Preparing Your Site for Search Engine Directory Submission

Successful submission of your site to major internet directories, such as Yahoo, Looksmart, or the Open Directory, require a specialized approach, significantly different from that necessary to success with the standard spider based search engines.

The evaluation of your site by these properties will be done manually, via either paid or volunteer editors, who are charged with the responsibility for ensuring that only sites of the highest quality achieve listings in each of the directories. In this circumstance, overall site quality, in the areas of presentation, content originality, speed of download, and general navigational ease will present themselves as primary in ensuring that a listing is achieved.

Rankings within that environment, once listed, will rely strongly upon only a few basic areas, including given title, description, and the category of listing. As many of these areas are entirely managed by the editor responsible for your selected category, ensuring basic site appeal and value can strongly impact their willingness to use your suggested title, and/or description, thus ensuring a high ranking.

The following outline the basics of ensuring an appealing site prior to submitting:

Rule #1 – Create Appeal

A site that is clearly put together quickly, and unprofessionally, does little to interest an editor who spends his or her day reviewing all manner of properties, including the very best. Take the time to develop your site properly, or utilize a skilled designer if you have not the time, or the interest to do so on your own. As noted elsewhere at Online for Success, keep the navigation intuitive, the pages quick to download, and the content well organized. All of these factors serve to assist in achieving an editor’s approval.

Rule #2 – Don’t Jump Too Quickly

Before submitting your site, ensure that all aspects of its construction are complete. There is little that will turn an editor’s eye elsewhere more quickly than a site with non-functioning links, or “under construction” graphics. If the property is not at a state of perfection, save the submission until you achieve it, as to submit early will surely result in the denial of your listing request, and potential difficulty with re-submitting down the road.

Rule #3 – Follow Their Rules

Each directory property has their own terms of submission, which is generally incorporated into their submission page(s). Take the time to read and understand these rules, as a failure to do so can result in either non-inclusion, or at worst, permanent banning of your property from the directory involved.

Once your site is fully complete, and of absolute value to the editor, and visitors it will achieve, it is imperative to understand the impacts of your submitted title, and description, as well as the category you select for the listing request. All directories follow a similar process, though the actualities of how listed sites are ranked during a search remain largely unknown.

The most important factors to consider when preparing your submission to Yahoo, Looksmart, or the Open Directory include:

Site Title

The title associated with your site is often dictated by the given name of your business. In most cases, directory terms of submission will inform submitters that all business sites must use their given name for listing. This is to help avoid scenarios where all ranking-aware site operators suggest names that begin with “A”, or “123”. As listings are generally alphabetical in the directory area, these issues can have a strong impact on traffic from that location.

It is also best to avoid listings that merely note your URL, such as onlineforsuccess.com . The combined format of this title would result in an inability of the search function to discern the keywords within that title, reducing the opportunity for search related success. Obviously, an important feature of your title is these incorporated keywords, which can often be dictated at the moment you select your domain name. Keeping this factor in mind early can be of substantial import at this juncture.

Site Description

As noted earlier, the final site description is always the decision of the editor involved in the evaluation process. It is imperative to recommend a description that will be effective, based upon standard keyword strategies, and satisfactory to the editor’s intent to provide only an accurate outline of your site’s content.

Incorporate carefully placed keywords that relate entirely to your site’s content, in as appealing, and efficient a manner as possible. Avoid suggestions that are mainly hype, as they do little to impress the area editor, and can result in a description entirely generated by them, which may miss the mark you were aiming for entirely.

Take the time to review other site descriptions in your category of interest, following their example to determine what the appropriate number of words, and keyword selections are effective for them. Do a search to see which sites rank highest, and determine the most potent mix of keywords and category to achieve that type of ranking for your internet property.

Due care taken pre-submission will ensure a positive impact on your business via the traffic, and thus sales, that can stem from a solid directory listing on sites such as Yahoo, Looksmart, and the Open Directory. Research thoroughly, implement carefully, and then prepare for your own version of online success.

Preparing Your Site for True Search Engine Popularity with Keywords

To this day, many budding web designers preparing their own piece of internet real estate often neglect to incorporate well thought out keywords or descriptions into their site design concept. Some leave the area untouched, while others choose to include hundreds of keywords, which in the end can have as little value as none at all.

Keywords, though an aging aspect of search engine inclusion and end placement, continue to play a role in those engines that are entirely spider based, scouring the internet for newcomers offering content of value to their visitors. Many of these sites consider some, or all of the following site inclusions when determining their overall ranking within their listings:

Title

Your site title should be succinct, no longer than six or seven words, and must include selected keyword(s), in a logical order, and in as sensible and appealing a fashion as can be developed. When listed, this area will be featured on the spider-based engines as your highlighted drawing card, and must have appeal to your customers in order to be effective. Important keywords should be placed prominently within the title so as to indicate to the spider that these keywords play a significant role in the nature of the page.

Description

There are a variety of search engine expectations with regard to the description area, and the number of terms or phrases that should be included. To offer a simplified suggestion, keep your description to the point, within a reasonable number of words – say between six and fifteen. Utilize both the keywords placed within the title, as well as additional versions of those words, such as plurals, and other related terms felt to be common queries within your market. Prominence plays a role here as well, so keep your major keywords in mind when writing the description, and if the number of words is growing too large when all aspects are incorporated, consider moving the pluralized forms into the meta keyword, and body areas.

Meta Keywords

Determining the keywords of most value to your operation can be an arduous, but necessary task. Utilizing tools such as the Overture search frequency tool can play a strong role in simplifying this process. In the end, your quest should be the targeting of keywords that are popular, entirely relevant to your product or service, with as little competition as possible.

For example, a company in the area of alternative health would do better to focus on keywords relative to specific ailments, where the number of sites focused on these areas is low, versus targeting the keyword health, for which competition is in the millions.

As in all other areas, select and place your keywords in careful order, keeping overall prominence, and number of words in mind. Don’t overdo it in this area, as too many keywords are a signal to some engines to ignore a site that may simply be attempting to misdirect traffic through the inclusion of a barrage of keywords, versus actual content. A safe number of keywords would be in the ten to twenty range.

Body Text

Inclusion of keywords in your page’s body text, as well as the volume and placement of those keywords is an additional factor reviewed by search engine spiders. As they say, content is king, and a well written content page can please both spider oriented engines, as well as the keen eye of a manual review. Keep your keywords in mind throughout development of your page, targeting all forms of the keywords you are featuring. As prominence again plays a role, it may be of value to place your most potentially important words both near the beginning, and end of your content area.

Link Text

Search engines will also take note of your site’s linked text, as an indicator of overall relevance. Ensure that your incorporate keywords into both the text portion of the link that your visitors will encounter, as well as the actual page name that the link will transfer them too. In order for link page names to be legible to an engine interested in them, phrases must be broken up into blocks, as in the following:

http://www.onlineforsuccess.com/internet-marketing-directory.htm

In this example, keywords internet, marketing, and directory are utilized to the best advantage of the site development team. Other forms of breaking up phrases include the use of the underscore: _

Comments and Alt Tags

Site designers often incorporate keywords into their comment and alt tag areas as well. Comments are notes to the designer made while developing site areas to remind them of each area’s location and/or designation. Alt tags are placed alongside link text so that the site visitor who places their cursor over the link can see a quick summary of that link’s offering. Adding keywords to these areas is not an imperative, but assists in establishing the overall nature of the site with the engine. Keep the number of keywords to a minimum, as too many comments and/or alt tags can again be seen as abuse, and result in non-inclusion.

All of the above areas are of value in designing a site that intends to develop traffic flow via search engine listings. Other factors of recent importance include overall site popularity, which is a search engine measurement of the number of sites linked to your property, and the newest technique, theme indexing, which measures the overall nature of your site, versus the nature of individual pages within that site. Understanding these concepts, and applying them to your final stages of design are imperative to successful traffic generation, and your overall potential for online success.

Search Engine Optimization Software and Services

In today’s increasingly competetive search engine environment, many creative and entrepreneurial spirits have directed their energies towards the development of both software and services designed to lessen the workload relative to achieving quality, traffic generating listings on the busiest search engines.

As in the selection of any software package, or pay per service arrangement, research into the applicability of that package to your specific needs and financial capabilities is essential. There are any number of opportunities available for improved rankings, ranging from those that require a concerted effort on the part of the property designer, to those that are entirely managed by an outside source. Naturally, the costs associated with all of these services can vary significantly based upon the level of involvement you require from that service, which can seriously impact the ability of any business to survive its launch phase.

In selecting a search engine optimization software or service, one must also give due consideration to the level of experience and success that organization has achieved in the past. In researching a product of potential value, maintain a keen eye for product references and testimonials, contacting businesses that have utilized the service and/or software in the past.

Examples of the software and services of this type, available in today’s marketplace include:

Search Engine Optimization Services

These services offer a range of options relative to achieving improved rankings within the most popular engines. Many will play a role in not only the submission of the property, but in the preparation of your site for that submission as well. This can include overall keyword selection, measurements within your property, and optimization of each page based on the keyword targets chosen.

There is generally a startup, and monthly fee associated with this process, as submissions and ranking adjustments will continue for a specified period following the initial application. Some services will offer guaranteed top ten placements, with customer payment then based on a fee per top ten search term or phrase achieved. Some examples of services in this genre include:
SearchEnginePosition.com Top-10.com

Search Engine Optimization Softwares

There are a variety of software packages on the market today that aim to improve overall ranking on a variety of search engine types. Their abilities range from complete site keyword evaluation and reporting, to submission capabilities that guarantee not to exceed engine terms of submission, as well as the development of doorway pages, and other techniques that are used as gray area means of achieving better rankings.

Without question, one of the strongest packages available today is WebPosition Gold. This software enables the newcomer to do a complete analysis of keyword strength throughout their site, comparitive analysis with current top ranking sites, guideline based submissions, and ranking analysis once listed. For your free download of this software package, visit the link below, or compare the features with the other packages noted.