search engine submission & optimization services

A successful website features several different "best practices": design that is easy for its users to navigate and is pleasing to the eye, content that provides answers and solutions for its users, and products & services that customers want to buy.

Unfortunately, website success does not mean that you simply put up a website and hope that everyone will find you. Your marketing strategy will, hopefully, have included tried and true methods or making sure your current customers know where to find you online. And while you cannot possibly hope to reach the entire online world with your website, you do need to reach out to other online users interested in what you have to say or sell. The internet community needs to be able to find you, and 85% of internet users find new web sites by using search engines.

"understanding" the search engine process

The most popular search engines on the internet include Google, AltaVista, MSN and Excite. Search directories that are popular include Yahoo and LookSmart.

There are different methods of submitting to and being listed on these search engines and directories. And the nature of search engine technology (referred to as "search engine spiders") is changing all the time. Experts in the search engine industry identify regularly new ways of achieving high rankings, and in the past, some of these methods have included methods that the search engines believed hurt legitimate sites. For example, objectionable sites would identify the most searched terms on the search engines and fill their "meta keyword tags" with those phrases, when you did a search, for example, on "cooking with tomatoes" people learned to be afraid of the pages that might be listed.

The search engines' software engineers have learned to quickly identify methods like this and stop websites from undertaking activities meant only to abuse the system and gain high rankings for unrelated sites. Because of the constant ebb and flow of the technology, the way search engines view your site is constantly changing, and so too will your listings and rankings on each search engine.

Submitting your site to a search engine is a hurry up and wait, react quickly to changes in the industry, then hurry up and wait again. An entire industry has spawned of experts who spend their time researching and watching how things are changing within the search engines and attempting to decipher and understand it. And the search engines keep their changes very close, very little information is released from any search engine about how their spider technology is being adapted, lest the "spammers" figure out too easily then how to find the holes and abuse it. In addition, many of the search engines have begun implementing paid inclusion - but without guarantee of high rankings. Some of the paid inclusion methods are explained further on.

A firm focussed solely on search engine optimization and submission can easily cost you thousands and thousands of dollars.

MetaFusion Design Services utilizes memberships in several associations and watch lists for changes in the search engine industry. We are not attempting to recreate the wheel in search engine submission and optimization, but we can help you to achieve better rankings and listings without the cost of high-priced firms. The most important steps in securing a decent listing for your website is to ensure your site is well-written from both a marketing and search engine approach, that your site is submitted to the search engines properly (submitting too often or incorrectly to some engines can actually get you banned), and that any decisions you make regarding paid inclusions are made with a clear understanding of your return on investment.

search engine optimization services

Briefly, search engine optimization (SEO) means ensuring that each page within your site has a title, description and keywords that clearly identify your purpose to a potential visitor and to the search engines. It means carefully reviewing your marketing copy on each page to ensure that all elements are working together to gain you the highest rating possible with the lowest cost for paid inclusion. As each search engine and directory has a different process, it includes an understanding of how to find a balance between what, for example, Yahoo considers an acceptable description and what Excite considers is the correct number of characters in your keywords.

Search engine optimization is not an exact science, nor can there be any guarantees. Any SEO firm that can promise you high rankings must be taken with a great deal of caution, as the promise for high rankings will likely include some form of spamming to get you a high listing relatively quickly and for a short time, and may indeed, get your site banned. An SEO firm that promises to get you listed and work with you overtime to continually monitor and tweak your site for better rankings is a much safer bet. Read on for more about search engine optimization...

search engine submission services

When your site has been designed with an eye to its best performance in the search engines, you need then consider who and where to submit your site.

There are multiple programs which promise to simplify your submission process - offering to submit your site for free to over 1500 search engines, and will do it automatically over and over again until you have a high ranking. While these programs, again, can be beneficial in some situations, in many situations, the opposite is true. Because the search engines and directories are a constantly changing and evolving industry, what is true for submission guidelines this month may change next month. "Hurray up and wait" is a very important concept when submitting your site - some search engines may have you in their database next week, some may take 8 weeks, others can take much longer (Yahoo, for example, is a directory service and every submission is reviewed and often rewritten and recategorized by an actual person - and you have to pay $199 US for the privilege of even having your site reviewed with no guarantee of actually being listed). While you can also opt for temporary paid listings, they can get expensive and don't necessarily provide high rankings when you stop paying - although they can drive traffic to your site temporarily.

Your website designer needs be constantly attentive to the changing circumstances of the search engines, track your progress and rank in the engines, then work with you to revise your content as needed to achieve better rankings as the industry evolves. It takes time and patience, and there are no quick fixes .

On the right-hand side are links to pages with more detailed information about each of these steps. Please read on for more information, or contact us any time by phone, fax or email for more information.