Internet Marketing: Search Engine Submission and Marketing

"Search engine submission" refers to the act of getting your web site listed with search engines. Another term for this is search engine registration.

Getting listed does not mean that you will necessarily rank well for particular terms, however. It simply means that the search engine knows your pages exist.

Think of it like a lottery. Search engine submission is akin to you purchasing a lottery ticket. Having a ticket doesn't mean that you will win, but you must have a ticket to have any chance at all.

"Search engine optimization" refers to the act of altering your site so that it may rank well for particular terms, especially with crawler-based search engines (what these are will be explained later in this guide).

Returning to the lottery model, let's assume there was a way to increase the odds of winning by picking your lottery numbers carefully. Search engine optimization is akin to this. It's making sure that the numbers you select are more likely to win than purchasing a set of numbers at random.

Improve your search engine ranking

Most search engines finds its pages when our robots crawl the web and jump from page to page via hyperlinks. The best way to ensure listing on Yahoo or Google, is for a page to be linked from lots of other pages (hyperlinks).

No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.

Beware of SEO's that claim to guarantee rankings, or that claim a "special relationship" with popular seach engines such as MSN, Yahoo or Google, or that claim to have a "priority submit". There is no priority submit for MSN, Yahoo, Google. In fact, the only way to submit a site to these popular and important search engines, is by using the page at http://www.google.com/addurl.html. You can do this yourself at no cost whatsoever.

Ask for explanations if something is unclear. If an SEO creates deceptive or misleading content on your behalf, such as doorway pages or "throwaway" domains, your site could be removed entirely from search engine's index.

You should never have to link to a "free-for-all" pages

Avoid sites that talk about the power of "free-for-all" links, link popularity schemes, or submitting your site to thousands of search engines. These are typically useless exercises that do not affect your ranking in the results of the major search engines. At least, not in a way you would likely consider to be positive.

What are some other things to look out for?

There are a few warning signs you may be dealing with a rogue SEO. It's far from a comprehensive list, so if you have any doubts, you should trust your instincts. By all means, feel free to walk away if the SEO:

• owns hundreds even thousands of domains
• puts links to their other clients on doorway pages
• offers to sell keywords in the address bar
• doesn't distinguish between actual search results and ads that appear in search results
• guarantees ranking, but only on obscure, long keyword phrases you would get anyway
• operates with multiple aliases or falsified WHOIS info
• gets traffic from "fake" search engines, spyware, or scumware