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Sample The following is a section of the Online Retailers Success Guide, presented here as a sample of the content available to clients who contract ClassActive to design and develop their classifieds website, or a classifieds section of an existing website.

Free Guide! Every ClassActive client receives this handy 100-page book. It provides a complete manual for maximizing the value of a ClassActive website. Plus, it includes more than 100 practical things clients can do to support their website, and ensure profits. No fluff, just the facts. A $50 value - but for our clients, it's free!

Chapter 8: Low Cost Website Promotion

Promoting a small business website in the search engines can be a daunting task. Use of free submissions and link popularity is a good starting point for an inexpensive - yet still effective - website promotion campaign.

Start with the basis of good search engine and directory listings. Make sure to read and follow each search engine and directory's rules for submissions. Before making submissions, always verify that all your website links and pages work, with no pages "under construction".

Search Engines and Directories Begin with the Open Directory Project (ODP) (http://www.dmoz.org). ODP is free and provides secondary search results to many other search engines. (Secondary search results are search results that come up after the primary search results of a search engine are shown.) Google uses the ODP directory results in their search engine results.

It is preferable to secure a listing in ODP before submitting your website to Yahoo!, but it often takes time to become listed in ODP and may not be possible. If you can afford a yearly $299.00 subscription to submit to Yahoo! (http://www.yahoo.com), do so. If you are a non-commercial website, you may be able to submit your website for free. You will find the rules about free submissions when you click on the "suggest a site" link at the bottom of your chosen category page.

If you do B2B (business-to-business) with other companies, Business.com (http://www.business.com) is a reasonable $99.00 subscription per year and gives you the opportunity to list not only your home page, but four other pages from your website. The Business.com search results are used by many other business sites for search results.

Many of the major search engines still include a free submission section for their listings. Paid Inclusion and PPC (pay-per-click) are always the faster choices, but if your budget is limited you may want to consider submitting and waiting the 6-8 weeks (or more) it often takes to see your listings show up.

The Big Four
¶ Google - 29.5% of searches* Google is everyone's favorite search engine, but how do you get your website listed? First there is the submission form, located on their website. Google has always preferred to find new websites by spidering existing sites in its index and following new links from there. If you want to increase your chances of seeing your website indexed, find some quality websites or directories to link to your new site now. Google typically updates its full index once a month, so do not panic if 4 weeks have gone by and there's still no sign of being indexed. However, if after 6 weeks, your site is still not indexed, concentrate on adding more quality links and work on getting listed in the Open Directory. See below.
¶ Yahoo - 28.9% of searches Up until about 18 months ago, the best way to get listed in Yahoo was by paying the annual $299 fee to be listed in their directory. However, at this time, Yahoo gets its results from the Google index and a directory listing is no longer vital (although many like having the directory listing as well). So for the time being, I recommend concentrating on getting your website listed in Google, and that will take care of Yahoo (although with Yahoo acquiring Inktomi, this could soon change).
¶ MSN - 27.6% of searches There are two effective ways to get your website listed in the MSN results (sponsored listings aside). You can submit your website to Looksmart (see below) and find your site listed in the "Web Directory Sites" or you can favor Inktomi and have your website listed in the "Web Pages" section.
¶ AOL - 18.4% of searches The submission process for AOL, is well, non-existent. AOL uses the results from Google, so obtaining a listing at Google is important if you wish to be shown in AOL.
* NetRatings for January 2003. Results do not add up to 100% as some searchers use more than one search engine.

The Directories
¶ The Open Directory The Open Directory is also referred to as ODP or DMOZ. To get your website listed in the directory, simply find the most appropriate category for your website and click the "add url" link. Follow the instructions carefully. Do not be tempted to write a description that is full of dozens of keywords. Pick 3-4 of your most important keywords and write a 20-30-word description that includes these terms. DMOZ editors are known for changing the descriptions submitted by website owners, so make sure yours is well written so that you reduce the chance of it being edited; it could be your keywords that are edited out. Remember, editors are unpaid at DMOZ, so don't expect to see your website listed after just a few days. It could take weeks or even months. You can read further instructions at the DMOZ site.
¶ Looksmart Pay the $29 to have your site reviewed and listed in the Looksmart directory. Once listed, you will pay $0.15 per click for the first 5,000 visitors that Looksmart generates to your website. After that, your click-thru rate is adjusted depending on the type of business you operate (rates range from $0.23 to $0.75 per click). The good news is that you can set your monthly budget to ensure that you do not overspend (minimum spend is $15 a month). You can submit your site via this link. Zeal.com (http://www.zeal.com) listings are part of the LookSmart directory, which provides primary search listings for MSN. You must sign-up to become a Zeal editor and pass a test before being able to add your non-commercial submissions to Zeal. Articles and tutorials are good choices to use when submitting non-commercial information from your website to Zeal.com.

The Crawlers
¶ Inktomi - provides results to Looksmart, MSN, Hotbot and Overture. The best way to get listed in Inktomi is to use one of the many paid-inclusion services. The cost is typically $39 a year for the first URL you submit and $25 for each URL thereafter. The subscription is for one year and usually ensures your site is listed within 48 hours. Two of the main providers of Inktomi paid-inclusion are: PositionTech and Network Solutions.
¶ Ask Jeeves Crawler results for Ask Jeeves are provided by Teoma (which Ask owns). Fees are in line with Inktomi and are $30 per year for the first URL and $18 for each additional URL. The main paid-inclusion partners are PositionTech and Ineedhits.com.
¶ Fast - provides results to Lycos and AllTheWeb. Sites indexed are displayed at both AllTheWeb and Lycos, so submitting is definitely worthwhile. The fees are typically $34 per year for the first URL and $16 for each additional URL. The main paid-inclusion partners are PositionTech and Lycos InSite Select.
¶ AltaVista AltaVista has either its basic submit service , which is free but very slow, or you can use the paid inclusion option which will cost you $39 for your first URL (this is for 6 months only).
¶ Netscape and iWon Both Netscape and iWon receive their crawler results from Google.
ExactSeek I wanted to include at least one of the up-and-coming crawlers to consider. ExactSeek.com is one of the few search engines that spiders both the Title tag and Meta tags and it is easy to submit your site and has options for enhancing your listing.

Secondary Search Engines
¶ You can submit for free to the following secondary search sites: Gigablast (http://www.gigablast.com) and ScrubtheWeb (http://www.scrubtheweb.com). One smaller directory is JoeAnt (http://www.joeant.com).

Link Popularity Methods If you are a small business, seek out business directories to submit to, especially those directly related to your business.
¶ Looking in Yahoo! and ODP categories for business directories can be very helpful in getting a start on your search for links.
¶ For link popularity, searching in Google is a quick way to find suitable websites to request links from or submit to.
¶ Search for specialty search engines. If your business is in the medical field, search for medical search engines.
¶ When looking for link partners, select sites that reflect your website's topic or subject. Links from sites that are not related to your site are not weighted as heavily by the search engines in deciding how to rank your site.
¶ Visit your competition's websites. See how they are ranking in the search engines and find out which keywords they are found under.
¶ Link popularity is a very time-consuming activity, be prepared to spend a minimum of 10-20 hours in order to start building your link popularity. This may be a daunting enough task you might want to consider working with a search engine marketing professional.

Helpful Tools It is always a good idea to keep in mind that many tools are not "exact" and can vary due to the search engine algorithms changing (which can be often). I like to think of it as an "approximation" of the information I am seeking.
¶ The Google Toolbar (http://toolbar.google.com) shows you the approximate link popularity of other websites (note the green bar that says "PageRank" after downloading the tool), as well as giving you choices such as checking backlinks (who is linking to the webpage), similar pages, a cached snapshot of the page and more when you right-click on the web page. Visit your competition's webpage, then use the toolbar to view who is linking to them.
¶ The PageRank and backlink information is very helpful in regards to researching your competition. The backlinks you find via the toolbar may show you some quality websites to submit links to. Seek out websites with PageRank 4 and up to get the most out of your submitted or reciprocal link. Hovering your mouse over the Google Toolbar tells you the page rank of the page you are visiting.
¶ To learn about writing an email request for a reciprocal link and other linking strategies, visit Eric Ward's website (http://www.ericward.com/articles/index.html).
¶ The Overture suggestion tool (http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion) is a free way to check how popular your keyword phrases are in comparison to the monthly results of Overture. This will not give you a complete picture since Overture is used on many but not all search engines. It will help you decide which keyword phrases are the best choice, as well as as variations on your keyword phrases.
¶ MarketLeap (http://www.marketleap.com/) measures your link popularity, and that of three of your competitors. The report is free and gives you a benchmark showing where your popularity lies online vs your competitors.
¶ Lastly, if you want to "do it yourself", the top places to research and learn from are Search Engine Watch (http://www.searchenginewatch.com) and Webmaster World (http://www.webmasterworld.com). Search Engine Watch and Webmaster World's sister site, Search Engine World (http://www.searchengineworld.com) both have free newsletters full of information to help you promote your website.

Summary Now for some caveats and clarification on the above. While some search engines offer free submission services and others will index your site eventually if you have inbound links, the advice above concentrates on the quickest and most effective means of getting your website indexed. In addition, I have not delved into the realms of "Direct-Feeds" or Pay-Per-Click which would need articles in their own right. However, for most small to medium sized businesses looking to follow the best methods of submitting a website, the above information should be enough to ensure that your site is indexed. If you're ready for your website to be the next "blockbuster," then following the guidelines above will help ensure your success.

Free Guide! Every ClassActive client receives this handy 100-page book. It provides a complete manual for maximizing the value of a ClassActive website. Plus, it includes more than 100 practical things clients can do to support their website, and ensure profits. No fluff, just the facts. A $50 value - but for our clients, it's free!

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