Forum Moderators: open
After my clients have spent money on design and programming etc they rarely have money left for search engine fees.
Up until now, I have been using Web Position Gold to submit to engines and manually submitting to directories.
But I've noticed that more and more of the search engines want you to pay and seem to give preference to those sites that pay.
I currently charge a small monthly fee for doing free monthly submits but I am noticing that they aren't really being successful.
Basically, what I am asking is, are there any engines/directories now where it is still worth submitting for free or should I not bother and just advise my clients they need to pay?
I am based in England and ideally I'd like to get my clients ranked in yahoo.co.uk & .com/google.co.uk & .com and msn.co.uk & .com.
Also, I have never tried this sponsored keyword thing that the engines are pushing - is it really worth it?
Finally, I try to set up reciprocal link partnerships with my client's site and other quality sites - will this really help the site's ranking?
Many thanks
James
As far as Google goes (this is the Google forum) I suggest forgetting about submissions and concentrate on getting some links from other sites. The open directory (dmoz.org) is a good place to request a link from.
Some people here are finding Sponsored Links a useful source of traffic and there are several recent threads here about 'AdWords'.
Personally, I rarely pay for listings in engines and I rarely buy ad's. If your sites are robot friendly, you make it easy for search engines to understand what each page is about and you get good links from other sites then you can get good traffic from Google.
Paid listings (available in most engines but not Google) and adverts can be a good way to help the site along quicker, but for a small budget site I wouldn't bother.
Yes, there are free submissions still worth it, Google and FAST to name two of them, though search engines with free submission are getting scarcer. And yes, arranging quality reciprocal links will help with rankings.
>I program websites for small clients with small budgets.
So do I, and I also had no interest in rankings to begin with. But the first business site I did accidentally got excellent rankings, so I set out to find out how it had happened. Believe me, it WAS an accident! I started to learn more, and before long found my way here. I used that first site, as well as the next few, as my first "learning lab." You've got the perfect opportunity to use your current clients' sites to do the same thing. You can then, after a while, start to offer promotion as a value-added service, and/or offer it separately.
>I currently charge a small monthly fee for doing free monthly submits but I am noticing that they aren't really being successful
It's important to optimize the sites for good placement in addition to establishing good links, which can also help bring traffic, and you've come to just the right place for that.
>But I've noticed that more and more of the search engines want you to pay and seem to give preference to those sites that pay.
For clients with some budget, IMHO the best thing is to start with a modest PPC plan at first, since regular search engines take a while. When there's no budget for promotion, I include it all with a package deal with design and stay with the free submits. That's just for design clients, if other sites have no promotion budget it's a moot question.
If there's any budget at all, in addition to what's still free I'm suggesting pay for inclusion with Inktomi if MSN and AOL are suited demographically, since it's reasonable enough and works well for less competitive keywords, which are often very targeted anyway. And I've just started this week with the Lycos (FAST) paid submit to a very limited degree, since I'm hoping and anticipating that they'll expand their exposure.
In your case, since you're just starting with search engine promotion, it's probably best to stay with the free ones for now and just concentrate on the basics of optimization.
There are differences depending on location, so I'm familiar with the U.S. You'd probably be best off digging in to our UK/Ireland forum for specifics for your area. There are 3 moderators, and a good number of highly competent members, that are some of the best in the business, as well as being extremely helpful. There's nothing you need to know that you won't find here.
That's a bit of a red flag. eg: don't quit your day job.
True story: There is a gentleman who visits these forums everyday. He's got a house, a wife, 2 kids, a dog and two cats. Last year, he grossed $250k off of websites (I know - I subcontracted part of the promotion for a year and saw the books).
For the longest time, I couldn't figure out the real secret to his success. He has some of the plainest looking sites you'll ever run into today. Most of them don't even include tables - just raw text/html poured onto the page with a simple menu at the bottom.
I finally ask him what the secret was to his success, he said, "I spend 40% of my time on content, and 60% of my time on promotion". I asked where that left time to work in any design or rebuild work. He said, "I've not worried about design since 1996".
That same story is nearly true for most of the really successful web independents I know. The mass majority of todays web design time, is nearly a waste of time.
How about this one that you can relate to: we all know a successful guy who runs a site that is one of the top sites in his industry. He's got newsletters, subscription areas, doing conferences all over the world. He even hired a new full time writer for his site. You know he hasn't changed the design on his site since I believe 1996. Ya...you know him [webmasterworld.com].
>free
Yes, Google, Fast, and the free directories. manual - not programmed.
And sometimes it's nearly slaughter, as well:
Beatifully designed sites in frames with ONLY high-tech fancy Javascript menu navigation. Can't be spidered, buried in rankings.
Beatifully designed sites with all but the homepage dynamic with question marks and multiple parameters in the URLs. Don't get spidered, buried in rankings.
Expensive sites in Flash or all graphics. Buried in rankings, if indexed at all.
And what does it say on the designers' sites a good part of the time? "We add meta tags and submit your site to (insert number of search engines) so you can be found on the search engines."
>rarely have money left for search engine fees.
Assuming the site design is considered part of the companies' marketing budgets, and their goal of commissioning a site is to increase business, since the site won't accomplish that unless it gets traffic, and though they may be uninformed, they've misallocated their marketing money.
Some web designers don't know any better, and haven't informed themselves. But those that do learn their trade enough to know that just because they design it "build it and they will come" has no basis in reality no longer have any justification for not presenting the truth to their clients.
>necessary evil
So are paying rent and utilities, paying staff and leasing the copy machine, and so is a company paying to have a site designed instead of doing a home made job in Publisher. It's all part of the cost of doing business.
Unfortunately for some companies, they don't call in someone who knows search engine friendly site design to begin with, and eventually when they find they're not getting any return on their investment, they have to end up spending even MORE to do PPC forever or get a total redesign, or just give up altogether, thinking the web is all a waste.
If there are any SEO here, based in England, (preferably not too far from London) and good at what they do (and can prove it) then feel free to send me an email.
Regards,
James
And if you haven't looked already, there's some excellent information in our UK & Ireland Engines & Directories [webmasterworld.com] forum you'll enjoy going through to familiarize yourself. The thread on
Search Engine Strategy for a Small UK Business [webmasterworld.com] is a particularly good one.
