Re: Help getting quality traffic through search engines...

From: Kim Weston <westonkim_at_hotmail.com>
Date: Wed 27 Feb 2002 16:13:40 -0600

Dear Jan Hviid,

As a search engine optimization specialist, this gives
me the opportunity to answer your question.

* Yahoo Express Submission
Yahoo has both a human-edited directory and a spider
based index provided by Google. Sponsored results are
provided by Overture and appear at the top of
the results page and additional entries are presented
at the bottom of the page whenever a next page is
available. Yahoo Express Submission guarantees that
your site will get reviewed with 7 days; however, it
does not guarantee that your site will get into the
directory or where it will be placed. Even though a
Yahoo listing might not get you direct traffic and/or
sales, the impact Yahoo has on your site's link
popularity is extremely high. So if you rely on
traffic from Google, Inktomi (MSN Search, AOL Search,
HotBot, etc.), Fast Search (Lycos), and AltaVista, a
Yahoo listing has a major impact on your site's visibility
in those search engines. Why? Because all of the
major search engines measure popularity as part of their
algorithm. The quality of the links to your site matter
more than the quantity. So listings in Yahoo, LookSmart,
and Open Directory are extremely important for search
engine visibility.

* LookSmart Express Submit

The Looksmart directory is currently used by Altavista,
Excite, IWon, MSN. Looksmart claims to be included by
search engines that collectively provide 80+% of all
search results, making it the largest in usage of all
search engine data bases.

* Altavista Express inclusion

We have used the Alta Vista paid submission program.
When spidered our initial ranking was #12 for "search
engine optimization". Two days later we settled at #4.
When resubmitted thru the paid program we immediately
returned to #12, then 2 days later we were back to #4.
We believe that the paid submission spider was causing
us to decrease in ranking from #4 to #12. To avoid
this penalty, once we were #4 we changed the spidered
page (yes, you can do that) to another page from our
site. OPPS - the page ranked as #4 was immediately and
totally removed from the Alta Vista index. So it seems
that once you are paying for spidering, you must always
pay for spidering or you will be deleted from the alta
vista index.

* Google Adwords
* Google Adwords Select

For a very minimal amount of money (they charge a $5
set-up fee), you can set up a Google account and find
out which keywords might be the best to target in your
regular SEO campaign! You can learn how many people
type in your particular keyword phrases at Google by
looking at how many impressions your chosen keywords
receive. You don't pay anything unless someone actually
clicks on your ad. With the old AdWords program, you
had to buy impressions and pay, whether or not your ad
was clicked. This new program is also a cheap way to
create "branding" ads. Many people don't click on ads
just because they're ads (raising my hand as one of the
many!). But that doesn't mean they don't notice them
or read them. With this program, you're not paying
anything for branding your site under the keywords of
your choice.

* Inktomi Search/Submit
Inktomi is a search engine data base used by (that
powers) other search engines. You can view Inktomi's
results at any of their parnters sites. It is important
to rank well in the Inktomi data base because it powers
so many other sites. To rank well in Inktomi you should
you use keywords in the title and meta tags, use a high
frequency of keywords in the body, and use shorter
documents. Inktomi is a crawling spider technology and
thus any submission will lead to a full site being indexed.


* Overture
Overture is a search engine that auctions its rankings.
In other words, the more you pay per click (PPC) on your
results link, the higher your ranking. For each keyword
phrase, advertisers bid against each other for placement
within the search results. Below the paid listings,
Overture gives additionial results that are provided by
Inktomi. Not everyone needs pay-per-click engines. The
majority of our clients don't use pay-per-click
services and do just fine in terms of online visibility.

I hope this helps,

Kim Weston
91.20.5532334/5520483
Kim_at_enfusen.com
www.enfusen.com



Received on Wed Feb 27 2002 - 16:13:40 CST