Wednesday, December 29, 2004
Can You Still Successfully Market Your Website in Search Engines for Free?
The answer is YES, but you need to know where and how to do it. First, a little background on search engines. Like all industry's, search engines have begun consolidating in recent years. The days of hundreds of high traffic free search engines are long gone. After numerous mergers, partnerships, and buy-outs we are left with a handful of extremely popular and powerful search engines. These include Yahoo, MSN, AOL Search, AltaVista, Lycos and a few more.
The bad news...all of these search engines employ one of two business models to make money, and in some cases both. They charge for inclusion into their directory or they charge for specific search terms and keywords.
The good news...there are still ways to get your site listed in all of these search engines for free, you just have to be creative.
One of the best ways to get your site listed in the majority of high-traffic search engines is by getting your site added to DMOZ, http://www.dmoz.com. DMOZ, or the Open Directory Project is the largest human-edited directory of websites on the Internet and powers listings for the majority of high-traffic search engines. Each website submission is reviewed by a real person and cataloged in the most appropriate category. Search engines recognize the value of providing their visitors the most relevant search results and depend on the DMOZ for these accurate rankings.
Submitting your website to DMOZ is completely free, but there are several things to consider before you submit. Make sure you choose the appropriate category within DMOZ to submit your site. The more specific the category, the better chance you have of getting listed. Make sure your site is completely functional. DMOZ will not accept sites with broken links or images. Make sure your site is optimized for search engines prior to submission. Once your site is listed, it will appear in search results for AOL Search, Google, Lycos, Netscape, and many more. Without the proper code that search engines use to display listings, your site may never be seen!
In addition to submitting your site to DMOZ, you should submit your website individually to as many search engines as you can. Don't be discouraged by submission charges on the major search engines because most of them still offer free submission, they just make it difficult to find. I have provided a list of URL's below of major search engines that still accept free submission.
Finally, be weary of submission services that offer submission to "hundreds or thousands of search engines." While there are thousands of search engines on the web, only a few receive any substantial traffic. It is much more valuable to be listed in 5-10 search engines that receive millions of visitors a day versus a thousand search engines that receive only a few visitors each day.
Major Search Engines & Directories that still accept free submissions:
http://www.google.com
http://www.yahoo.com
http://www.dmoz.com
The bad news...all of these search engines employ one of two business models to make money, and in some cases both. They charge for inclusion into their directory or they charge for specific search terms and keywords.
The good news...there are still ways to get your site listed in all of these search engines for free, you just have to be creative.
One of the best ways to get your site listed in the majority of high-traffic search engines is by getting your site added to DMOZ, http://www.dmoz.com. DMOZ, or the Open Directory Project is the largest human-edited directory of websites on the Internet and powers listings for the majority of high-traffic search engines. Each website submission is reviewed by a real person and cataloged in the most appropriate category. Search engines recognize the value of providing their visitors the most relevant search results and depend on the DMOZ for these accurate rankings.
Submitting your website to DMOZ is completely free, but there are several things to consider before you submit. Make sure you choose the appropriate category within DMOZ to submit your site. The more specific the category, the better chance you have of getting listed. Make sure your site is completely functional. DMOZ will not accept sites with broken links or images. Make sure your site is optimized for search engines prior to submission. Once your site is listed, it will appear in search results for AOL Search, Google, Lycos, Netscape, and many more. Without the proper code that search engines use to display listings, your site may never be seen!
In addition to submitting your site to DMOZ, you should submit your website individually to as many search engines as you can. Don't be discouraged by submission charges on the major search engines because most of them still offer free submission, they just make it difficult to find. I have provided a list of URL's below of major search engines that still accept free submission.
Finally, be weary of submission services that offer submission to "hundreds or thousands of search engines." While there are thousands of search engines on the web, only a few receive any substantial traffic. It is much more valuable to be listed in 5-10 search engines that receive millions of visitors a day versus a thousand search engines that receive only a few visitors each day.
Major Search Engines & Directories that still accept free submissions:
http://www.google.com
http://www.yahoo.com
http://www.dmoz.com
