The following techniques are usually considered spam by thesearch engines:

- cloaking (the server returns different pages for search engine crawler programs and for web browsers)

- cybersquatting (using domains that resemble common domain names to get traffic from users that make a typo, for example, www.gogle.com)

- doorway pages or multiple domains with identical or nearly identical content

- invisible text (text in the same color as the background color)

- offensive content (e.g. hate views or offering illegal services)

- overuse of keywords

- overuse of tiny text

- stuffing pages with irrelevant words

- submitting to inappropriate categories (on directories)

- using deceptive or misleading links

- using irrelevant keywords in the title and in the Meta tags

What can you do if you discover that other web sites get better search engine rankings than you because they use one of the techniques above?

The search engines encourage reporting spam to them. We’ve compiled a handy list of addresses where you can report search engine spam:

* AllTheWeb/FAST:
Report spam by emailing spam@fastsearch.com. Use the subject “Spam Report”:  http://www.alltheweb.com/info/spampolicy.html

* AltaVista:
Select “Spam Reporting” as the subject on the following form:  http://help.altavista.com/contact/search

* Google:
Report spam sites by emailing spamreport@google.com or use the form at  http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html

* HotBot
Use the form at: http://help.lycos.com/LycosHelp/hel…hotbot_form.htm

* Inktomi:
Before reporting spam by emailing reportspam@inktomi.com, read Inktomi’s spam policy at http://www.inktomi.com/services/web…mpolicyfaq.html

* LookSmart:
Report spam by emailing expsvc@looksmart.net.

* Lycos:
Use the form at:

http://help.lycos.com/LycosHelp/hel…tchdog_form.htm

* Open Directory Project:
If you think that an editor is spamming or promoting its own domains, send an email message to staff@dmoz.org.

* Overture:
Report inappropriate sites by emailing termsofuse@Overture.com (read  http://www.overture.com/d/USm/about/company/terms.jhtml for more information).

* Web.de (popular German search engine directory) Use the form at: http://hilfe.web.de/eintragsservice2/Kontakt/

Always be fair to search engines and don’t try to cheat them. You’ll get the best long-term results for your web site by building good content and a thoughtful reciprocal linking strategy,

Some search engines form new alliances to access new audiences. For example, Google has established partnerships with Palm and Vodafone to provide searches on PDA’s and on mobile phones.

It’s essential to know which search engines and directories work together. If you want to plan an effective search engine optimization strategy, you must know which search engine partners cooperate and who gets results from whom.

We’ve compiled a table which lists popular search engines from the USA and the UK. It tells you which search engines and directories get their search results from whom.

The table will help you in your future search engine marketing efforts: if your web site doesn’t get listed by one search engine, you can try to submit to the partner engine which provides secondary or directory results.

Please note that such partnerships and alliances change regularly.

Who works with whom?

AllTheWeb - Gets search results from FAST, Open Directory Project (ODP), Overture

AltaVista - Gets additional search results from LookSmart, Overture

AltaVista UK - Gets additional search results from LookSmart UK, Overture UK

Ask Jeeves - Gets search results from Overture, Teoma

Ask Jeeves UK - Gets search results from AltaVista UK, Espotting, Mirago, Overture UK, Teoma

AOL Search - Gets search results from Google, Open Directory Project (ODP)

AOL Search UK - Gets search results from Google, Open Directory Project (ODP), Overture UK

Espotting (UK) - Gets additional search results from Inktomi

Freeserve (UK) - Gets search results from Google, Overture UK, Google and Google UK. Get additional search results from Open Directory Project (ODP)

HotBot - Gets search results from Inktomi, Open Directory Project (ODP), Overture

HotBot UK - Gets search results from Espotting, Inktomi, Open Directory Project (ODP)

LookSmart - Gets additional search results from Inktomi

LookSmart UK - Gets additional search results from Espotting, Inktomi

Lycos -Gets additional search results from FAST, Open Directory Project (ODP), Overture

Lycos UK -Gets additional search results from FAST, Open Directory Project (ODP), Overture UK

MSN Search -Gets additional search results from Inktomi, LookSmart, Overture

MSN Search UK -Gets additional search results from Inktomi, LookSmart, Overture UK

Netscape Search - Gets search results from Google, Open Directory Project (ODP), Overture

Overture - Gets additional search results from Inktomi

Overture UK - Gets additional search results from Inktomi

Yahoo - Gets additional search results from Google, Overture

Yahoo UK - Gets additional search results from Espotting, Google

(as of September 2002)

As you can see, almost all popular search engines are powered by only a handful of other companies. If your website is   listed in Google, Inktomi, Open Directory Project (ODP) and Overture, you’ll be able to reach almost all search engine users.

There’s a nice relationship chart of US search engines at http://www.bruceclay.com/searchenginechart.pdf

You can click the logos to view a brief explanation of each search engine or directory.

Knowledge is power. If you know how search engines compose their rankings, you’ll be able to optimize your web pages
for high rankings

Many engines require that you bid for top position on an ongoing pay-per-view or pay-per-click basis. Other companies now require payments of as much as US$299 to to have them review your site for inclusion, and then pay an annual fee if your site is accepted.

There is no guarantee that you will be listed once you have paid initial fees, or how much traffic you will receive as you’ll be in competition with other sites. Search engine optimization strategies, techniques and principles become even more important with some paid listings, otherwise you’ll be simply burning good money. Maintaining paid rankings is a time consuming and expensive process.

These new rankings/listings models present a number of challenges to those web site owners on a limited budget as the costs are out of reach for many. But there are options, and effective search engine optimization strategies that will actually generate web site traffic have become an even more urgent issue in relation to free listings. It’s well documented that you need to be listed in the first 3 pages of results, otherwise it’s a waste of time. If paid listings are taking up the first 5 or 10 results, the competition for the residual prime placements is fierce.

Current search engine URL submission overview
The following is a brief rundown on the major engines/indexes and their paid/free listings policies (current May 2002). NOTE: If you run a community based site, in many instances the company can be approached directly and you can have your web site listed for free.

Yahoo: US$299.00 non-refundable, recurring annual fee

AltaVista: You can still submit up to 5 pages at a time for free, but be prepared for a long wait. “Express” inclusion starts at around $US39 for *one page* (cheaper for subsequent web pages).

LookSmart & MSN: US$49 setup fee, then US$0.15 per click

AskJeeves & Teoma: US$30.00 for the first page (cheaper for subsequent web pages)

Google: Still by far the best free URL submission search engine, but also runs paid listings for top “sponsored links” and side boxes. If you aren’t ranked well in Google as yet, make the effort to be as soon as possible. Google supplies secondary data to a number of other search engines/indices and sites.

DMOZ: Still a strong community of independent editors, free listings, but you are only listed once. But considering that DMOZ supplies data to hundreds of search engines/indices and sites, it’s absolutely essential to be listed here.

Lycos/Hotbot: $18 annual membership fee and then $12 per URL.

AllTheWeb: Another good free URL submission option. Submit your home page URL to them and they will spider your whole site.

Overture: Pay per click. This model requires that you bid on keywords for ranking and at times the competition can become quite insane - some advertisers go overboard. As an example, I recently reported that on the word “computer”, the no.1 advertiser had bid US$10 for the privilege. The number 2 position was held by an advertiser prepared to pay US$.77 per click. It’s a huge difference. Coupled with the fact that not everyone who clicks on the link will purchase, it becomes an extraordinarily expensive marketing exercise, even at 77 cents per clickthrough. The COA (Cost of Acquisition) tied in with each sale is not viable for the majority of online ecommerce oriented businesses.

Optimize your rankings while you can
Some web masters may tell you that as the SE landscape is rapidly changing, search engine optimization is a waste of time. Nothing could be further from the truth! 95% of our new visitors come from search engines and we don’t spend a cent on rankings at this point. What we do spend is time, lots of it, in an effort to boost rankings and compete with the “big guys”. The effort has paid off and we receive many thousands of visitors a week from our high ranking free listings. There’s nothing more satisfying than achieving higher rankings on important keyphrases over a company with a multi-million dollar advertising budget ;0)

It is also very important to improve search engine free listings while you can. More and more companies will turn to the paid model, and at times to the total exclusion of everyone else. In these situations, as has been the case with Yahoo recently, listings already included in their own database are “grandfathered”. This means that the listing stays, all new business pays.

Search engine optimization is a legitimate promotion strategy
Search engine optimization is a buzz phrase that has been around for a long time, but it’s surprising how many people still do not properly understand the concept. In my home town of Adelaide, which is the capital city of South Australia, mentioning the term often draws blank looks from web masters and site owners. Many think it’s some sort of scam.

Search engine optimization is not about scamming or fooling search engine “spiders” (the software used by the companies to crawl through your site and index it). It’s about making the best of what you have and making what you have the best. Solid content is still king, forget the pretty pictures and Flash animations - the more valuable information you have, presented correctly, the higher the ranking and the more visitors you’ll get from your free listings.

The Search Engine Optimization Professional (SEOP)
URL submission fever and competition for high search engine rankings has given birth to a new industry - that of the SEOP (Search Engine Optimization Professional). Many of these “professionals” charge around US$150 per hour for their skills. Few are worth this kind of money. If you choose to utilise the consultancy services of an SEOP, make sure you carry out exhaustive background checks on the person/company first. Anyone can arrange to have tens of thousands of visitors sent to you (for a fee), it’s not that hard to achieve, but in most cases, this will be garbage traffic - people not interested in what you are offering. If someone approached me today wanting 10,000 visitors directed to their site by tomorrow, I could do so - it would only cost them a few hundred dollars, but it would be a waste of their advertising budget.

There are a number of automated URL submission software programs available which promise to increase your traffic. Few do and many will cause damage to your listings. Many so-called “bleeding-edge” strategies and optimization techniques are bandied about in forums - be very wary as some of these strategies will not only damage your listings, but may get you kicked out - forever.

Tried and True Optimization Techniques
The following is a list of 8 tried and true strategies for increasing your profile in search engine rankings - stick by these to begin with before you begin trying the more exotic strategies, and remember - don’t gamble what you can’t afford to lose. These techniques apply to most paid and free listings. At the end of this article are links to specific tutorials on the points mentioned that you may find useful.

Content is King - Provide information, lots of it and ensure that is relevant to your subject and that it contains popular keywords and phrases in relation to your topic or industry

Meta Tags - Meta tags are the sections of your HTML that provide direction and information for search engine robots. To get the best rankings possible in some search engines, be sure to use keywords, description and title tags every web page. Meta tags are not viewable to Internet users unless they examine the source code of your pages. Even search engine spiders such as Googlebot will use the description tag if there is a problem with spidering body content. Try to use different description tags for each page. This is a point I ignored as I thought I didn’t have the time to create a set of tags for each page. It was a big mistake that I’m now slowly rectifying. While our search engine generated web site traffic stats are nothing to be sneezed at, there is always room for improvement ;0)

Exterior links - The more sites you can have linking to you, the higher you will be ranked in some of the major engines. But not all links are created equal. Many links coming into your site from low quality sites may damage your rankings. So will buying & hosting a hundred domain names and publishing up a brief page with links to your site. Worse still, links coming in from FFA sites may destroy your rankings altogether. Aim to be linked from popular sites.

“Alt” text - Search engines can’t read images, so ensure that descriptive “alt” text is added to your coding.

Transparency - I received an email yesterday from a major engine stating that they wouldn’t include a site I had submitted because there wasn’t an email address on the home page. While this was a glitch on the engine’s part as there was an email address, it was a good reminder that some companies demand that your site contain proper contact points, privacy statements etc. - and that they do enforce their policies

Study submission guidelines - Take the the time before hitting the submit button to study the URL submission guidelines of each site - they will vary. To ignore even one small point can prevent your site from being listed.

Target - Just as your site’s content should be focused, so should your search engine optimization strategies initially. Submit to all engines, but focus on gaining high rankings on one or two before moving on to others. If you try and optimize for all, you may only acheive mediocre rankings across the board. The difference between No.1 position and No.30 position can literally translate into thousands of dollars of income a year. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

Frames are evil - Framed sites can be optimized for search engines, but it is very, very time consuming. Use server side includes (SSI) or FrontPage Includes as an alternative to framing.

Further Learning Resources
The following articles, guides and tutorials will assist you with developing a search engine optimization strategy. Nearly a hundred other Internet marketing, web site development and promotion articles are listed on the following pages:

Article - Tutorial Index 1
http://www.tamingthebeast.net/ articles/articlemain.htm

Article - Tutorial Index 2
http://www.tamingthebeast.net/ articles/articlemain2.htm

Title tag guidelines
http://www.tamingthebeast.net/ articles/titletag.htm

Paragraph One
http://www.tamingthebeast.net/ articles/paragraph1.htm

Meta Tags and Zen
http://www.tamingthebeast.net/ articles/metatags.htm

Buying Web Site Traffic
http://www.tamingthebeast.net/ articles/buywebtraffic.htm
Site Promotion - The Common Courtesy Strategy
http://www.tamingthebeast.net/ articles2/internet-marketing-etiquette.htm

Basic ecommerce web site design
http://www.tamingthebeast.net/ articles/ecommerce-site-s1p1.htm

While Google does not have relationships with any SEOs and does not offer recommendations, we do have a few tips that may help you distinguish between an SEO that will improve your site and one that will only improve your chances of being dropped from search engine results altogether.

Be wary of SEO firms that send you email out of the blue.
Amazingly, we get these spam emails too:

“Dear google.com,
I visited your website and noticed that you are not listed in most of the major search engines and directories…”
Reserve the same skepticism for unsolicited email about search engines as you do for “burn fat at night” diet pills or requests to help transfer funds from deposed dictators.

No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.
Beware of SEO’s that claim to guarantee rankings, or that claim a “special relationship” with Google, or that claim to have a “priority submit” to Google. There is no priority submit for Google. In fact, the only way to submit a site to Google directly is by using the page at http://www.google.com/addurl.html. You can do this yourself at no cost whatsoever.

Be careful if a company is secretive or won’t clearly explain what they intend to do.
Ask for explanations if something is unclear. If an SEO creates deceptive or misleading content on your behalf, such as doorway pages or “throwaway” domains, your site could be removed entirely from Google’s index. Ultimately, you are responsible for the actions of any companies you hire, so it’s best to be sure you know exactly how they intend to “help” you.

You should never have to link to an SEO.
Avoid SEOs that talk about the power of “free-for-all” links, link popularity schemes, or submitting your site to thousands of search engines. These are typically useless exercises that do not affect your ranking in the results of the major search engines. At least, not in a way you would likely consider to be positive.

Some SEOs may try to sell you the ability to type keywords directly into the browser address bar.
Most such proposals require users to install extra software, and very few users do so. Evaluate such proposals with extreme care and be skeptical about the self-reported number of users who have downloaded the required applications.

Choose wisely.
While you consider whether to go with an SEO, you may want to do some research on the industry. Google is one way to do that of course. You might also seek out a few of the cautionary tales that have appeared in the press, including this article on one particularly aggressive SEO: http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2…_inc/index.html

While Google does not comment on specific companies, we have encountered firms calling themselves SEOs who follow practices that are clearly beyond the pale of accepted business behavior. Be careful.

Be sure to understand where the money goes.
While Google never sells better ranking in our search results themselves, several other search engines combine pay-per-click or pay-for-inclusion results with their regular web search results. Some SEO’s will promise to rank you highly in search engines, but place you in the advertising section of the engine rather than in search results. A few SEO’s will even change their bid prices in real time to create the illusion that they “control” other search engines and can place themselves in the slot of their choice. This scam does not work with Google because our advertising is clearly labeled and separated from our search results, but be sure to ask any SEO you’re considering which fees go toward permanent inclusion and which apply toward temporary advertising.

Talk to many SEOs, and ask other SEOs if they would recommend the firm you’re considering.
References are a good start, but they don’t tell the whole story. You should ask how long a company has been in business and how many full time staffers it employs. If you feel pressured or uneasy, go with your gut feeling and play it safe: hold off until you find a firm that you can trust. Ask your SEO firm if it reports every spam abuse that it finds to Google using our spam complaint form at http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html. Ethical SEO firms report deceptive sites that violate Google’s spam guidelines.

Make sure you’re protected legally.
For your own safety, you should insist on a full and unconditional money-back guarantee. Don’t be afraid to request a refund if you are unsatisfied for any reason, or if your SEO’s actions causes your domain to be removed from a search engine’s index. Make sure you have a contract in writing that includes pricing. The contract should also require the SEO to stay within the guidelines recommended by each search engine for site inclusion.

What are the most common abuses a website owner is likely to encounter?

One common scam is the creation of “shadow” domains that funnel users to a site by using deceptive redirects. These shadow domains often will be owned by the SEO who claims to be working on a client’s behalf. However, if the relationship sours, the SEO may point the domain to a different site, or even to a competitor’s domain. If that happens, the client has paid to develop a competing site owned entirely by the SEO.

Another illicit practice is to place “doorway” pages loaded with keywords on the client’s site somewhere. The SEO promises this will make the page more relevant for more queries. This is inherently false since individual pages are rarely relevant for a wide range of keywords. More insidious however, is that these doorway pages often contain hidden links to the SEO’s other clients as well. Such doorway pages drain away the link popularity of a site and route it to the SEO and its other clients, which may include sites with unsavory or illegal content.

What are some other things to look out for?

There are a few warning signs you may be dealing with a rogue SEO. It’s far from a comprehensive list, so if you have any doubts, you should trust your instincts. By all means, feel free to walk away if the SEO:
owns shadow domains
puts links to their other clients on doorway pages
offers to sell keywords in the address bar
doesn’t distinguish between actual search results and ads that appear in search results
guarantees ranking, but only on obscure, long keyword phrases you would
get anyway
operates with multiple aliases or falsified WHOIS info
gets traffic from “fake” search engines, spyware, or scumware
has had domains removed from Google’s index or is not itself listed in Google

By Stephen Mahaney

Ever wonder what strategies that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) experts consider to be the most important? Stephen Mahaney, President of Planet Ocean Communications, a search engine consulting and SEO publishing firm, was asked this very question. He was kind enough to send us his response for publication in MarketPosition:

I decided to write this article after receiving the following comment and question from a reader…

“I usually don’t ask questions, often intimidated by my lack of knowledge but I guess I’ll ask the age old question. To get more traffic to my website, what are the top five simple steps to take. If you can give them to me in point form that will be sufficient as I’m sure I can go from there.”

Actually, we thought it was a great question - so much so it merits a short article. Granted, all of these tips are well known and relatively simplistic but they are also the must-do aspects of search engine optimization.

In other words, before you do anything else, these are the items that you should check off your list.

1: Be certain the words that you wish to be found under show up in your <title> tags.

Many people fail to place their keywords in their title tags - in fact, this is the #1 optimization mistake. You don’t have to put all your keywords in every page’s title, just put in the ones that are relevant to that specific page.

On your main (home) page, focus on the core keywords that reflect the overall theme of your site.

2: Link to all of your subpages from the home page.

There may be times when this seems impractical but there are usually unobtrusive ways to do it. By having links to all of your sub-pages you provide the means by which a search engine can find the various pages on your site whenever they visit your “home” page.

Ideally the spider should be able to access every page on your site by clicking on a series of links. And, the fewer clicks the better because search engines score page relevance from top to bottom - the deeper a page is found within a site the less relevant the search engine considers it to be. In addition, some engines will not spider more than a few levels deep.

3: Be sure that keywords are being used in the text links that are pointing to pages within your site.

If your site is about cameras, make sure when you post a link to your site from some other web site that the word cameras appears in the text of the hyperlink that is pointing to your site.

A correct example would look something like…

Click here for the best prices in <a href=”http://www.mycameras.com”>cameras</a>

In contrast, it would be a mistake to use a link like…

<a href=”http://www.mycameras.com”>Click here”</a> for the best prices in cameras

If you were to make such a mistake the search engine - especially Google - would believe your site was about “click here” (ouch!).

4: The more pages the better.

Just like fishing, the more hooks you have in the water the better your chances of catching something. Same deal with search engine optimization. The more pages you have on your website, the better chance you’ll have of hitting those ever changing “correct” formulas for keyword density, keyword combos, and so on.

Of course, your pages should contain quality information so the visitor doesn’t just click back to the search engine when he or she arrives. Fast click-backs are noticed by many engines and can work against you. In such cases the engine figures the visitor didn’t find what they were looking for so your page must not have been relevant to their search.

One way to fit the bill is to create a new page of content every week. Chances are likely that there will be some aspect related to one of your products or services about which you can write a special report or a feature article. Perhaps you’ll do a weekly Q&A where you explain the benefits and features of what you do in greater detail.

And by all means look for ways to make the material work double-duty by, perhaps, assembling it into a newsletter that could then be made available to your customers. These are legitimate and valuable ways to expand your site and thereby broaden the net you cast to snare prospects that turn into future customers.

5: Use a good, reliable web hosting service.

There is no substitute for a hosting service that is dependable and one that assigns a unique IP address to every domain.

Remember, if your host goes down when a spider comes visiting you’ll likely get knocked out of the index. Quality hosting services are a must in the same way that an appropriate physical location in a brick-n-mortar operation is essential.

Many people make the mistake of attempting clever “tricks” while ignoring the basics. That is foolish. It’s possible that a site can score at the top using only the basics. However, “tricks” alone will never help you achieve top scores without first integrating those basics.
There you have it! There is their top 5 now, what’s yours?

DIRECTORIES

It is important to note that the sheer number of incoming links is not as important as the quality of the sites that are doing the linking. The fastest way to get some quality incoming links is to get listings in the popular directories, such as Yahoo and the Open Directory Project. For business sites, Yahoo costs $299 per year (it is free for non-commercial sites, although it takes a while to get listed). The Open Directory is free for all sites that meet certain quality standards, but it sometimes takes some respectful but diligent follow-up inquiries to make sure your site gets listed. When listing your sites, try to get them in the highest-level category that is applicable to your site. For instance, if your company in Smallville Ohio ships wind chimes to consumers nationwide, make sure you submit to the national “Wind Chime Dealers” category, not the “Retailers in Smallville, Ohio” category.

FINDING PARTNERS

Once you have submitted your directory listings, you should look for other sites that might link to yours. Ideally, the businesses that run these sites will be related to yours but will not be direct competitors. For example, if you had a site that sold supplies for swimming pools, it could be useful to your visitors if your site had a link to a swimming pool installer, and useful to his visitors to have a link back to your site. Since your offerings complement each other, neither of you are likely to lose business by exchanging links.

You also have to find sites that show a propensity to link to others. Google is an excellent engine to use when looking for potential linking partners. Typing in keywords that you think your customers might use to find you, look for quality, well-ranked, non-competing sites that have “links” or “resources” pages, and objectively look to see if your site would fit with the other sites listed. If you think it is a possibility, make a note of the site, including the webmaster’s address and something specific about the site you particularly liked.

It is also very useful to look at each of the sites on these “links” pages, as many of them might also be potential link partners. When you have found a good number of sites, add a link to each of them from a “links” page on your own site. It is important to do this before contacting the site owners, as they are much more likely to reciprocate if they see that you have already taken the trouble to link to them.

MAKING THE CONTACT

Once you have added a link to each of the sites you have identified, it is time to contact the site owners. Usually this is done by email. Due to the volume of spam most webmasters receive, it is very important to let them know that you have actually visited their site in the first few sentences. Compliment them on the site and specifically mention the attribute you particularly enjoyed (as previously noted). You should then let them know that you have already provided a link to them, and give them the URL of your links page so they can see this link for themselves. Only then do you mention that you would appreciate it if they would reciprocate.

MONITORING

Once all of your initial emails have gone out, check back to the sites you have targeted periodically to see if they have added your link. If they haven’t added it within a month, one follow-up email is normally acceptable. If you don’t hear back from them for a month after that, it may be time to remove their link from your links page, unless you feel that the resource they provide is of critical value to your visitors. Check your rankings every month or so to see how they improve, and, if necessary, start the process again.

THE LIST OF DON’TS

Don’t exchange links with sites that you would not want your visitors to see. This type of link can make your site look indiscriminate while defeating the entire purpose of link popularity. Also, do not ever exchange links with sites that contain nothing but a huge collection of links (AKA “link farms”). Search engines have been known to aggressively penalize sites that are associated with such sites. In addition, do not harass people who do not answer your emails. Remember that you are contacting someone, out of the blue, who probably has too much to do already. If they haven’t responded within a month of your second email, don’t expect a link.

Finally, do not expect overnight results. Link building takes a great deal of time and labor, and there is no real shortcut - a primary reason why search engines place importance on it. If your site is terrible, you aren’t going to convince many others to link to you, no matter how sweetly you ask.

CONCLUSION

A properly executed link building campaign will help boost your ranking with many search engines, but this is only part of the benefit. The quality sites that have agreed to link to you will also send you highly relevant traffic. Also, your brand and name will become better known within your industry as a result of the link requests that you make. Finally, your additions to Yahoo and the Open Directory will send you a great deal of additional quality traffic. Link building is a laborious process, but if done properly it is most definitely worth the effort.

A growing number of web hosting firms set up multiple domains on the same IP address — this is known as shared or virtual hosting. It may have a extremely deleterious effect on your site’s search engine placement.

There are a few reasons this is bad. The main reason that concerns us is the chance of having your site blocked by a search engine. The reason is simple. If you are sharing an IP number with 30 to 50 other web sites, you are trusting them not to over submit or spam the search engine. If a search engines blocks an IP number all the sites that are sharing that IP number are blocked. If you have your own unique IP number, you do not have this problem.

One incredulous bit of information is that when you discover shared hosting and bring it to the attention of the hosting firm, they will claim that is has nothing to do with search engine placement. They will usually say that they have lots of sites with top placement. Keep in mind that the hosting firm is saving money by using shared or virtual hosting.

It is well worth the money to pay more for hosting with a unique IP number then to host at a discounted and have to worry about your search engine placement.

Now that you know your web site should have its own IP number, you should also know that you should be able to get to your web site by your domain name or the IP number. The IP number for this web site is 64.70.225.182 If you copy and paste that into your browser you will find you are at the home page of this site.

We have set up a place where you may enter your domain name and find out what IP number your site resolves to. The url is:
http://www.AllSearchEngineSiteSubmissionService.com

When you find the IP number that your site resolves to paste it in your browser and hit enter. If you do not go to your own web site, you are hosting without your own IP number. You need to correct this. Keep in mind your hosting firm system may not be set up to give you an unique IP number.