if your site doesn't appear within the first three pages, and often the first two, it might as well not be there. You therefore need to ensure that you have done everything you can to assist in your aim of a top 20 listing for your site. This is a huge topic, and one for which people can command fees of thousands of pounds. Whilst I can only skim the surface, below I've listed sources of more information on the subject.

The most important factor in getting your site listed is the use of keywords. Research the keywords applicable for your site. This is by far the most important step, and one that will make or break the effectiveness of your search engine positioning efforts. If you select the wrong keywords for which to optimize your site, all your efforts will go down the drain. You need to take time to choose a small number of words that perfectly suit your site and use them to your advantage. One of the most effective ways of choosing your words is to go to a few of the search engines you use yourself and do a search using words that you think people would use if looking for a site like yours. Come up with as many words of your own first and then look individually at the first 5 or more sites that appear and view their source code to see which key words they use. If you don't know how to do this, just follow this example with this page. For simplicity, I'll assume you're using Internet Explorer as your browser. Simply click on "view" at the top of the page, and the drop down menu will appear. Click on source, and the code for the page will now be in front of you. Save this code for fuller analysis later. Part way down the first block of text you'll see the wordsMETA NAME="keywords" followed by CONTENT="etc.etc. The words listed after contents are the keywords that will get that page listed on that particular search engine. See how many of them are suitable for your site. Repeat with the other sites on the list to get a good selection of keywords. Make sure these words appear both in your keywords and in the text of the page itself for maximum efficiency.

Choose one or two of these keywords to repeat everywhere - title, meta tags, main body, alt links and anywhere else you can fit it.

Each search engine has a different criteria for choosing sites so once you've chosen your keywords, go back to the blocks of source code you saved earlier and see if you can see any patterns between the top 5 sites. Take particular note of sites that have a good ranking with many of the search engines.

Many search engines cannot cope with graphics and will only view your site up to the point of the first graphic. If this is at the top of the page you have a potential problem. With many search engines however you can get around this by inserting a hidden list of words just inside the body text. Take a look at the source code for this page to see what I mean.

Play around with your site, submitting regularly to the sites that allow it and respond quickly, until you're happy with your rating. Expect different search engines to have different criteria and respond differently. Consider several intro pages to cater for this.

If what I've just said above makes little sense to you, there is an excellent set of video tutorials available for less than £10 that explains this is a better way than I can. Visit http://www.homeworkinguk.com/googletraffic for more details.

Free 30-Day Trial Allows you to Try WebPosition 4 Risk-Free WebPosition 4 now delivers complete website search engine visibility metrics making it an even more indispensable tool in your search marketing tool box. WebPosition 4 allows you to: 1. Report your search engine rankings 2. Target your keywords 3. Optimize pages using built-in expertise 4. Submit URLs to search engines 5. Analyze conversions using WebTrends*

One of the best tools as far as researching your keywords is concerned is WordTracker, available at Wordtracker. Free trial available. You can also subscribe to receive a free keyword report. Every week they will send you the top 500 frequently searched words on the Internet, completely FREE of charge (including the option to omit " adult" terms). These are taken from various metacrawlers across the internet and stored in a database of over 350 million search terms.

To learn how to use WordTracker to select the keywords for your site, you'll find a useful report at http://www.1stsearchranking.com

If you are serious about your business, with a marketing budget available, then there is one company that rates way above all others. Whilst http://www.1stSearchRanking.com/is not cheap you certainly get value for money and 100% no-nonsense, totally risk-free guarantee:

You get top placement in the search engines or ALL your money back.

1st Search Engine Ranking.com specializes in achieving top placement in the major search engines for your company's Web site. We do this with a proprietary, proven strategy that generates results.

Here’s how it works:

• They determine your exact needs by reviewing your site, your business, and your competition.
• They research and select the most effective keywords for your site - the keywords that will bring in the targeted traffic you’ve been dreaming about! Fully supported by extensive research on which phrases and words are going to generate the greatest number of hits for your site. The result? A viable long-term strategy, not the usual 'quick-fix' scheme.
• They optimize your site, creating pages that get you top positions in the search engines. We focus on making your site attractive to the most popular search engines and also submit your site to 2 of the most popular, high-traffic directories - Open Directory and NBCi.

   

  LINKS FROM OTHER SITES

  In additional to getting listed in search engines, another way for your site to be found is through similar sites so try to arrange for your site to be listed on as many relevant sites as possible. Use search engines to find appropriate sites and suggest that they might like to add your site details to their site. Usually you'll need to place a link to their site on yours. One of the factors that affects your rating with search engines is the frequency with which your website address appears on other websites, so this will also help your visibility.

  One piece of software that I'd recommend using for improving the link popularity of your site is Zeus, available from Zeus Internet Marketing. A free trial version is available.

  If you are familiar with traditional ad link programs, you will know that you usually have to choose, one by one, the types of web sites that you want your links to appear on. At LinkOutbreak.com, they do it differently. Upon sign up, they instantly expose your ads to a massive number of member sites. Then, at your convenience, you just specify which sites you do not want to swap links with.

  LinkOutbreak.com is a truly automated link swapping system which means you'll get instant new links each time a new member joins the pool. In addition you get free use of their Search Engine Submitter Tool with a Link Popularity tool coming soon. LinkOutbreak.com review search engine guidelines regularly to ensure compliance.

  LinkDash.com is an automated reciprocal link exchange service - You can boost your Link Popularity by joining their directory of participating partner websites. Optional paid service enables your links to be added to other sites without the requirement to add links to your site.

  See http://www.homeworkinguk.com/adclicks.htm for more details of sites that sell links without the need to add links on your site.

http://www.searchenginewatch.com tells you all you need to know about the top search engines. Visit the site and subscribe to the free newsletter.

http://www.linkpopularity.com will tell you how many sites are linked to you. Also useful to look at which companies link to your competitors for compiling a list of companies for you to approach with a view to adding your details to their site.

www.andys-now2business.co.uk - Business to Business site offering free listing within 2 working days, generous descriptions, listing in up to 3 categories and the option to suggest new categories.

In addition to getting your site listed with the various search engines, you can also pay for an enhanced listing so that your site is featured prominently whenever your chosen search phrases are used. Generally you then pay a fixed sum each time someone visits your site from these links.

Yahoo and Google, with their recently launched Adwords, are particularly highly recommended.

Google AdWords™ enables you to manage your own account, and with cost-per-click (CPC) pricing, you pay only when users click on your ad. You control your costs by setting a daily budget for what you are willing to spend each day. Only £5 is required to activate your account with CPCs starting at just four pence in the UK. There's no minimum spending requirement or time commitment, and you can change or suspend your campaigns whenever you want from an online control panel.

A qualified Google Adwords Consultant can maximise the best return on your marketing investment and bring new customers to your business. As a fully qualified Adwords consultant, CIM certified, experienced internet marketer Paul Smith can ensure that your Adwords campaign is configured correctly to achieve the lowest possible price-per-click whilst maximising your click-through-rate.

To find out more or get a free, no-obligation consultation, visit our Google Adwords Consultant or give Paul a call on 08700 343 880 (office hours 9am - 5pm).

Yahoo! Search Marketing allows companies to appear in front of customers expressly searching for what they sell by appearing at the top of search results on sites such as Yahoo!, MSN, Altavista, Wanadoo, Lycos and many more. Start with £50 credit in your new Yahoo! Search Marketing account and attract customers to your site for as little as £20 a month.

For a more in-depth look at pay per click sites and resources, visit http://www.homeworkinguk.com/ppc.htm

If you only ever read one book to help you with your website, then that book should be Make Your Site Sell , the bible for anyone wanting to make money online. Now with over 1500 pages, but without doubt you won't be wasting any of the time you spend with this book. Whether you've still to decide what to sell, whether you need to know how to get visitors to buy or whether you simply need to get visitors to your site, MYSS not only tells you exactly what to do, in terms that a complete beginner will understand, but it will save you hours by showing you what doesn't work, or no longer works.

You can download it for FREE from http://myss.sitesell.com/websuccessstory.html

There are many free e-zines offering advice for successful on-line marketing, including search engine submissions. Most of them aren't worth the time it takes to delete but some are absolute gems. Take a look at my newsletter page for a list of the best.