The search engine game

Getting to the top of search listings is a game which never ends and it almost never produces a winner. In this game however, second is just as good....

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Things NOT to do for SEO

• Invisible Text – Creating a page that only the search engine spider can see by setting the text of the keyword to the same color as the background.
• Too Many Keywords – Filling a page with just keywords or with keywords that do not relate to the topic of the page.
• Redirects – Creating a page that redirects a search engine spider to one page while sending human visitors to another page.

Penalties levied by the search engines can result in permanent banning, that kind of defeats the purpose of SEO... They will catch on and your site will suffer.

How to get indexed by search engines

Getting indexed into a search engine takes patience. Let me emphasize that again, it takes patience. This is not a game of immediate gratification, but more of a game of skill and foresight, much like chess. You make a move, the search engine makes a move and it continues.

The first thing you need to do is visit the submission form of each of the major search engines

          Google

            Yahoo!

            MSN

Submit your site once and wait. DO NOT KEEP SUBMITTING! It may consider this as spamming and penalize you before you even get in. If after 6 weeks or so and you are still not listed by at least your sites domain name, submit again and wait. Do not get tempted to use a submitting service, some of them are legitimate, but most are considered spam by search engines.

There is a faster way to get into the search engines, and as a bonus will improve your rankings as well. Links. The more links you have pointing to your site from other sites the better. You can never have too many links.

You can however have bad links. These are sites which have nothing to do with the topic of your site or even worse, spam sites. These can actually hurt you in the long run as the search engines will forever associate your site with the site that is linking to you. It’s is immeasurably worse to link to one of these sites from your own site so keep this in mind when making link exchange requests.

When choosing a link partner, consider the following:

• Is this a site which I would visit?
• Is it on topic with my site or complement the topic of my site?
• Is the site a competitor?
• Is the site spammy?
• Is the site promoting bad SEO techniques?

If you think it may in any way harm the reputation of your site, don’t link to them. Otherwise, link away!

How to ask for a link:

• Research the site – The site operator is more likely to respond to a link exchange request if you sound like you actually have visited the site.
• Be professional – Grammar and spelling are important. Stay away from form letters but keep the request somewhat formal.

Remember, the more you ask, the more you will receive. Also note the fact that some engines weigh one way links more heavily than reciprocal links, it’s better for them to link to your site than it is for them to link to your site and you link to theirs.

Another great source for links is the Open Directory Project or ODP. This is a human edited directory that is used by most of the big search engines and thousands of smaller ones. It is quite difficult to get into the ODP but if you submit a request to be included into the section which best fits your site, and your site is of suitable quality (not just one page) you should get in. It may take months though so be patient!