How to get you site listed in search engines.

[will32]

Hi, i am new to OS commerce and spent the last 1 month installing the store with contribs, and getting my products on. I have installed Ultimate SEO. But how can i get my site to come up on a search engine.

 

Please help would be greatful.

 

Thanks

[KaiAnimation]

Hi will32-

 

Your question is a little touchy on the Forum, because it may lead to a bunch of spammy links to places that say they will get your site listed on the top of all search engines. Once this happens, you will see this thread deleted.

 

To answer your question, like we should on this forum, you need to get other, quality websites to link to your website and you need keyword rich text on your website.

 

The way the search engines find you is they search sites that they already know about and if those sites have a link to you, then the search engines will find you.

 

Once they find you, they have to have something to store on their search index. They don't store pictures, they only store text. You need to have well written, keyword rich text on the pages you want the search engines to index.

 

Try doing a search for the type of website that you have. Look at the sites that come up on the search. Read the text that they have on their site. You will see that most will have text on their pages describing what the page is about. The text will probably be very detailed.

 

You will also find something to the opposite of my advice, too. You may find sites with a ton of text, but it will seem not so well written. What these sites may be doing is just putting their keywords in their text without reguard to whether it makes sense to read. They just want as many keywords as possible. You can do this, too, and it may fool the search engines into finding you and indexing you, but your human guests will find this frustrating.

 

You will also find sites without a lot of keyword rich, well written text. These guys probably have a ton of links to their site from other sites. This can be verified by doing a search for their URL. The search engine will show how many links they have stored to this site's URL.

 

The way to ask for a link is to send polite Emails to websites like your website, to the webmaster. You should already have a link back to the sites you are Emailing. If you want a link, you should give a link. If your site looks like it is finished and polished and worth sending one of their guests to, then they may add a link to your site from theirs.

 

I guess I should also say, the major search engines have an "Add My Site" form on their websites. This will only get them to do a spider search of your site. By luck or fluke, you may end up towards the top for a little while. They count the clicks to your site from their index, once they compare your clicks with other sites clicks and inbound links with others inbound links, they will place you where they think you belong on the index.

 

The majors also have Pay-Per Click section on their search. You can sign up for those if it is worth it to you.

 

Google has the best description of how to get indexed. Do a search for their Webmasters section for what they have to say.

 

Getting indexed is easy, getting listed high on the index is an art. If your website has a lot of competition, it may take a while to get listed near or on the top.

 

Am I good at it? Not yet, but I'm getting better.

 

Danny

[Jack_mcs]

Will - What you are asking cannot be easily answered in one reply. There are many things you need to do to get a decent listing position. First is to install a meta tags contribution like Header Tags. After that, do a search on the forums for SEO. This topic has been discussed quite often and there is a lot of valuable information that will help you get listed. The SE's will find your site, in fact, they most likely already have. So getting listed is not a problem. You have to learn how to pick out a good keyword and optimize a page for that keyword. It is not difficult but it requires a lot of work on your part.

 

Jack

[tina_boots]

Hi will32-

 

Your question is a little touchy on the Forum, because it may lead to a bunch of spammy links to places that say they will get your site listed on the top of all search engines. Once this happens, you will see this thread deleted.

 

To answer your question, like we should on this forum, you need to get other, quality websites to link to your website and you need keyword rich text on your website.

 

The way the search engines find you is they search sites that they already know about and if those sites have a link to you, then the search engines will find you.

 

Once they find you, they have to have something to store on their search index. They don't store pictures, they only store text. You need to have well written, keyword rich text on the pages you want the search engines to index.

 

Try doing a search for the type of website that you have. Look at the sites that come up on the search. Read the text that they have on their site. You will see that most will have text on their pages describing what the page is about. The text will probably be very detailed.

 

You will also find something to the opposite of my advice, too. You may find sites with a ton of text, but it will seem not so well written. What these sites may be doing is just putting their keywords in their text without reguard to whether it makes sense to read. They just want as many keywords as possible. You can do this, too, and it may fool the search engines into finding you and indexing you, but your human guests will find this frustrating.

 

You will also find sites without a lot of keyword rich, well written text. These guys probably have a ton of links to their site from other sites. This can be verified by doing a search for their URL. The search engine will show how many links they have stored to this site's URL.

 

The way to ask for a link is to send polite Emails to websites like your website, to the webmaster. You should already have a link back to the sites you are Emailing. If you want a link, you should give a link. If your site looks like it is finished and polished and worth sending one of their guests to, then they may add a link to your site from theirs.

 

I guess I should also say, the major search engines have an "Add My Site" form on their websites. This will only get them to do a spider search of your site. By luck or fluke, you may end up towards the top for a little while. They count the clicks to your site from their index, once they compare your clicks with other sites clicks and inbound links with others inbound links, they will place you where they think you belong on the index.

 

The majors also have Pay-Per Click section on their search. You can sign up for those if it is worth it to you.

 

Google has the best description of how to get indexed. Do a search for their Webmasters section for what they have to say.

 

Getting indexed is easy, getting listed high on the index is an art. If your website has a lot of competition, it may take a while to get listed near or on the top.

 

Am I good at it? Not yet, but I'm getting better.

 

Danny

 

Danny gives some excellent advice. The one thing I would add is to download and install the Google tool bar to your browser. It contains a tool which shows their page rank of any site you happen to visit, for example this page that I'm typing this reply on has a rank of 5 out of 10 which is very good. There is also another icon which will tell you other useful information about a particular page.

 

Be well,

Tina

[will32]

Hi,

 

Thanks to everyone for giveing me the advice. I am starting to understand it all now. thanks again.

[Guest]

pagerank is irrelevant when trying to get your site indexed or indexed higher. google has said many times recently it won't impact where you stand.

 

that number is only generated by the quality of site(s) that link to you.

 

for instance:

i was developing a new *.com website and i fell short on time, so it never got completed, it had only a contact form and a graphic.

 

i linked two websites to it. one PR4 and one PR0

 

within a month or so, the site with nothing but a contact form had PR4, but was no where to be found in the search engines

[ebusinessconsulting]

The best way to get your site listed in Google, MSN, Yahoo!: place a link on an "authoritative" web site. These days I have been amazed at the speed at which Google is crawling new sites. It used to be that you place a link and Google bot will get the first page. Then a few days later it will get the first layer of links. Recently I experienced that a site with more than 300 pages got indexed within 48 hours of an authoritative web site linking to the site. I was very surprised. Don't know if this is a permanent or temporary feature.

 

The second best way to get your site listed in Google, MSN, Yahoo!: use the sitemaps feature.

 

The worst way to get your site listed, IMO, is using the "Add Url" feature, unless obviously that is the only way.

 

Hope this helps.

[Chance]

Post a link in a blogger post. SEO people have been doing that for years, and it gets most sites indexed in 2-3 days.