Search engines

[holmer]

Hi all,

I got my website running about 6 months ago and the local outfit that helped me set it up submitted it to the "Search Engines Powers That Be" to be listed for a fee of $150. That was 6 months ago and so far the only place I can find myself is on the Yahoo! search engine. I figured 150 bones would do better than that.

Yesterday I received an email from workmiracle.com They offered to list me with 300,000 search engines for $89. How do you know who is legit?

I am wondering how DO you get your website listed? What works for you guys? Thanks

[DonTx]

Hey Holmer,

You got ripped for $150 bucks in my opinion. Most of those "submit your site to 1 million search engines" type of business's are scams or very close to being scams.

How many search engines can you name?

The only search engines you need to worry about are the big ones; Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL.

Many of those "search engines" those companies submit too are non players. Many do not even exist any longer. Besides, they use a program for sumission. That may or may not get you on the search engine.

Save you money and do it yourself.

If you must use a company, you can try this one. I used a company called I Need Hits (www.ineedhits.com).

If your site does not have the proper keywords and meta tags, you can forget about ever getting anywhere on the above mentioned search engines.

If Machias is as small of a town as I think it might be, you may be better off advertising in places such as the Yahoo Yellow Pages, Verizon

SuperPages...etc. You should also do well by having your website address on every piece of paper you have.

Best of Luck and stay away from those bulk submitters!

Donald

[Chad Fabry]

Hi Eric,

Mike Brown (one of the people who put this forum together) made my site. It cost more than 150, but it's on every search engine you ever heard of. Additionally, I subscribe to the Google "pay per click" advertising, and after some tweaking with key words and telling them I'd be willing to pay 200 dollars a day for results, I'm getting 2 or three hits a day from that. The maximum you're willing to spend isn't what you get charged. I have my max per click cost at 3 dollars which places my ad in the top three, but the most I've ever been charged is 37 cents. The most I've spent in a month is 19 dollars. If you're interested in this I can help some setting it up and you past the learning curve with good keywords (keyword results are tracked and graphed so you can keep modifying the list) You can customize the target audience by keyword and geographic location so only the people you want click your site can see the ad. I set mine for 120 miles around Rochester.

Register @ DMOZ.org and then about a year later they'll actually get around to listing you.

You can reach Mike Brown by email: Mike@devwave.com

[holmer]

Thanks for the information gentlemen. Those are helpful suggestions. Happy 4th!

[hoptoo]

How funny much of this is.

For such an in demand service I cannot believe the competition is not tougher for top spots.

You have a great domain name for ranking in yahoo as it is the only SE that takes that into regard. The longevity of your domain makes it easy to work into the top spots on google, as they are favorable toward older domains.

YOU SHOULD not ever "need" to submit your site anywhere.

Submitting to directories for free links and exposure is smart but search engines will find you if you put links anywhere accessible.

We just did the site for tampa market, and were #1 ranking for every combination of tampa home inspector on Yahoo and MSN within 7 days. The market is soft with poor seo competition. Google will just take time but will get to the top as well.

I could have you site in a #1 spot on a couple of the big engines in one month for maine home inspectors with little problem.

mike + @ + hoptoo.com if you wanted to discuss it.