Website as Storefronts

A customer walks into the store, browses through products and shelves, picks up items, inspects, considers the prices, chooses a product and takes it to the cash register to pay. Now if you want to sell your products online, then your site must be enabled for e-commerce, where you must have the following features:

 

• You need to provide plenty of content and product description like sizes, dimensions, colors and comparisons with other similar products. It must allow the customer to choose a product, get a clear pricing and shipping costs on the product, complete the transaction and get an order number, and/or invoice confirmation via email. Allow your customer to choose a shipping method.

• You must tell the customer if the item is in stock or delivered against order. Ideally, you should have an email contact or live help if the customer has a question. Most importantly you must respond immediately! If you want to provide your own live chat and help desk services on your website, specialized software are available for purchase. 

• Be sure your customer service links are large and clearly marked, so your client does not have to dig around to find information.

• Provide an ‘about us’ section or a section about your policies. If you have privacy statements and customer satisfaction policies, your customer will feel better about shopping in your store.

• You probably want to have customer quotes and references on the storefront page, as well, to let your prospective client know that others are happy with your service.

• Provide an FAQ with information about your return-back policies, guarantees, shipping prices and insurance charges if any.

• If you are so inclined, you can offer a print catalogue if the customer prefers to order one from your storefront and shop in the privacy of their homes.

• Do not annoy your customers by presenting products that are marked ‘sold’ or pages that say ‘under construction’ or ‘coming soon’.

• Do add new content frequently, so your returning customers will not be bored by seeing the same products they saw four months ago.

• If your site has got a date tag or has current references, be careful to change these references frequently so you don’t give the perception that nobody is attending or reading your site.

 

What Is Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization is a process of choosing the most appropriate targeted keyword phrases related to your site and ensuring that this ranks your site highly in search engines so that when someone searches for specific phrases it returns your site on tops. It basically involves fine tuning the content of your site along with the HTML and Meta tags and also involves appropriate link building process. 

The most popular search engines are Google and Bing. Search engines keep their methods and ranking algorithms secret, to get credit for finding the most valuable search-results and to deter spam pages from clogging those results. A search engine may use hundreds of factors while ranking the listings where the factors themselves and the weight each carry may change continually. Algorithms can differ so widely that a webpage that ranks #1 in a particular search engine could rank #200 in another search engine. 

New sites need not be "submitted" to search engines to be listed. A simple link from a well-established site will get the search engines to visit the new site and begin to spider its contents. It can take a few days to even weeks from the referring of a link from such an established site for all the main search engine spiders to commence visiting and indexing the new site.

 

If you are unable to research and choose keywords and work on your own search engine ranking, you may want to hire someone to work with you on these issues.

 

Search engine marketing and promotion companies, will look at the plan for your site and make recommendations to increase your search engine ranking and website traffic. If you wish, they will also provide ongoing consultation and reporting to monitor your website and make recommendations for editing and improvements to keep your site traffic flow and your search engine ranking high. Normally your search engine optimization experts work with your web designer to build an integrated plan right away so that all aspects of design are considered at the same time.

An Introduction to the Three Biggest PPC Platforms

PPC has completely transformed the way that people advertise on the web. This is a new form of advertising for what is a very different medium – a very more interactive medium – than television or magazine.

 

PPC stands for ‘Pay Per Click’. What this means for advertisers is that they are only paying for each click. If their ad isn’t successful and no one clicks on it, then you don’t pay anything at all. That can mean free exposure sometimes! A bidding system comes into play whenever an advert is shown and that means that the cost of each click will depend on the amount of competition – again this is good news because it means that some advertisers will be getting nearly free visitors when there isn’t much competition.

 

At the same time though, because they can set their own ‘maximum bid’ for each click, this means that advertisers can decide precisely how much they are willing to pay for any new visitor. By keeping this lower than the amount they earn per visitor, they can nearly guarantee they will make a profit from those efforts.

 

Also, important though is targeting and this is where the differences between the different PPC platforms start to come into effect. Read on and we’ll take a look at the three big choices when it comes to starting a new PPC campaign.

 

Google AdWords

 

By far the biggest PPC network is Google AdWords. When you pay for adverts on Google AdWords, they will appear on the ‘SERPs’ or the ‘Search Engine Results Pages.’ Thus, you need to start by first choosing a keyword that you want to target. If you are selling hats for example then, you might choose to target the keyword ‘Buy Hats Online’. Of course, it’s important to think carefully about your keywords to ensure they don’t have too much competition.

 

Google is the biggest search engine means that you’ll gain access to the most visitors – but you’ll also pay the most due to the other advertisers.

 

Bing Ads

 

Bing Ads is a very similar system but for Bing instead of Google. Bing is of course the big search engine from Microsoft which accounts for 20% of the market share and an additional 10% through Yahoo!. This is not a small amount.

 

More importantly, Bing has less competition, meaning that you’ll end up paying less. Specifically, you’ll pay 33.5% less, which is again a big deal. Bing also has a lot of powerful tools for targeting the right users.

 

Facebook Ads

 

Finally, Facebook Ads work the same but appear on Facebook based on the information that users give Facebook about them. This can include age, sex, and location but also things like hobbies and interests or even job title!

 

Another big benefit of Facebook Ads is that you can create more media-rich options that have images or even short videos. Likewise, you have the option to choose ‘CPA’ which means ‘Cost Per Action’, and only charges if someone signs up to your mailing list.

 

Learn from one of the best Microsoft Ads courses!

 

Microsoft Ads Training Kit: Step-by-Step Tutorial Videos To Start Using Microsoft Ads For Your Business & Boost Profits!

https://tankwanhong.xyz/courses/microsoft-ads-training

 

How to Find the Best Keywords for Your PPC Campaign?

What makes a great PPC campaign? What makes the difference between a waste of cash that you never get back and a campaign that you can use to continuously keep growing and scaling your organization?

 

While there are a lot of factors, you could certainly make the argument that one of the most important of these is the keywords. Your keywords are of course the search terms that you’re going to target. With both Google AdWords and Bing Ads, you’re going to be advertising in such a way that your ads end up showing on search engine results pages for specific searches. You can then choose precisely which searches bring up your adverts and this is going to impact how sees the ads and what difference this makes for your success.

 

So, the question is: how do you go about picking the right keywords? What is the difference between a good keyword and a bad one?

 

Let’s take a closer look…

 

The Basics

 

The basic idea behind your keyword choice is that you’re going to try and ensure that the phrase you pick is one that the right people are going to be looking for. Who are the right people? Of course, they’re the ones who are most likely to buy your product.

 

This is also how Facebook Ads work – it lets you choose the type of person you want to target by looking at the details they fill out such as their age, sex, location, and even hobbies and interests. The difference with a search term is that it is also time-sensitive. In other words, a search term will have a bigger impact on your eventual profits because you are showing ads to someone at the precise time that someone is actually looking for your site.

 

For example, if you’re trying to sell hats, then your search term would be ‘buy hats online.’ That means you’re not only targeting people who want hats but you’re also targeting people who want hats now.

 

So, when picking keywords, think about who and when.

 

Negative Keywords

 

One way you can make this a little more precise is to try and avoid certain search terms from showing your ads. This is what is known as a ‘negative keyword’ and a good example of this might be the word ‘free’. You don’t want people to click on your ad if they’re searching for free things, because they won’t be likely to want to buy anything off you – and that means they’re costing you money without earning you anything back.

 

Keyword Research

 

More important still is to do your research.

 

That means looking to find out just how often certain keywords get searched for, rather than assuming. For instance, some phrases that might at the first sound popular end up being surprisingly unpopular. This meaning of course that no one ever searches for them and thus they won’t bring any visitors.

 

Likewise, you also need to research the amount of competition for each keyword and aim for the terms that aren’t saturated!

 

Learn from one of the best Microsoft Ads courses!

 

Microsoft Ads Training Kit: Step-by-Step Tutorial Videos To Start Using Microsoft Ads For Your Business & Boost Profits!

https://tankwanhong.xyz/courses/microsoft-ads-training

 

How to Fit Bing Into Your Internet Marketing Campaign?

A great internet marketing campaign should be a campaign that is fought on many fronts. That means you need to have your fingers in lots of pies and you need to find lots of ways to reach the widest audience possible.

 

If you rely on just one method to build your brand and gain customers – whether that be PPC or SEO – then you’re going to end up too reliant on that single source of traffic and you’re going to greatly limit the number of visitors you can appeal to.

 

This is why it’s important to make sure that Bing fits into your campaign. But it’s also why Bing should only be one part of a much larger and multi-faceted assault. Read on to learn more about the different aspects of internet marketing and how they should all coalesce into one single strategy.

 

Content Marketing

 

One thing that every business can benefit from these days is a blog. Having a blog allows you to create content on your site and this will then give people a reason to come to your site.

 

The key to understanding here is that no one likes being sold to. If all your site is, is essentially one big advert, then you’re not giving people any reason to keep visiting. You’re not building loyal fans, trust, or a relationship. If the visitors don’t want to buy then and there, then they will simply leave.

 

By creating great content, you give people a reason to want to find you and this will gain you regular traffic.

 

Email Marketing

 

If you can’t capture sales, then capturing emails is the next best thing. This converts cold leads into warm leads and it gives you a huge list of people you can potentially sell to.

 

Social Media

 

Social media has a similar end goal to email marketing. This gives you a way to reach the people who have proclaimed themselves your fans and it allows them to share your content and to help more people find you. It also lets you build a closer relationship with your potential customers.

 

SEO

 

One part of this is creating lots of great content, which you should already be doing. The other part of this is having lots of inbound links to your site and lots of people sharing what you do. You can encourage this by writing great content and being active on social media. This will help you to reach the top of Google and Bing for different ‘search terms’.

 

PPC

 

Now let’s talk about PPC. This is a tool you can use to pay to reach the top of the search engines right away for your chosen keywords. That means you need to be making money back from these searches, so normally it will be used as means to send targeted visitors right to your sales page or eCommerce store. You can also use this as a way to ‘test’ the organic keywords to try and rank for with SEO though.

 

Using Google and Bing makes sure you gain 100% of this audience and it also helps you to avoid direct competition in some cases. Bing is more affordable and has fewer advertisers competing for the same few spots!

 

Learn from one of the best Microsoft Ads courses!

 

Microsoft Ads Training Kit: Step-by-Step Tutorial Videos To Start Using Microsoft Ads For Your Business & Boost Profits!

https://tankwanhong.xyz/courses/microsoft-ads-training

 

How to Identify Your Buyer Persona?

If you’re going to have a successful PPC campaign, then one of the single most important things to have in mind is your target demographic. In other words, you need to be sure that you’re showing your adverts to the right people to ensure that those viewers are going to convert and become buyers. Otherwise, you’re just wasting your money.

 

By properly profiling who your buyer is, you can that way create a better advertising campaign that will result in more sales. So how do you do that?

 

The Basic Demographics

 

To start with, you need to consider the most basic factors that makeup demographics. That means categorizing your potential buyers in terms of their age, their sex, and their location.

 

Who buys the products that you sell? Are they young or old? Do they have a big income or a small one?

 

To a large extent, this will be obvious – for instance, if you’re selling wedding dresses, then you can safely assume that your target demographic is female. In other cases though, the demographic might be both or it might not easily fall into one category.

 

So, what can you do in this case to make sure that you’re targeting the right person?

 

One way to do this is with a little market research. You can look at the metrics of who has bought from you so far for example, or you can simply survey your visitors. Who is it that buys from you? Likewise, you might be able to find information about other products or brands that are similar to yours.

 

You can also ascertain a fair amount by looking at your web stats. If you have Google Analytics set up, or you have web stats on WordPress, then you can see what people are searching but also the location they’re coming from and even how long each person stays on your site!

 

The Persona

 

But this does not yet give you your full buyer ‘persona’. That’s because a person is more than just a collection of statistics; a persona is an entire fictional biography based on what a person likes, what their hobbies are, and more. You need to try and get inside the mind of that person to better understand what they might want to spend their money on, where they will be at any given time and what they will be likely to search for. 

 

To do this, it can help to have an idea of the ‘why’ behind what you do. Make sure your brand has a mission statement and think about what it is you want to achieve as a company. When you do this, you’ll then be able to find people who believe what you believe and who are like-minded. These are going to be your long-term customers with longer ‘lifetime customer value. That means they’re the ones you want to advertise to get the very best ROI in the long term!

 

Learn from one of the best Microsoft Ads courses!

 

Microsoft Ads Training Kit: Step-by-Step Tutorial Videos To Start Using Microsoft Ads For Your Business & Boost Profits!

https://tankwanhong.xyz/courses/microsoft-ads-training

 

How to Increase Your Conversions?

Want to increase the success of your PPC campaign? Then it might pay to look elsewhere, other than the actual PPC campaign itself. 

 

For example, you might want to look at your website itself. If you can increase the conversion rate on your website, which means that more people will buy products from you. If more people buy products from you for the same number of visitors, then that means that you’ll be able to earn more money from your site, which in turn means that you can spend more per click on each visitor. That, in turn, means your ad will be seen more, bringing in more customers and scaling up your profits even higher. It’s a ‘virtuous circle’. 

 

So how do you go about increasing your conversion rate? There are a few things you can do…

Sales Copy

 

The main thing that will help you to sell more from your site is good sales copy. This is the persuasive writing you’ll add to your website that will convince people that your products are worth buying and that they should make a purchase.

 

So, what can you do to increase that sales cop? A whole lot!

 

First of all, you need to make sure that your sales copy is gripping and that it is holding the attention of your visitors. People have very short attention spans these days and if they have to wait more than a minute to find out what your site is about then they’ll often just leave without waiting.

 

To grab them right away, one thing you can try is to use a narrative structure. That means phrasing your sales pitch like a story – perhaps telling the tale of how the product helped you. We are naturally inclined to pay attention to stories, so if you do this right, then it will be hard for people to turn away.

 

Another thing you can do is to make sure that your readers can skim through your content if they want to. These days, most people do not thoroughly read content and instead just briefly skim over it. That’s why you need to make sure that you are including all of the relevant information in each headline: so that people can read through quickly and still be sold to.

 

You also need to make sure you build trust, remove risk and remove ‘buyers’ guilt’. To do the first part, you can allude to stats and statistics and use ‘social proof’ (like reviews). To remove risk, you need to make sure that you are offering a comprehensive money-back guarantee. And to remove guilt, you need to demonstrate how your product is of good value. Ideally, it should even be an investment!

 

The Value Proposition

 

Most important of all though is to have a ‘value proposition’, which will help you to sell the lifestyle and the emotion that your product is promising to deliver. How does your product make life better? What’s the dream? Make sure your readers can feel the emotion of being fitter, healthier, wealthier, or happier!

 

Learn from one of the best Microsoft Ads courses!

 

Microsoft Ads Training Kit: Step-by-Step Tutorial Videos To Start Using Microsoft Ads For Your Business & Boost Profits!

https://tankwanhong.xyz/courses/microsoft-ads-training

 

Time Management and Article Directories

Do you work as an internet marketer? Whether you are a marketer for hire or if you work only on your own websites, you will likely turn to article directories. Article directories, like EzineArticles.com, are a great way to generate traffic to a product, service, or website. To get full use of article directories, you must also rely time management.

 

Article directories are large websites where articles are shared. These articles are written by internet users and uploaded for free. It is not uncommon for large article directories to carry hundreds of thousands of articles. Many use article directories for fun or to share an opinion, but they are a good internet marketing tool.

 

As an internet marketer, you can benefit from submitting content to article directories. They help to generate traffic. To get started write or hire a freelance writer to compose an article for you. This article should be related to what you are marketing. Do you want to increase page views for a dog grooming website? If so, write articles on the subject.

 

When submitting articles to directories, you will find a link or resource box. Many authors write a summary of their career or their interests. You can use this to generate traffic for a website or even a blog. Create a catchy phrase such as “Click here for more dog grooming tips.” By making your links clickable, interested readers will click.

 

Not only do article directories generate links at the end of an article, but they do so through distribution. Many directories make your articles available for use. This means your work may appear on other websites. Yes, this may be a big turn off at first, but all links and resource boxes must stay intact. This means that your link will still be present and clickable. In a way, this results in marketing without extra steps on your part.

 

When submitting articles to article directories, some content will do better than others. As previously stated, compose articles that are inline with the website, product, or service you intend to market. These articles should useful to read, not outright advertisements, and contain relevant keyword phrases. Most importantly, always include a link.

 

So, where does time management come in?

 

Submitting content to article directories with links is not the only internet marketing method. In fact, it is not the only step you should take. There are many other ways to market a website, product, or service online and you should do so. For that reason, divide your time wisely. One day you can submit an article to an article directory, the next you can host a contest on your website, then buy advertisements, and so forth.

 

Article directories are a great way to generate interest and clicks, but you will typically see short bursts of traffic. This is because article directories like to focus their attention on newer articles. These are articles that will appear on the front page of a website or high in search rankings. For that reason, you want to spread your time and your content out evenly, meaning you have to manage your time.

 

So, what is the best way to manage your time when using article directories as an internet marketing tactic?

 

It is best to submit articles on a weekly basis. For example, submit one article one week, two the next week, and then follow with one more. This will keep new fresh content with your website links appearing and on the front page or at the top of search results. Although you want to submit articles on a weekly basis, you can write them all at once and save until ready for submission.

 

By combining time management and article directories together, you will find one great internet marketing tactic. By submitting weekly content, as opposed to all at once, you will get new readers and hopefully more page views and sales.

How Do Search Engines Work - Web Crawlers

It is the search engines that finally bring your website to the notice of the prospective customers. Hence it is better to know how these search engines actually work and how they present information to the customer initiating a search.    

 

There are basically two types of search engines. The first is by robots called crawlers or spiders. 

 

Search Engines use spiders to index websites. When you submit your website pages to a search engine by completing their required submission page, the search engine spider will index your entire site. A ‘spider’ is an automated program that is run by the search engine system. Spider visits a web site, read the content on the actual site, the site's Meta tags and also follow the links that the site connects. The spider then returns all that information back to a central depository, where the data is indexed. It will visit each link you have on your website and index those sites as well. Some spiders will only index a certain number of pages on your site, so don’t create a site with 500 pages!

 

The spider will periodically return to the sites to check for any information that has changed. The frequency with which this happens is determined by the moderators of the search engine.

 

A spider is almost like a book where it contains the table of contents, the actual content and the links and references for all the websites it finds during its search, and it may index up to a million pages a day.

 

Example:  Excite, Lycos, AltaVista and Google.

 

When you ask a search engine to locate information, it is actually searching through the index which it has created and not actually searching the Web. Different search engines produce different rankings because not every search engine uses the same algorithm to search through the indices. 

 

One of the things that a search engine algorithm scans for is the frequency and location of keywords on a web page, but it can also detect artificial keyword stuffing or spamdexing. Then the algorithms analyze the way that pages link to other pages in the Web. By checking how pages link to each other, an engine can both determine what a page is about, if the keywords of the linked pages are similar to the keywords on the original page.

 

Keyword Density

Keyword density is an indicator of the number of times the selected keyword appears in the web page. But mind you, keywords shouldn’t be over used, but should be just sufficient enough to appear at important places.

 

If you repeat your keywords with every other word on every line, then your site will probably be rejected as an artificial site or spam site.

 

Keyword density is always expressed as a percentage of the total word content on a given web page.

 

Suppose you have 100 words on your webpage (not including HMTL code used for writing the web page), and you use a certain keyword for five times in the content. The keyword density on that page is got by simply dividing the total number of keywords, by the total number of words that appear on your web page. So here it is 5 divided by 100 = .05. Because keyword density is a percentage of the total word count on the page, multiply the above by 100, that is 0.05 x 100 = 5%

 

The accepted standard for a keyword density is between 3% and 5%, to get recognized by the search engines and you should never exceed it.

 

Remember, that this rule applies to every page on your site. It also applies to not just to one keyword but also a set of keywords that relates to a different product or service. The keyword density should always be between 3% and 5%.

 

Simple steps to check the density:

 

• Copy and paste the content from an individual web page into a word-processing software program like Word or Word Perfect.

• Go to the ‘Edit’ menu and click ‘Select All’. Now go to the ‘Tools’ menu and select ‘Word Count’. Write down the total number of words in the page.

• Now select the ‘Find’ function on the ‘Edit’ menu. Go to the ‘Replace’ tab and type in the keyword you want to find. ‘Replace’ that word with the same word, so you don’t change the text.

• When you complete the replace function, the system will provide a count of the words you replaced. That gives the number of times you have used the keyword in that page.

• Using the total word count for the page and the total number of keywords you can now calculate the keyword density.

 

Must Have Features Your Web Site

Just don’t focus on the home page, keywords and titles.

 

The first step to sales when customers visit your site to see the products they were looking for. Of course, search engine optimization and better rankings can’t keep your customer on your site or make them buy. The customer having visited your site, now ensure that he gets interested in your products or services and stays around. Motivate him to buy the product by providing clear and unambiguous information. Thus, if you happen to sell more than one product or service, provide all necessary information about this, may be by keeping the information at a different page. By providing suitable and easily visible links, the customer can navigate to these pages and get the details. 

 

Understanding Your Target Customer.

 

If you design a website, you think will attract clients, but you don’t really know who your customers are and what they want to buy, it is unlikely you make much money. Website business is an extension or replacement for a standard storefront. You can send email to your existing clients and ask them to complete a survey or even while they are browsing on your website. Ask them about their choices. Why do they like your products? Do you discount prices or offer coupons? Are your prices consistently lower than others? Is your shipping price cheaper? Do you respond faster to client questions? Are your product descriptions better? Your return policies and guarantees better than your competitor’s? To know your customer, you can check credit card records or ask your customer to complete a simple contact form with name, address, age, gender, etc. when they purchase a product.

 

Does your website give enough contact information? 

 

When you sell from a website, your customer can buy your products 24 hrs a day and also your customers may be from other states that are thousands of miles away. Always provide contact information, preferably on every page of your website, complete with mailing address, telephone number and an email address that reaches you. People may need to contact you about sales, general information or technical problems on your site. Also have your email forwarded to another email address if you do not check your website mailbox often. When customer wants to buy online provide enough options like credit card, PayPal or other online payment service.

 

Some other Keyword Research Tools

One need to choose those keywords that are frequently searched for and which is in high demand, but not being already used by many other websites and competitors, and thus has low competition. There are a number of keyword research tools that can help you find them.

 

Apart from the Wordtracker which was already discussed in an other article, we have some more equally important research tools like the Overture, Google AdWords Keyword and Guidebeam. 

 

Overture's http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ keyword suggestion tool is free and much quicker to use than Wordtracker. It works more like the Wordtracker but doesn't tell you how many websites are targeting each keyword phrase. For example, if you type ‘Computer’, the Overture search suggestion tool will tell you that during the last month the word ‘Computer’ was searched, say for example 459550 times at overture.com. Similarly, 'computer game' was searched 302210 times. Also, given one word it will tell you all relevant combinations of that word, which are based on actual searches done by people. If the word you keyed in is not a common search term then you will not get any results. It means that very few people have actually searched for that word during the last month.

 

Even Google Keyword Tool generates potential keywords for your ad campaign and reports their Google statistics, including search performance and seasonal trends. Features of this tool include:

 

• Sorting the results of your desired keyword search by popularity, past performance history within the AdWords system, cost, and predicted ad position. 

• Easy keyword manipulation where you can select a few keywords here and there or add them all at once. 

• Searches for keywords present even in any webpage URL specified by your search. It can also expand your keyword search even further to include those pages that are linked to or from the original URL page.

• More keyword results are generated based on regularly updated usage statistics database. This helps you to get new keywords or phrases.

 

Guidebeam http://www.guidebeam.com/  is an interesting resource. Type in a phrase and it will suggest a large number of related searches. The numbers generated against each phrase are Guidebeam's estimation of how relevant that phrase is.

 

These softwares are useful for researching how people search the web and then optimizing your own web pages so that more people find your web site.

 

Submitting Your Website to Search Engines

If you have a web-based business or if a significant portion of your business is done on the web through your website, then the best advertising and marketing is done by submitting to a search engine. No amount of press release, newspaper or radio ad, banner ad, spam email or newsletter will achieve the same results, although, maybe effective in a small proportion.

 

Beware of companies that promise automatic submission of your website to hundreds of search engines which are but only false promises. The best way to submit your website for search engine ranking and inclusion is to do it yourself or to hire an expert to do it manually, by contacting the search engine companies and directories.

 

Before you begin to submit your website to search engines ensure your websites are thoroughly designed to the professional quality using the right key words, good graphics and pictures and the relevant content. Don’t submit websites that are incomplete. While submitting to a search engine, make sure to provide information about your website, keywords and any other information that may be pertinent, including the name and contact information of your business. 

 

Mere submission to search engine companies does not guarantee that your site would be immediately listed and the ranking will be high. Because there are thousands of new websites coming up every day and it may take quite sometime before they take up your site for review by human editors. One important factor to remember while submitting site is to include a site map of your website which makes the crawling easy for the web robots. Search engines like ‘http://www.google.com’ hardly considers submissions without sitemaps.

 

There are many online companies that accept search engine submission services. You can choose to do it yourself with a software package and service like this one:

 

• http://www.webposition.com/order/trial.asp?WT.mc_id=google%3A%7Bifsearch%3Asearch%7D%7Bifcontent%3Acontent%7D%3A%7Bcreative%7D%3Atrial%3A%7Bkeyword%7D&WT.srch=1

 

Or if you want professional help try the following sites:

 

• http://www.addpro.com/professional_submission

• http://www.submitawebsite.com/aboutus.html

 

Don’t use the automatic submission services.

 

Here is a list of the most popular Search Engines and directory companies:

 

Search Engines

 

• Go.com/InfoSeek AltaVista

• Google, HotBot

• Excite/Webcrawler

 

Directories

 

• AOL Search Inktomi

• Lycos Open Directory

• MSN, Yahoo!

• LookSmart Snap

 

Apart from the above there are thousands of search engines and directory companies, where you can submit your website to as many companies as possible. The following links gives info on other search engines and directories:

 

• http://websearch.about.com/library/searchengine/blsearchenginesatoz.htm

• http://websearch.about.com/library/tableofcontents/blsearchenginetableofcontents.htm