Search Engine Promotion on a Tight Budget
--As seen on InternetDay.com

For companies on a tight budget, there are six things that can be done to get started with good placement on the search engines. Some of those things companies can do themselves. Some of them are probably better done by professional search engine promotion companies.

1) Optimize the code in the front page of a site. Then tag all other site pages with optimized meta tags. The front-page optimization is probably best done by a search engine promotion professional because it's a fairly complicated task that involves research, time, and experience. Some search engine promotion companies can do this work fairly inexpensively. SageRock.com charges $200 to optimize a front page. The designer or other web-savvy worker could cut and paste the meta tags from the front page into the other pages of the site.

2) Submit the site, by hand, to the engines. This is mildly time consuming but it is the only way to ensure that a site gets submitted. SageRock.com has a page on its site that highlights the important search engines and links to the submission page of each engine. Businesses can do this themselves.

3) Get listed on LookSmart. This will get the site listed on multiple other engines. They have a $299 submission fee. This fee does not guarantee that a site will get in. However, most sites that are submitted are included. LookSmart chooses the category and the description for a site. Businesses can do this themselves.

4) Get on Yahoo. This can bring a site a good deal of traffic depending on the type of business and where Yahoo places the site. They also have a $199 submission fee. Yahoo is much more particular than LookSmart. Making one mistake can ruin a company's chances of getting in and cause them to lose $199. Hiring a professional is a good idea. Having an optimized, hand-crafted title and description that will give the best possible results is a skill that comes from submitting many sites to Yahoo. SageRock.com currently charges $400, which includes the $199 submission fee and a money-back guarantee that a site will get listed. A company can do this themselves, but should follow all of instructions explicitly. See our article, "Getting Listed in Yahoo."

5) Pay for the Goto express submission. Call 1-877-WWW-GOTO and let them do the work. For a reasonable fee they will find 20 relevant search terms, professionally write search listings, and give $50 worth of clicks. Look into getting at least one top 3 position. This will get the site in AltaVista, AOL Search, HotBot, Lycos, Search.com.

6) Pay to get spidered by Inktomi. Inktomi is a service that gives listings to engines
such as: iWon and gives secondary results to: AOL Search, HotBot, GoTo, LookSmart, MSN Search, Snap. They charge $30 for the first page and $15 for each additional page per year. This money is simply for them to look at the site - this is called spidering. Once a company pays this amount they will spider your site every 48 hours. The front page optimization in step one is essential to do before paying for this spidering. Otherwise the site will not rank well and the money will be wasted. The Inktomi partner, Position Technologies: http://www.positiontech.com/is the service businesses can use to get involved with this system. At least submit the front page of the site initially. Businesses can do this themselves.

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