Site Review and Search Engine Submittals 2

[VBRookie]

We just finished re-tooling and re-designing this site (

http://www.atlantametrosda.org)

and would love to have some constructive criticism on it.

Also is it wise to pay a company to handle search engine submittals for us or is it better to do it manually? If so who are the best to apply to since there are hundreds.

Many Thanks,
VB Rookie

 

[viol8ion]

There really are not hundreds of search engines, actually less than a dozen that 99% of the people out there use. Google is #1.

Submit the sites yourself, manually. It will take a half hour of your time to hit all the big ones, will be more effective, and you will not be subject to the abuse of spam that the so-called list services will inundate you with.

As fas as the site goes, it is attractive, quick-loading and cross-browser compatible. I checked it with IE as well as Mozilla... nice job.

When in doubt, deny all terms and defnitions.

http://www.wuli.com

 

[ChrisHirst]

Submit to directories by all means. Submitting to search engines is quite honestly a waste of time. Get a link to the site from somewhere and the spiders will find you far quicker than waiting in a queue of submitted URLs.

In fact you will probably find that Google will have visited your site within the next 7 to 10 days simply because of the link you posted here.

Check forum828 SEO forum for more info on SEs.




Chris.

Indifference will be the downfall of mankind, but who cares?

 

[VBRookie]

Thanks for the feedback. So the top engines that I should aim for I'm guessing are:

Google
Yahoo
Alta-Vista
Ask Jeeves
MSN Search
Lycos
HotBot

Am I missing any?

- VB Rookie

 

[viol8ion]

As Chris alluded, one of the best things you can do is to get your site linked to by other sites, as many as possible. If you post in forums frequently, using your site URL as part of your signature helps, too. Sites that use google's technology rate your site partly by the number of opther sites that link to it, as well as the terms they use to describe the link.

I disagree that it is a waste of time to submit to a search engine, however... it can speed the process of getting listed and some allow you to add keywords, descripion of site, etc.

Yahoo is not a search engine, but a directory. Put a litle bit of time and thinking when you submit to Yahoo to make sure you have it submitted properly.

Go to Dogpile.com for a list of the top contenders, you will find some you have missed.

When in doubt, deny all terms and defnitions.

http://www.wuli.com

 

[ChrisHirst]

The big players are even less than that as many of them take results from elsewhere.

Lycos and AlltheWeb take their results from Fast
Hotbot and MSN show results from Inktomi
MSN also uses Looksmart and Overture paid listings
Yahoo at the moment uses Google results but may be changing to show Inktomi (Which Yahoo own)
Plus many of these have their own crawlers. MSN have one in development.
Bruce Clay has a chart that shows the SE relationships

http://www.bruceclay.com/searchenginerelationshipchart.htm

One thing to look for are directories,
DMOZ, Gigablast, JoeAnt, Gimpsy, Websavvy etc
You are already listed in Zeal

http://www.zeal.com/website/profile.jhtml?cid=10080808&wid=100477745

Google already crawls your site and has 62 pages listed

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...c2coff=1&q=site:www.atlantametrosda.org+-asdf

The problem is the site needs optimising for different search phrases.
All your pages have the same title. take a look at a lot of the advice given in the SEO forum and work on that. The site is content rich and well laid out, a bit of work will get you found for more searches.



Chris.

Indifference will be the downfall of mankind, but who cares?

 

[VBRookie]

Wow! I did not know about these services ... I'll definitly take note of them and check them out.

Thanks!
- VB Rookie