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

[KingHippo]

I'll be doing my official website and product launch within the next two weeks. I've been working on mostly internal websites that do not get put into search engines, so I have little experience with submitting websites to search engines and do not know SEO to get to the top. Can someone point me in the right direction as to the basics of SEO? Is it possible for a little guy to get to the top 10 on Google or Yahoo?

[billbenson]

Pretty sure Vangogh has a blog on the subject. A short answer is yes. Write a big site in a very specific niche. Use all the tags properly. Optimize each page for only one key phrase. Generally 3 word key phrases are the best. You won't get there optimizing a computer site for computers. Try to add unique content daily and updates daily. You can program CMS's to do that.

After that, you get into gray areas like linking strategies, dup content penalties, keyword density etc.

I think the biggest piece of advice is don't take any one or group of peoples advice. It varies from type of site, to multisite strategies... Just read everything you can and make your own judgments. You won't figure it out in two weeks though.

You mentioned submitting to search engines. Just stick a link somewhere and the search engines will find you. Google says not to use autosubmitters like web position gold etc. They don't like it.

[vangogh]

First don't bother submitting your site to a search engine. It won't help your pages rank and it's mainly a pointless pursuit. Search engines will find your site if there are other sites linking to it. And easy way to have search engines find you is to add a link to the site in your signature here. Search engines spider this forum regularly and if you have a sig link and continue to post, they'll follow the link(s) and find your site.

However having a search engine spider find your site and index your pages is not the same as your pages ranking well in search engines. If you're hoping to rank at the top in the next 2 weeks, take a deep breath and rethink your goals until you find a more realistic one. Depending on what phrases you're hoping to rank well for it could be a few weeks, it could be a few years, and it could be never.

SEO is one aspect of marketing. There's nothing magic about and in general it will likely take a combination of time, effort, and money to rank well.

Here's a thread I started here about how to approach the seo process

Here's a seven part tutorial on seo basics from my blog. I wrote it a couple of years ago and it probably needs an update, but most everything in it should still apply. I've written other posts about seo on the blog as well if you want to explore.

There are many others who have also written tutorials and guides. You can read some of the free guides at SEOmoz. SEO Book is another great site to learn from. No one site is going to tell you everything you want to know. Also you won't learn seo overnight. It's part of your overall marketing and if you want to succeed with search engines you need to understand it's a process that you will continue to work at. SEO is not a one time thing that you set up and forget about and it's not a quick fix way to bring traffic.

[seolman]

Even though he only has one ear, that VanGogh guy really knows his SEO - it's his painting he needs to work on - bit sloppy at times...to much wax in his paint.

[vangogh]

Had to do something with the wax since it couldn't stay in my ear anymore.

[KingHippo]

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?

[billbenson]

You are looking for shortcuts which could get you banned from google. The fact that SEOElite's home page has little if any SEO and is written in a get rich quick style should tell you a lot. If they say they guarantee results, then run the other way. The best SEO in the world can't guarantee placement. In a quick search on google, it appears to be a system which places a ton of links to your site overnight. Google doesn't like that anymore.

If you absolutely have to have traffic in a few weeks, I would hire someone who is good with adwords to work with you and get that traffic. Good AdWords traffic at a reasonable price usually means hundreds of ads, keyword research, and optimized landing pages - hundreds of them. It's quicker, but not easy or cheap.

Why do you need to place so quickly? Unfortunately, there aren't any shortcuts.

[KristineS]

I'm with billbenson on this one. Stay away from anyone who promises you top 10 or first page ranking results. That's not something a company can promise.

The best way to do things is to stick with a slow and steady placement strategy. If you try to take too many shortcuts, Google will ban you.

[Business Attorney]

I'm no SEO expert, but I'll echo what the others have said. There are no good shortcuts.

Concentrate on the content first. Trying to get a site to rank high in the search engines if it is not one of the best pages on the Internet for that search term is ultimately a doomed endeavor. You may be able to achieve the rank for a short time, but you'll never keep it.

I have several sites, both my business and some hobby sites, that consistently rank in the top 5 on Google. The reason is not because I am smarter than the search engines but because, for the relevant search terms, the sites deliver the most valuable content. SEO helps, of course, but without the content to back up the search results, it is meaningless.

[seolman]

David said a mouthful. It's about content. Linkability. Think of it like this. If you have a bakery and make the best baguettes for miles around, word spreads quickly and soon everyone will be coming from miles around to buy your baguettes. The web is no different. It's just a huge cyber-community. Put something people just can't live without on your site and you'll get organic traffic and links by osmosis.