By David Gikandi, CEO, SearchPositioning.com
[May 24th, 2000]

See Also   Email Marketing Primer   How to Increase Your Online Sales   Take Advantage of Google's AdWords   Using Foreign Search Engines to Boost Your Sales   Getting Sure Profits Through Google, Goto.com and DirectHit   Ten Places You Must Submit Your Site   Clever Profit Growth Software   The Power Of Personalized Email   How To Go Long With Your Web Marketing   How NOT to Promote Your E-business   Winning the Search Engine Wars   Latest Tips on Search Engine Marketing   Are You Wasting Your Money Online?   Should I Hire Another Salesperson or Invest in an Affiliate Program?   The Death of Positioning?   Links: Why You Need Them and How to Get Them   Your #1 Overlooked Business Asset

[This is the second part of a two part article. The first part can be read here].

Tip: Lycos

Nothing much new here but one small tip. The best way to get into Lycos is to submit your site to Lycos as usual AND submit to www.dmoz.org, the Open Directory Project that Lycos and many other engines use as a source of results on certain searches. Lycos also uses the FAST engine for some of its results so you should also submit your site to the FAST engine (at www.alltheweb.com.)

Tip: Hotbot

Hotbot is still mysteriously dropping pages off their index for no apparent reason. Other than that, they are doing fine. Here is a tip from www.searchengine-news.com. Their newsletter said that the fastest way to get indexed by Hotbot at the moment is to submit to Canada.com at http://canada.com/search/web/addurl.asp. Try it! You should also submit to www.dmoz.org, the Open Directory Project, which Hotbot uses.

Hotbot is also the first engine to index dynamic pages (pages created on the fly from a database or CGI script). To have your dynamic pages indexed, if you have any, simply submit your dynamic page with all the arguments added onto the URL (e.g. www.mysite.com/page.asp?catalog=5369&state=florida) or submit a static page with a bunch of dynamic URLs you need indexed.

Note: AltaVista "Too many URLs problem"

AltaVista recently installed an ultra-tight and aggressive spam filter which according to numerous reports is causing a very large problem to thousands of web site owners. The spam filter is often improperly tagging many pages as spam. The good news is that your site is not dropped off their index if you do get tagged, but the offending pages are given low ranking and you are blocked from submitting any new ones. So it isn't a very grave situation and especially because way too many webmasters have been affected unfairly this situation will likely get better soon. For most webmasters, simply avoiding the known spam techniques such as hidden text etc and abstaining from submitting more than one page a day at the most should keep you clear off their spam filter. If you feel you have been cut off from new submissions unfairly, simply use AltaVista's feedback form and let them know and they will put you back up.

Tip: DirectHit, LookSmart and Open Directory Project submissions

Several search engines such as HotBot and Lycos use DirectHit and the Open Directory Project as a major source of their search results. It has been found advantageous, for this reason, to also submit your site directly to DirectHit at http://www.directhit.com/util/addurl.html as this gets you a better position much faster because DirectHit updates its engine much more timely than the engines that use it such as Lycos and Hotbot. You should also submit to www.dmoz.org, the Open Directory Project, as this is the only way to get into certain results served by an increasing number of search engines (over 20 major search engines and directories use it). LookSmart is also being used by a very large number of search engines and directories so be sure to submit there too at www.looksmart.com.

Suggestion: Automatic submission tools plus getting listed on as many places as possible

Automatic submission tool (software or web based) are extremely useful and timesaving when it comes to submitting your site to several hundred search engines and directories. By all means, use them. But make sure that you do not use them for Infoseek and AltaVista if you are submitting more than just one page. These two engines have high-speed submission detection that can get your submitted page penalized. How this works is that they watch for more than one submission per, say, 30 minutes from any one site. So if you submit two pages from your site to Infoseek or AltaVista in less than 30 minutes, that's not good for you.

On the other hand, you should use these tools and get yourself listed on as many places on the web as possible - directories, search engines, free-for-all link pages, About.com, etc. It is very important, especially for Infoseek rankings, that you have as many incoming links into your site from other sites as possible, especially from larger sites such as Yahoo and About.com.

Final Note: Delayed index updates

Most of the major engines are now taking between 30 and 90 days to refresh their databases, although their information pages claim shorter periods than that. What this means is that a page you submit today and any pages on your site linked from it will appear on search results in 30 to 90 days. Excite is especially slow. The Internet community believes that this situation will definitely change because no engine wants to have old information in its database - its bad customer service to its users. So they will work at correcting these delays. This is a time of great opportunity, and marketing your site through search engines is one of the world's greatest advertising opportunities. Where else can you reach such vast numbers of people worldwide at practically no cost to you? So it does pay to keep a close tab on the engines and use them wisely but ethically to your advantage.

If you need any more information on this topic, please see the Additional Resources section at the PositionWeaver.com Web site.

David Gikandi is CEO at SearchPositioning.com. PositionWeaver.com features tools and resources that get you top positions for your Web site on AltaVista, Excite, HotBot, Infoseek, Lycos, Northern Light and other search engines. It also has forums, articles, links, and other resources useful for the Website owner and marketer. You can also download free trial copies of the PositionWeaver Gold and PRO software packages for Windows from this site.