D’Oh! 5 Search Engine Submission Mistakes
Your site copy is polished, the design looks pretty neat, you’ve even got a few Flash graphics on your home page, and you’re ready to do your search engine submissions.
STOP!!
Today we check out the top 5 mistakes that people doing search engine submissions for their site make. In the interest of doing things right from the start, preserving your cash and effectively using your website promotion time, here are 5 things to make sure of before you have your internet marketing firm start on search engine submissions.
1. Check that your site is search engine friendly first
In many cases, search friendliness means ‘human friendliness’; however there are also a few additional things you’ll need to take note of. Make sure that:
* You have descriptive titles on every page that match the content
* Your copy is written for people, not ‘keyword stuffed’
* You’ve included every page of your site in the main navigation. In other words, ensure that one of the main menu options can eventually lead you to every page on your site.
* Make sure each page can be accessed by means other than Flash navigation or Java navigation.
2. Start your link building activities before you do search engine submissions
Your website will start out with a much better ranking if you start your link building activities before doing all of your submissions. Star getting some article marketing content and press release out in the big wide web, do a few directory submissions, etc.
3. Create a system to monitor your search engine submissions
You’ll want to know whether the search engines are indexing every single page on your website, and how frequently they are updating your listing. This is especially important if you are still in the process of adding content to your site.
4. Test your site marketability
In the end, having a website isn’t about just ‘getting good Google results’; having a website is about being profitable. Use Google AdSense as a tool for discovering which taglines, keywords, entice visitors to your site, and also encourage them to ‘convert’ - not just look around and leave.
5. Forgetting your analytics
If you don’t want to fall victim to John Wanamaker’s famous dilemma (”Half of the money I spend on advertising is completely wasted … I just have no idea which half”), you’ll want to implement analytics on your site. In the interests of getting complete and comprehensive data and an accurate baseline to measure from, do your search engine submissions after you’ve implemented your web analytics.
