Search Engine Optimization FAQ's
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Does my search engine optimization need continual updating and maintenance?
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Should I use services that submit my web site to hundreds or thousands of search engines for free or for a small fee?
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How do Search Engines work?
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What is an Internet Directory or Catalog?
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How do Internet Directories / Catalogs work?
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What is a pay per click search engine?
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Do you recommend using pay per click search engines to get traffic?
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Should I use techniques such as doorway pages, cloaked pages or link exchange?
Does my search engine optimization need continual updating and maintenance?
Typically search engine optimization does need some maintenance each month. Whether this is major or minor depends primarily on what techniques you use to optimize your search engine positioning and how much tinkering you do with your site once the original optimization has been performed. San Diego Internet Marketing uses strategies based on long term search engine success as opposed to somewhat controversial techniques which need to be updated each and every time the search engine watchdogs catch on to the optimizer's new tricks.
Should I use services that submit my web site to hundreds or thousands of search engines for free or for a small fee?
No, never use services that submit your site to thousands of search engines for free or for a small service charge. There are many reasons for this, but most prominent is that many of these services are outdated and may forever have a negative affect on your rankings, plus there are not thousands of search engines that are driving traffic to your web site! I witness first hand the affects of many of these services that mass submit sites on a monthly basis and I can tell you that the most frequent affect these services have is getting sites that are already listed removed from search engines. You should typically submit to each engine or directly by respecting the unique qualities and requirements for submitting to each search engine or portal. Some directories such as Yahoo require submittal once a year (for a fee) and other may require monthly resubmission such as Claymont.
A search engine is a computer with thousands, millions or in some cases billions of URL's in its database. When a web surfer types in a search such as "Hotels in the Caribbean" the database will search the millions of sites available and using algorithms unique to each, a search engine will pull up the best sites in order of relevancy, based on factors such as keywords in the title, description, body and other areas within the HTML code. It is the goal of each search engine to pull up results that are going to be the most relevant to the web surfers, while eliminating inappropriate spam web sites. Some examples of major search engines include, Yahoo, Google, MSN, ASK, My Search and Gigablast.
What is an Internet Directory?
An Internet directory is a collection of data such as Yahoo Directory, DMOZ, Joe Ant or Jayde where web sites are reviewed by human beings and placed into the hierarchal categories considered most relevant by these human editors. The major advantage of directories over search engines is the quality of web sites within the collection. It is much more difficult for spammers to add inappropriate material or poor quality sites.
How do Internet Directories work?
Directories work similar to search engines in the sense that they read the information on each distinct URL and rank them according to unique logarithms set up by the individual catalogs. The major differences are: 1. Directories often default to categories prior to providing individual web pages or web sites, therefore the category your site is listed in is often as important as the key words and title, and 2. Directories often have a fewer number of URL's from each site to select from. This means typically that if a certain site has quality information for a certain search, but this is not apparent from the home page, some of the best pages may be omitted. However, today most directories have partnerships with search engines and vice versa to help minimize this affect.
What is a pay per click search engine?
Pay per click is a service such as Yahoo Search, MSN Ad Center or Google AdWords where rankings are purchased on a bid basis. They are listed as Sponsored Listings so searchers will know that those web sites are paying for that position. Whoever is willing to pay the most money per click is going to get the highest listing.
Do you recommend using pay per click search engines to get traffic?
We do recommend using pay per click search engines (PPC) to introduce a web site to the market, but CAUTION must be used! PPC engines are a great way to test new products or specials for a company. But caution must be exercised as PPC engines can be 10 times more costly and a mismanaged PPC accounts can go thru $500 in 2 days! The top search engines all have there own pay per click advertising. The advantage of a web site using a PPC program is that your web site can be in the top spot in 48 hours....If you are willing to pay for it!
A recent media report showed on average that Google and Yahoo received a 25 to 30 % click thru rate on the top PPC ads but MSN had as much as 75% click thru rate on the top PPC ads. This means that MSN users feel that the PPC ads are more relevant than the users of Yahoo and Google.
Should I use techniques such as doorway pages, cloaked pages or link exchange?
Absolutely Do Not Us Doorway Pages or Cloaking Techniques! Today many of the top search engines robots and crawlers are more sophisticated and can find spammed, cloaked, and door way paged web sites.
Quality Link exchanges are highly recommended if not mandatory since many search engines rank sites on good reciprocal link exchanges. You must use relevant linking techniques.
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