Top 1-20 Placements in Search Engines

You and 10+ Zillion people are trying for the same top 10 or top 20 positions.

There's no magic. No one has any special pull with engines so keep that in mind when someone wants you to sign up and pay them for placement.

Most engines take time to reach the top. All depends on the tags and content of your site.

Also, depends what search terms you are trying to get the top 10/20 listings for. For example, if you want top 20 listings for "Golf Clubs" - good luck! IOW, some search terms, while popular, are so broad and so common it's really more luck than anything else. If you can narrow your search terms targets to something more defined you stand a better chance.

Jaiem is right. Since there is no magic or particular way to get into the top twenty listings, you'll just have to work on optimizing your site for search engines. This means to use effective meta tags, ALT tags for your images, etc.

I agree. There are some companies that "guarantee" a certain position level, but...they may not be exactly what they seem. I've had experience with http://www.submitplus.com for one. The prices are not bad and the guarantee positioning. But read the print with care and understand what they are really saying they will do.

These outfits focus on "heavy" optimization that borders on SPAM (IMO). They choose many forms of keyword variations and pack them in. They replace page titles with keywords, and create doorway and "spider" pages.

They are somewhat effective, I'll give them that. But their work won't stand a close look by someone trying to detect SPAM.

Most knowledgeable and experienced SEOs won't make any guarantees on ranking with too much specifics. But they should guarantee to get you placed and if your content has some merit and some uniqueness, then you should place well.

Optimization and Promotion of a site by a top professional can run you between $1,000-2,000, or more. It has to do with the skill and experience and the time involved. If I optimize a site, it might take me 3-6 hours, depending on the size. But but the promotion, verification, and follow up can average about 4-5 hours a week. Over a basic 3 month period, this can bring the total to about 65 hours * $40 per hour = $2600! The verification and re-submission is more time intensive at first and then as the placements "take", less time is involve each week.

I had a client refuse to pay me because after 3 months I sent an invoice for $1,200. They expected tons of traffic an got very little. Well, it COULD have been me, but I really spent much more time than I billed for on the project. From my perspective:

1) There were already a lot of arts and crafts sites.
2) They refused to let me optimize the site correctly.
3) I did not properly set their expectations.

When you see "ads like: We submit your site to 1500 search engines for $14.95 and guarantee top 10 placement!!

It creates a huge job for us to educate the client about what is really involved.

Good luck,
Christian

I've consulted with many companies on getting their sites well ranked on engines. I always make it clear to them there is no trick or one way of making it happen, that there are many others trying for the same positions, and even if they do get top 10 or 20 ranking they may loose it in the future. And that goes in writing in the project proposal.

Depending on how broad the subject of the site even top 50 ranking is pretty good.

In my opinion, all those submission services and guaranteed services that try to get you a ranking isn't worth crap. For one reason is that the search engines have all changed and I explain below. All of them are using directories now, like Yahoo.com

Yahoo - You just have to pay attention, get your main keyword in your title and description and you should all be ok, expect for the term "Web Hosting". Good luck

Aol - use Dmoz.com Same as Yahoo, get keyword into title and it will rank good.

Netscape.com - follows aol pretty much the same.

Lycos - Kinda the same way as aol.com, but don't update as often.

Google.com - uses dmoz.com - just have to play and hope. Go for keyword in title.

Excite - uses looksmart.com Don't know much about them.

Altavista - looksmart.com

Hotbot.com - Good luck, they never update.
MSN.com - uses hotbot.com results.

Go.com - Good luck, goto.com now owns that one, those punks, I was #1 for web hosting!

Any others that I missed worth dealing with?

Curtis, I wish it were that easy!

I have a super rich content site (TheCatSite.com) and I get good listings in directories (where there is a human being involved). I fair well on DMOZ and Looksmart (without paying for a listing) and I'm still waiting for my Yahoo listing (I guess I'll just pay them eventually ).

Yet, I'm nowhere to be seen in Alta Vista, Google or any other search engine! And don't tell me I should get better meta tags and such - My competitors for the same search words get top 5 listings with no meta tags to speak of (and usually simply no meta tags!).

I'm working on link exchanging and hopefull that and time will help!

Yahoo, worth the $200, I think, depends on your web site.

Altavista, is powered by looksmart, you have to pay for that one too.

Google, powered by DMOZ. You just have to be paitent, they are slow on updating their files.

Are meta tags helpful now? NO, maybe on Hotbot and lycos, but that is about it.

Curtis

Haven't had any trouble getting into AV or Excite.

Definately agree that Google is great!

Try submitting to the regional Yahoo directories. I just got one of my customers into Yahoo after only 1 submission and about a week's wait.

Search engines war is a game where we have to pay to play.

About the guaranteed listings... Two years ago when we have first launced our site we thought that we should leave the search engines to the professionals. So we paid for a service with guaranteed results. Fortunatelly we decided to choose the keywords ourselves. So we picked up the most popular keywords we could find as we thought that the experts would put u sin the top10. Some of the keywords were 'web design', 'web site promotion', 'web hosting', etc.
As you understand the experts who had guaranteed the top10 listings didn't manage to get our site even in the top100... and made a refund some months later. From that point we started to understand that we must study the search engines, try to improve the quality and content of our site and not let a single day go by without doing something that will help our rankings in teh long run.

I wouldn't mind so much shelling out some bucks for a listing but 1) There's no guarantee you'll be listed, 2) no way of knowing where you'll ranked, 3) no guarantee you'll stay ranked well or even listed!

I subscribe to the i-search newsletter (the BEST!), and there have been some "horror stories" of people paying for a listing, and being denyed.

Yeah, that's bad, but they were UNABLE to get their money back! That really sucks!

I'm sure this is not a common thing, but it would be wise to be familier with the guidelines before shelling out the bucks.

Don't look for a domain called, i-search, the newsletter and others are at audettemedia.com/.

Thanks,
Christian

Quote: Originally posted by anat
Yet, I'm nowhere to be seen in Alta Vista, Google or any other search engine! And don't tell me I should get better meta tags and such - My competitors for the same search words get top 5 listings with no meta tags to speak of (and usually simply no meta tags!).

Hi anat,

What keyword(s) are you speaking of that you can't be found for?

First, I just took the following from your keywords meta tags.

For ... cat behavior, cat grooming
#4 - http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&q=cat+behavior%2C+cat+grooming

For ... cat behavior, cat grooming, cat breeds
#1 - http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&q=cat+behavior%2C+cat+grooming%2C+cat+breeds

For ... cat behavior, grooming, breeds
#2 - http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&q=cat+behavior%2C+grooming%2C+breeds

If you want to rank higher for the keyword 'cat' then follow our
advice here ...

http://www.webmaster-forums.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=79926#post79926

You have the keyword 'cat' listed way too many times, which means
that you are actually being penalized for the word instead of
enhancing it, which I am assuming you have been taught or read
somewhere. That was true back in 1996 but not any more. LESS is now
better when it comes to keyword meta tags.

And in conclusion, let me show you something you may find rather
interesting. I just used Google to test this since it is THE Search
Engine to rank well in.
For your #1 ranking above, you will see that I took the keywords
directly from your HOME PAGE 'keywords meta tag' but that is NOT
the page you ranked highest for, it was this one ...

http://www.thecatsite.com/grooming/

So here are your 'keywords meta tag' for that page ...

As you can see, 'cat behavior' is NOT even listed there. Hmmm???

But the keyword 'behavior' IS listed in the 'body tag'

This means that if you will just use up to like 7 words with the
most important ones first in your 'keyword meta tags' and focus
on a particual keyphrase, such as ...

'cat grooming and behavior'

... you can do much better than the #1 listing you ALREADY have
for this phrase.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&q=cat+grooming+and+behavior&btnG=Google+Search

Just focus on some other common search terms and OPTIMIZE your tags
for THEM ONLY. Your Home Page carries THE MOST WEIGHT of all your
pages, so make sure you UTILIZE it to the fullest. Just get rid of
all but but up to 7 words and don't use commas.

Hi Sharon & Roy,

I agree with the idea the keywords or keyword phrases in the body of the page are the most important, along with the title.

Also, using a keyword too many times is bad.

But could you explain why you would limit the total keywords to 7? Surely that limits the possible alternative words that can be used for a subject? If Anat has a page on "cat behavior", surely she may want to add different forms that people may search for like "feline psychology" and "bad kitty habits"?

I understand that keyword popularity should be done to determine if the keywords are worth the bother, but I think you get what I mean.

The other thing is the part of not using commas. Without commas, you have a string of words and there is no way for keyword phrases to be correctly assessed. UNLESS, the thought just hit me, you think that the patterns will be matched WITHIN THE STRING OF KEYWORDS/PHRASES. I always assumed that you loose the power of phrases when you loose the commas!

Thanks!
Christian

Keep in mind that engines are constantly re-ranking sites. So even if you don't make #1 now you might in the not too distant future. IOW, don't try to tweek your site so much. Get a good set of tags and content then let nature take it's course.

From experience, I find that your really only need 2 important useful meta tags and the others are optional or not used for indexing by different search engine's spiders, crawlers, robots, etc.

1)

Depending on the search engine, this will be displayed along with the title of your page in an index. "content" could be a word, sentence or even paragraph to describe your page. Keep this reasonably short, concise and to the point and limit it to 200 words.

2)

Choose whatever keywords you think are appropriate, seperated by commas. Remember to include synoyms, americanisms and so on. So, if you had a page on cars, you might want to include keywords such as car, cars, vehicles, automobiles and so on. Don't duplicate or repeat words as some search engines may fault you for this.

3) Should commas be use or not to seperate keywords and phrase?

From viewing the source code of web pages, some people do, some people don't, so I am not sure which is the best approach. But I always use commas and it works just fine.

Of course, your page text content also helps to support your keywords and also the images ALT TAG should be manipulated to enhance your meta tags.

Well, I'm trying Christian's advice - hope it will get things better.

Sharon & Roy - thank you for taking the time and looking into my raking troubles For a moment there you nearly knocked me off my chair.... Me? #1 in Google?!?!?!

Then I realized that you used several search terms at once which I don't think anyone does. People looking for either "cat breeds" or "cat behavior" or cat health will still not see my site anywhere in the first 20 listings. I track my stats with Hitbox so I can tell which keywords do bring people in and these are not the main terms I'm trying to get at.

Also, I'd much rather get high listings on AV then on Google. Most people (that are not webmasters) still use AV and that's where I need to be.

Speaking of the devil - I read on AV that their engine ignores the keywords tag altogether, so perhaps the commas debate is not that relevant. I will try working harder on my titles and alt tags and will also review the keywords again just to make sure they're valid.

If this thing works I'll be very happy. I'm stuck with 150,000 page views or so a month which is not enough to get me going (profit wise).

Thanks for the help everyone - keep the advice coming.

Quote: Originally posted by Christian_SEO
Hi Sharon & Roy,

But could you explain why you would limit the total keywords to 7? Surely that limits the possible alternative words that can be used for a subject? If Anat has a page on "cat behavior", surely she may want to add different forms that people may search for like "feline psychology" and "bad kitty habits"?

The other thing is the part of not using commas. Without commas, you have a string of words and there is no way for keyword phrases to be correctly assessed. UNLESS, the thought just hit me, you think that the patterns will be matched WITHIN THE STRING OF KEYWORDS/PHRASES. I always assumed that you loose the power of phrases when you loose the commas! Thanks! Christian

Hi Christian,

Our reasoning for a very minimal amount of keywords in the
'keywords meta tag' is because the MORE words you have there, the
LESS effective they become. More than 3 occurrences of the same word
will penalize that word in most situations.

Most folks have the WRONG idea about 'keywords meta tags' (and the
current emphasis is changing very rapidly too) and thus either
misuse them or abuse them, due to misinformation or by accident.
Most who spamdex the Engines do not even realize that they are
doing so.

Your emphasis should NOT be on 'keywords meta tags' but on
optimizing EACH page for a specific keyword phrase.

I ask you, would you rather rank high (like in the top 10 or top
20) for a PARTICULAR keyphrase or would you rather include a lot of
keywords and phrases and not rank in the top 100 with ANY of them?

The choice is clear, right?

Most Web Designers have NO clue about SEO (Search Engine
Optimization) and so they create content for a Site FIRST and then
expect it to rank high for certain keywords by just inserting them
into the 'keywords meta tag' ... this is NOT the case.

If you want to rank high for a certain keyword phrase then the
designer MUST create the Pages/Site to reflect THAT phrase only.
That is why we always recommend to ONLY use UP to 7 words in the
'keywords meta tag' (less is better), so for example, if you want
to rank HIGHEST for the phrase 'ice cream' but you specialize in
say 'vanilla flavor ice cream cones' then list your words like this
...

ice cream vanilla flavor cones

Our advice is always to focus on the 'keywords meta tag' LAST,
because it does NOT have that much weight with the Search Engines
anymore and most of them do not even use them. Like the saying
goes, don't major on the minors.

The MOST weight we say to focus on is this ...

#1 Body Text (put 2 headings with your keywords, 1 at the top and
1 in the middle of the page) then use your keywords about 6% total,
which is usually no more than 7 occurrences on an average page of
text.

i.e. Ice Cream Vanilla Flavor Ice Cream Cones

#2 Title Tag (put your main words FIRST)

i.e. Ice Cream Vanilla Flavor Cones

#3 Anchor Tags (use your keywords BOTH within and to your Site.)

i.e. Ice Cream

#4 Get LOTS of links to your Site (with all things being equal,
the Site with the most links to it will rank higher.)

And finally to answer you about commas ... we advised to never use
them when they had more weight in determining your position, BUT
today, they mean NOTHING, so don't fret over it at all. Using them
will more than likely NOT matter today, BUT at one time it did.

[deleted]

It has taken me 8 months but I am finally on top of some of the major search engines. My primary search word is 'supply chain'. In Yahoo, Google and AOL I am on the top 10. In the other search engines I am farther down. Still trying to figure out how I can get in the top 10 in all search engines. Like what most others have said, there is no sure way to get in the search engines, it takes time and hard work.
Regards,
Dave Waters
http://www.supplychaintoday.com

Many engines ignore the keta keywords tag completely - including Google. Here's a useful scorecard on what the various search engines look for: http://icehousedesigns.com/engines/.

So if not meta keywords, what works?

- high keyword density (in body text) - have to play with it to find out what works for your keywords, but 4% is probably a good starting point; better if they occur higher in the page
- keywords in domain names or URLs
- keywords in title text
- keywords in headings (h1, h2, etc.)
- keywords in image alt tags
- words of a keyword phrase together work better than appearing with intervening words
- link popularity
- "theme-based" site design - i.e.the pages of your site are different but related to a common topic or "theme" - not just a bunch of stuff that doesn't logically belong together

Best way to experiment is to pay to include a few pages with Inktomi, and use their 48-hr refresh to test: check rank, update, wait a couple days, "repeat until done" (which is never

What is your target key words! IM still waiting to get indexed by 22 of the 24 search engines. Lycos did me good for my 1st web site submitiom one of my target keyword pharses was 'Free Sound Bite' I'm rank #1 out of 97,000 I've been getting alot of hitsHere is how my sound bites page is ranked. I used my keyword stats checker to find how people were findind my site...Here are key words used and my rank..
Key phase--------------My Engine Rank

free sound bites------------------- #1
free movie sound bites------------ #1
movie sound bites -----------------#8
cool sound bites--------------------#9
free cool sound bites----------------#1
money sound bites-----------------#9
free money sound bites-------------#2
space sound bites------------------#10
space 2001 sound bites-------------#4
free space 2001 sound bites--------#1
free tv sound bites------------------#1
tv sound bites-----------------------#7

A word more or less, even a letter more or less, can result in completely different search results.

I had a very hard time with my bosses at my last job getting them to understand that. I would tell them we had the #1 spot under A B C but they would type in A B E and get a different result so they didn't believe me!

Worse was when they bought a domain name from another company and totaly changed the content. They naturally wanted it re-ranked for the new content. So I submitted it to the engines. But we know how slow engines are at updating previously ranked sites. They (the bosses) just couldn't understand why you couldn't call an 800# to Yahoo, Lycos etc and ask them to update the entry!!!

Hi all!

I developed a tool that can help you to search expired domains with high link popularity.. some webmasters give up thier webbusinesses and thier domain names after a long fight..so these domains will be abandaned. Currently these expired domains are in millions. The Pc based software I developed..Popularity OnSnap can dig though these millions of domains and gives you the lik popularity..your job is to find and acquire..these domains..there are millions of such domains..so selling few hundred copies doesnn't get me any compitation...So i am selling it at my site

[Moderator note: I decided not to delete the entire ad that was posted... it does sound like an interesting idea.

But this is an ad and not quite on the topic of this thread. Check Onsnap's profile if you're interested.

Christian]