Search Engines 101 help

[mikeh1107]

Allright, I'm a noob.. so bear with me here. I have a site that will be up shortly and want to do everything that I can to get it listed well in as many search engines as possible. I have never done this before and was contemplating paying a site to submit it automatically, (8000 sites for $49.95, what a steal) Is this a waste of time? And for someone like me, if it is wise to pay someone the first time, and if so - any sites that anyone can recommend that are reputable? The only thing that I am worried about is getting blocked because these sites had "unethical practices" in getting my site ranked.

Also - I read a book by Shari Thurow "Search Engine Visibility" and seems to be a fairly decent book and followed as much as I could in developing my site. Any other books out there that anyone can think of about search engines in general that they would reccomend? Any help would be greatly appreciated, thx

[mikeh1107]

Side note, (I apologize if this is in the wrong forum)

does it matter if the links are relative or absolute?
ex - Folder\name-of-file.html
or
www.thesite.com\name-of-file.html

just curious..

thx again

[Dan0]

You probably want to use the other slash (/) but absolute vs. relative URLs is not a big deal any more.

Don't pay anyone to submit your site like that, all you'll get is 8,000 spams and you'll be no closer to having your site indexed by any real search engines.

Build your site, and work on promoting it - submit to directories like dmoz.org, get other folks to link to you. The search engines will find you on their own if you do that.

[The Man in the Jar]

I agree with DanO except I would suggest you manually submit 5 pages a day to google, AltalVista and All the Web until your whole site has been submitted. Then re-submit the home page at the end of the process - then spend the next couple of months soliciting links.

[Bot]

I'm not so sure about the google submit URL thing. I don't have any fact to base this on but think it's basically there for people to relate to... and so they don't mailbomb help@google.com with "Where do I submit my site".

Check this out: THE FASTEST way for you to get into Google (and probably Yahoo as well so far) - is to get someone to do you a favor and put your link on a page that is checked every day.

I just posted a link to a fresh new domain on my homepage and BOOM!!! Googlebot was there in 2 hours 17 minutes!!

[ihelpyou]

VERY good point Bot!!

I feel the submit url page on ALL the engines is a "perception" thing, and is there to thwart the many emails about "how" do I submit my site that the engines would get if that page was not there. Very, very good point.

[The Man in the Jar]

a "perception" thing A bit like American elections?

:-0

[Blue]

Originally posted by The Man in the Jar
A bit like American elections?

:-0 Quite!

[mikeh1107]

Originally posted by Dan0
You probably want to use the other slash (/)

I don't know, it rather looks nice, I thought I'd start a new trend.. ;-)


Bot mentioned something about putting a link on a page that is checked everyday, again please excuse my ignorance on this matter - but how do you know how often a page is checked? I thought spiders had a 4-6 week process that checked links. I didn't realize that there where pages that are checked everyday.

thanks for the advice everyone,..

[Bot]

I'm feeling generous today... Give me your link and I will put it up tonight and you should be hit by tomorrow.

Now, I won't leave the link up for long and I don't know what will happen when the link is removed.... but this will at least get you started.

[mikeh1107]

cool, thanks.. I will have to let you know what it is on the 19th. Thats the day that I have scheduled for the completion of it. I'll have to check back and see if your in a good mood that day
:cheers: