Search engine

[grassfarmer]

Having just set up a website and wishing it to appear on search engines, I'm wondering what kind of deal a one off submission offered by my web host is(@$15 US). For a minority breed website with not many listing on the web would this one off submission keep showing up my website or do you really need to submit them monthly ? Will the website be picked up eventually by the search engines anyway?

[edbaker]

Hello grassfarmer,

I think you goofed, if I may say so.

What's the subject of your site - and title, may I ask?

We'd all like to give it a look. Well - quite a few of us. Being curious, with a number of interests, as many farm-related people are.

There are a lot of people who frequent this place - despite the fact that you've had no replies in two months.

And they know a lot of people. Many of whom have email.

Your cost for the publicity that you'd have received?

Not one red cent.

On one money-saving forum that I frequent, there was a recent discussion as to whether people picked up pennies that they saw lying on the street.

One person said that they were dirty, germ-laden, etc. and she wouldn't stoop to that.

So - I asked her if she'd stoop to pick up a dirty, germ-laden twenty Dollar bill?

No reply - from her (but there were some from others).

I just saw your message, called my son, who's putting together a website, so I expected that part of his current activities would be investigating how to get one's website noticed.

He said that he doesn't know much about that, but that there are a lot of entities on the internet that promise to get your site seen by a lot of search engines. Some of them useful, quite a few somewhat less so - a number rather spurious.

Some agencies trying to get websites noticed have used interesting, but invisible, methods of achieving that end - and the operators of the search engines have taken evasive action, etc.

So - if your information is something over 6 mos. old, it's probably outdated.

Pays yer money, takes yer chance, I guess.

A couple of years ago I was trying to get noticed a freshly-minted website put in place by a friend of mine who builds heaters fired by wheat, rye or corn.

Some of the search engines allow you to register a dozen or so, possibly up to a hundred, related words, e.g in his case, "cheap heat", "low cost heat", "economical heat", "environmentally friendly heat", same with "-er" on the end, "grain burner", etc.

He calls his grainstove, (see his site at www.grainstoves.com) as it burns wheat and rye as well as corn. So one could use as a related word, "corn stove", "burn corn", "corn heat" so that people who went looking for a corn stove would be brought to his related system.

Check out such as Google, Yahoo (which I use for a number of free email addresses), Alta Vista, dogpile, Look Smart, Teoma, Northern Light, Oingo, Ask Jeeves, Momma, Lycos, Ah-ha, e-Pilot, Kanoodle, Brain Fox, Real Names, Direct Hit, Go To, excite, webcrawler, sprint, etc.

Those are from two years ago and I didn't check them recently, so more than likely some have disappeared, been amalgamated, etc.

Go to some of them and inquire about how one gets noticed.

Quite a number of search engines offer to list your site - and charge you varying amounts per hit, e.g. 2 cents, a nickel, etc. Of course, the ones that offer a dime per hit get listed higher than ones that are willing to pay 2 cents per hit to the search engine managers.

If uou accept one of those offers, you hope that you've chosen an engine where you have a good chance of attracting people really interested, rather than people with minimal interest.

Here's another idea - which I'm very little acquainted with myself, but there's good advice at other parts of that site and I think there as well.

Go to www.gardenweb.com, then check in their extensive index of forums for one related to computers. I think that you'll find a wealth of information from people there. And people very helpful.

By the way - if you know some gardeners, that site is wonderful for that interest. A number of plants and flowers have one discussion forum dealing only with that plant. Must be 60 or so forums there.

Including some, "Money saving tips", "Household finances" and "Retirement" that I use quite a lot.

Good wishes with your search.

Ed Baker