I Need To Submit My Website To Search Engines Within the Next Two Weeks

[vangogh]

I'll just echo what everyone else has said. Shortcuts won't get you where you want to go where SEO is concerned. There's a lot of seo software making promises. From what I've seen most are generally useless. They'll tell you some information that's pretty obvious and often out of date. I think seo software can have a use as far as data collection, but ultimately the best seo tool is your brain. Software isn't really going to tell you how to optimize your site.

Read the things I linked to in my post above and then search around for more on the basics. Do what you can to understand what search engines are looking for and then use that knowledge to make decisions about your site.

In the end search engine traffic is just one traffic stream (albeit a good one) and SEO should be one part of your overall marketing strategy.

[eborg9]

Thank you guys. Have you ever tried the program called SEOElite or anything similar? I have a trial now and I plan on working with it this week. I'm not sure how this program guarantees its results either. Maybe it makes fake websites that link to yours?

I don't know what kind of site you are launching, but what you really should learn about is Internet Marketing.
You will find after a while that yes, your site and it's pages should be optimized so that you can be found easily, but what really matters in getting people to the site in the first place, and that has more to do with your marketing away from your site, than what Page rank it is.

You should shoot for first page in as many key phrases as you can capture, and certainly 1st for as many as you can. the rest happens outside of the site.

Quick for instance....If you sell shoes, don't spend all your time and money trying to be number 1 for "shoes", try to be number 1 for:

"Brown Loafers"
"Penny Loafers"
"High Heels for Men"
"Neon Running Shoes"


Get the picture ?

[Aaron Hats]

Obviously, content is most important but would submitting the site and a sitemap through Google's webmaster tools be a good start?

[vangogh]

There's nothing wrong with submitting an XML sitemap through Webmaster Tools. If you're site is having trouble getting indexed it's probably something worth trying. However I'd sooner just have an html sitemap on the site itself and let search engines use it to crawl your site. The XML sitemap is really unnecessary.

It might make sense to use one if their are crawling issues on your site, but if you've done other things right there's no need for them. I don't use XML sitemaps with the sites I develop and have never had a problem getting indexed. As long as you build the site so spiders can crawl and find your pages the XML sitemap is redundant.

[billbenson]

On submitting sites to google - don't do that, just get a link to them. Multiple submissions to G may hurt you and one doesn't matter.

I don't use it, but a G sitemap is probably a good thing to do.

[KristineS]

The Google Webmaster tools do have some uses. I have the set up for the company sites and they are helpful. I could probably do more with them, but there's only so much time in a day.

I'd say they're worth investigating at least.