Search Engine Submission Part 2

What you need to know about search engine submission, Part 2
by Terry Stanfield

In part one we discussed the need to have your site indexed
by the major search engines and ordered to be found in the
search results. In this article we're going to discuss three
ways to have your site indexed, get into the search engines
database that are safe and will not get you banned by the
search engines.

Have another website (that is already indexed) link to your
site

Once a site is indexed or put into the search engines
database, the search engine spiders go out to those pages
anywhere for once a month to several times a day. You could
get a one way link back to your website from a site that is
already indexed the search engines will follow that link
back to your site and index it. The challenge care is to put
your link on the site that is related to what you do.
Ideally, the link back to your site is on a site that is
already considered an authority in your field. It is not a
good idea for a plumber to swap links with a web designer.
Speaking of swapping links, try and stay away from
reciprocal linking and buying text link ads, more about that
at a later date.

Publish an article or press release that has a link to your
site

This practice has several great advantages. One is that a
lot of those sites that allow you to publish your articles
are free and are indexed constantly because the sites are
constantly being updated with new content. Watch your
article is submitted to one of the sites it may take up to
two weeks to go through their editorial process and the
review. When sure article is approved, your site can be
indexed within a couple of days.

Sign up for paid search with each of the search engines

This is by far the fastest way to get your site indexed.
When you signed up for an Adwords account in Google your
website will be indexed immediately. It cost very little to
set up an account. You can put in just a couple of keywords
that you won a bid on and did very little so that your ad
does not show up on the first few pages.

A great strategy for getting your website indexed and
building links to your page

I would do a combination of first setting up a paid search
account with at least the top three search engines Google,
yahoo and MSN. Then I would start writing articles 500 to
600 words and start getting them published on as many
publishing websites that you can.

Search engine submissions are very important but if done
incorrectly can get you banned from the very search engines
are trying to get into.

Before you do anything go to Terry Stanfield's site for
information on Search
Engine Marketing and related info on Search
Engine Optimization.

Landing pages, Flypaper or Trampoline? By Terry Stanfield

Landing pages have the ability to grab and hold us like fly no-fly paper or repel us like jumping on the trampling. The question is what impact does your landing page have on the people who visit your website. As I talk to people who are just getting into SEO (search engine optimization), all they focus on our rankings in traffic. We have to remember that "rankings" and "traffic" are not the end but a means to the end. That end is visitors to your site that take advantage of the solutions that you offer. We can have a lot of traffic to our website but if no one is sticking around long enough to see if our solutions can solve their problems then that traffic does not mean anything. A lot of thought must go into your landing pages, both from a search engine perspective and from a customer perspective. From a Search Engine perspective: This is covered in Search Engines 101 Paid Vs Natural Search From a Customer Perspective: Your landing page has to do one thing, answer the questions that the searcher had in mind when he typed in his key words. The searcher type in his search terms because he has a problem, needs a solution or is in some kind of "pain". You have about two seconds to convince him that you understand what he is going through and what he needs. The last thing a searcher wants to see is that you can jump higher, run faster and do it better than the competition. He just doesn't care (yet). Besides, most of the websites that he already visited probably stated that they do that. The challenge is to show the searcher that you have the answers to his needs. How do we do that? 1. Think of as many questions as you can that might be on the mind of a visitor to that specific landing page. 2. Choose one of the questions to be the title of that specific landing page. Use the other questions as sub points or topics in the outline of the page. 3. The content underneath each heading will be a description of the problem. It is very important that when you describe the problem you do it from your client's perspective. 4. After describing two or three scenarios that your client may fall into closeout with the paragraph that describes your qualifications for dealing with the above scenarios. This is where you put in how me years of experience, the combined experience of your team or your experience in the marketplace. 5. The last thing is to have a call to action. The idea is that if your client falls into one of the scenarios described it would be natural for them to do the call for action to get help with their problem. For example, if someone is doing a search on long-term care insurance they may only have a general idea of what you're looking for. When they come to a landing page that has a question like "what happens to your nest egg if you suffer an illness or an injury that requires long-term care?" Then in the description of the problem they read that one year of long-term care can cost between $90,000 and $130,000 and as a result of this high costs it will either force you into bankruptcy or dependency on your children or family to take care of you. (Not a pretty picture.) After you add your qualifications, whatever they are, you put in your call to action. It could be something like "for a free quote and help in understanding what your options are fill out form below and one of our experts will contact you within the next 48 hours". So the question remains, are your landing pages flypaper or trampolines? If you are not sure give us a call and we will do a free evaluation of your site. This will help determine whether or not changes or in order. Terry Stanfield is a SEM consultant with over 15 years of sales and marketing experience. His company, Clickadvantage, manages PPC and SEO efforts for his lead generation and ecommerce clients. For more information: Landing pages, Flypaper or Trampoline?