Chapter Five...
The All Important Search Engine Submission Chapter

In this chapter I'll be talking about search engine submission.

Search engine submission is a great way to gain steady site traffic very cheaply.

According to Media Metrix, 85-95 percent of all internet traffic comes from the top 10-12 search engines.

That means that the vast majority (millions and millions) of people find sites by seeing them listed at the major search engines.

If you can get your site listed on those major search engines, you can get a piece of that traffic.

Plus search engine traffic is highly targeted!

We'll pretend you have a site about Dogs. When a person goes to the search engines and types in the word "dog" a link to your site will appear leading them straight to you. You can't get any more targeted than that.

How do you get listed on those major search engines?

That's the hard part. Getting your site listed at the major search engines is almost a science in itself. There's an entire industry of experts who get paid for doing nothing more than getting people's web sites listed at the search engines.

People charge a lot of money to do this for you. Anywhere from a few hundred dollars to several thousands dollars. Most also charge maintenance fees of several hundred dollars per month to make sure that your site stays listed at the top of the search engines.

(this is because each month, as other people submit their sites to be listed, YOUR site can get pushed further down the list. You need to resubmit your site every month to keep a high listing).

Very few beginners can afford to pay this kind of cash, plus it's hard to even find a good company to handle this work for you. You never know who the real search engine submission experts are.

First we need to talk about search engine optimization.

You must optimize your site in order to get it listed on the search engines. This means you have to add a few things to your web site so that it has the best chance of getting listed at the search engines.

Search engines optimization is no big deal if you know what to do...and I'm going to tell you everything you need to know.

The first thing is Meta Tags.

Meta Tags

What are meta tags? Meta tags are small HTML tags that you place on your web page. When you submit your site to the search engines, the search engines send automated robots, called spiders, to your web site.

The spiders automatically scan all the content of your site. They then take this information and use it to determine where to list you on their search engine.

If you have a site about dogs for instance, the spiders will scan your site, see that it is about dogs, and report to the search engine that your site should be listed under the dogs category.

One of the main things the spiders check is your meta tags. These tags tell the spiders what your site is all about.

There are 2 tags you should have, the keyword meta tag and the description meta tag.

As the names suggest, these two tags tell the search engines a description of your site and suggest some keywords to list your site under.

These two tags look like this, and should be placed between your web pages <head> and </head> tag:

Notice that the keywords in the keywords meta tag are separated by commas.

It's pretty straight forward.

Meta tags aren't the only thing spiders look for on your site. They also check your site Title. By title, I mean whatever you have written in your title tag on your web page.

<html>
<head>
<title>Joe’s Dog World Web Site</title>
<meta name="description" content="Dog World, Learn about dog breeds, buy dog toys, get advice on dog training, read about different dog foods">
<meta name="keywords" content="Dogs, Dog Training, Dog Health, Dog Toys, Pet, Dog breeding, Dog breeds, Dog Food, Personalized Dog Collars">
</head>

See the <title> and </title> tag above? The words between those two tags are your site’s title. In this case, its Joe’s Dog World Web Site.

Since the spiders check this and use what they find to help determine where to list your site at the search engines, you should use your keywords in your title. For this site, I would use something like this as my title:

<title>Dog World - Dogs, Dog Training, Dog Health, Dog Toys, Pet, Dog breeding, Dog breeds, Dog Food, Personalized Dog Collars </title>

Do you see how I used the keywords from my keyword meta tag in the title? You should do this same thing.

The spiders also look at the text content of your site. They look at all the words on your web page. We call the words on your web page it's "copy". So incorporate your keywords throughout your site's copy.

Link Popularity

Many search engines will also look at how popular your site is and take that into account when determining how high up the list to rank your site.

How do they determine how popular your site is? They look at how many other sites are linking to you. Their spiders, when checking a web site, also check all the links on the web site.

If lots of other sites are linking to your site, the spiders will determine your site is more popular.

In my opinion, that's a little silly, but that's what the search engines do.

As a new web site, you may not have many other sites linking to your site. The way to fix this is to post on message boards and guest books across the Internet.

Find message boards where people discuss topics similar to your site. Jump into any conversations on the message boards, or start your own conversations. At the end of each message you post, put a link to your web site.

Next submit those message board pages to the search engines. The search engines will send their spiders to those message boards, see your links to your site, and give your own site a higher link popularity!

The Most Important Search Engine Optimization Tip

You'll notice that everything so far has had to deal with your keywords. Using them in the keyword meta tag, using them in your site's title, and using them throughout your site's copy.

That's because the keywords you choose are the most important part of search engine optimization.

You have to pick the right keywords or all your work will be for nothing.

Why is this? Let's say you choose a keyword that no one searches for at the search engines. If no one searches for that keyword, then no one will see your site listed at the search engines and therefore no one will come to your web site!

But HOW do you know which keywords will attract the most people?

If you knew that, then you could make a fortune right? If you knew how many times per month that someone searched for a certain keyword at the search engines, you could use that keyword throughout your site's meta tags, site title and site copy, and therefore get listed at the search engines under that keyword, and therefore get a whole lot of site traffic.

Right? Yes, that's right.

You must choose keywords that get searched for often at the search engines. Period.

Some Search Engine Submission Pitfalls To Avoid

There are some things to steer clear of. Most of these things won't pertain to you, but I thought I would discuss them anyway just to be sure.

Spam. Search Engines hate spam. How does one spam the search engines? Well for one, by listing hundreds and thousands of keywords in your keyword meta tag. Search engines frown upon this.

I recommend you keep your keywords to about 20-30 different keywords in your keyword meta tag. That number is perfectly acceptable to the search engines.

Keywords can be single words like dog or phrases like dog collars. Phrases can be counted as one keyword when determining how many keywords to list...so "dog ollars" would be counted as one keyword.

Another way to spam the search engines (and this is the big one) is to submit your site to the search engines dozens of times per day. Some people set up programs that will submit their sites thousands of times a day hoping to get listed higher. The only thing these people will get is banned from the search engines!

Submit your site once or twice a month (I recommend once every 3 weeks) and you will have nothing to worry about.

As a final thought on search engine submission I would like to say this. Is search engine submission the end all be all of web site promotion? No it's not. You'll want to focus more on other methods mentioned in this book.

Get your site listed, spend a few days each month monitoring it and maintaining your listing, but don't focus completely on it and neglect some of the other tactics from this book.

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