So you have many sites… How do you get each of your sites listed in the major search engines without spending every waking minute registering them?

You can use time-saving promotional software. You can automate your search engine submissions, posting to online classified sites, etc. You might have to pay for them, but you'll make up the money you spend by getting your other business equirements completed faster.

You can also find this type of software for free on the web.

A couple of free sources where you can submit your site to the top Search Engines are:
AddMe.com will submit your site free to the top 14 Search engines here: http://www.addme.com/submission.htm

SubmitExpress.com will submit your site free to the top 20 Search engines here:
http://www.submitexpress.com/

Now go get listed if you aren't already

Greg

Ok, so you may know how the search engines work and you may know that you need to be listed by them, but do you know which engines get you more bang for the buck? In this week’s installment, we will review the top search engines on the Internet today.

Google

Google has increased in popularity tenfold the past several years. They have gone from beta testing, to becoming the Internet's largest index of web pages in a very short time. Their spider, affectionately named "Googlebot", crawls the web and provides updates to Google's index about once a month.

Google.com began as an academic search engine. Google, by far, has a very good algorithm of ranking pages returned from a result, probably one of the main reasons it has become so popular over the years. Google has several methods which determine page rank in returned searches.

Yahoo

Yahoo! is one of the oldest web directories and portals on the Internet today, and the site went live in August of 1994. Yahoo! is a 100% human edited directory, and provides secondary search results using Google.

Yahoo! is also one of the largest traffic generators around, as far as web directories and search engines go. Unfortunately, however, it is also one of the most difficult to get listed in, unless of course you pay to submit your site. Even if you pay it doesn't guarantee you will get listed.

Either way, if you suggest a URL, it is "reviewed" by a Yahoo! editor, and if approved will appear in the next index update.

AltaVista

Many who have access to web logs may have seen a spider named 'scooter' accessing their pages. Scooter used to be AltaVista's robot. However, since the Feb 2001 site update, a newer form of Scooter is now crawling the web. Whichever spider AltaVista uses, it is one of the largest search engines on the net today, next to Google.

It will usually take several months for AltaVista to index your entire site, although the past few months scooter hasn't been deep crawling too well. Unlike Google, AltaVista will only crawl and index 1 link deep, so it takes a good amount of time to index your site depending on how large your site is.

AltaVista gets most of its results from its own index, however they do pull the top 5 results of each search from Overture (formerly Goto).

Inktomi

Inktomi's popularity grew several years ago as they powered the secondary search database that had driven Yahoo. Since then, Yahoo as switched to using Google as their secondary search and backend database, however Inktomi is just as popular now, as they were several years ago, if not more so. Their spiders are named "Slurp", and different versions of Slurp crawls the web many different times throughout the month, as Inktomi powers many sites search results. There isn't much more to Inktomi then that. Slurp puts heavy weight on Title and description tags, and will rarely deep crawl a site. Slurp usually only spider’s pages that are submitted to its index.

Inktomi provides results to a number of sites. Some of these are America Online, MSN, Hotbot, Looksmart, About, Goto, CNet, Geocities, NBCi, ICQ and many more.

Lycos

Lycos is one of the oldest search engines on the Internet today, next to Altavista and Yahoo. Their spider, named "T-Rex", crawls the web and provides updates to the Lycos index from time to time. The FAST crawler provides results for Lycos in addition to its own database.

The Lycos crawler does not weigh META tags to heavily, instead it relies on its own ranking algorithm to rank pages returned in results. The URL, META title, text headings, and word frequency are just a few of the methods Lycos uses to rank pages. Lycos does support pages with Frame content. However, any page that isn't at least 75 words in content is not indexed.

Excite

Excite has been around the web for many years now. Much more of a portal than just simply a search engine, Excite used to be a fairly popular search engine, until companies such as Google seemed to have dominated the search engine market. As of recently, Excite no longer accepts submissions of URL's, and appears to no longer spider. To get into the Excite search results, you need to be either listed with Overture or Inktomi.

Looksmart

Getting a listed with Looksmart could mean getting a good amount of traffic to your site. Looksmart's results appear in many search engines, including AltaVista, MSN, CNN, and many others.

Looksmart has two options to submit your site. If your site is generally non-business related, you can submit your site to Zeal (Looksmart's sister site ), or if you are a business, you can pay a fee to have your site listed. Either method will get you listed in Looksmart and its partner sites if you are approved.

Once you have submitted your site, and it is approved for listing it will take up to about 7 days for your site to be listed on Looksmart and its partner sites.

AOL Search

America Online signed a multiyear pact with Google for Web search results and accompanying ad-sponsored links, ending relationships with pay-for-performance service Overture Services and Inktomi, its algorithmic search provider of nearly three years


Take some time to register with these search engines as soon as possible and watch the traffic grow.

Considerable effort is required to get customers for your products. You design killer web pages, work hard for high search engine rankings (or pay for them), submit classified ads, etc. but still do not manage to sell enough. This is where the concept of back-end sales is useful.

Most marketers are successful because they apply back-end selling into their marketing efforts. Back-end selling is when you sell other products or services to your existing customers after they have purchased an initial product.

It is always easier to sell products or services to your existing customers because you have developed a relationship with them when you sold your first product or service to them. You will find it less expensive to sell to old customers as compared to selling to new customers.

Your conversion ratio will be dramatically higher with existing customers. Every time you continue selling back-end products or services to existing customers, you will be building a life-long relationship. You should continually bring out new back-end products or services to sell to existing customers.

Many businesses sell their front-end products (initial products) at almost zero profit in order to generate back-end profits. These businesses do not care even if they lose money on the front-end products or services; they want the back-end profits.

How do you make backend sales? There are several ways. When you order a product from a mail-order company, they'll send you a catalog along with your order, or put you on a mailing list and send you new catalogs from time to time. They might also send you a sales letter for another product. This may be related to the first product in some way. Many companies implement such a strategy.

To implement this technique on the web, you can put the sales pitch for your backend item in the email to the customer to confirm their order. If you have an online catalog, you could include a link to it, or even include a coupon or special offer "for all valued customers".

For a faster response, you should put the backend offer on the "Thank You" page that is generated by a credit-card sale. The customer just bought something from you and has a credit card in his or her hot little hand! Why not ask for another purchase while they are in the mood to buy. In case you do not sell more than one product or service, affiliate programs might come in handy. This way you can back sell products promoted by your affiliate programs as well.

Back-end selling can also be integrated with “Up-Selling” wherein you introduce more expensive products or services to your existing customers in similar ways as those mentioned above. This will almost instantly raise your sales and profits.

The Internet is primarily used to communicate, entertain, educate and research. It is thus no wonder that nonperishable, information-intensive products - including computers and software, books, travel, consumer electronics, magazine subscriptions - are the most popular online products at present. Content-rich sites, subscription-based sites to advertiser-supported sites focusing on a wide range of topics, have been sprouting all over the Internet.

Services such as hotel reservation, air travel and investments have successfully translated themselves to the Internet.

Unique services such as Online driving schools have been prospering. Some states in the US have set up online payment sites for Government services. Residents of a state can log on to a common site to pay all bills and other expenses, such as parking tickets to the local/County courts.

However, all kinds of services cannot be run entirely on the Internet. The Internet is less effective when face-to-face selling is needed to close a deal. The Internet can give lots of preliminary information that's useful in setting the scene for the closing. But the actual closing takes place offline - i.e., not on the Internet.

Products can also be marketed and sold successfully on the Internet. The kinds of products and services that sell best on the Internet are those that take advantage of the convenience of the Net. Remember that convenience is the primary reason why consumers flock to the Internet in the first place. People can shop any hour of the day at any site. They can avoid crowded stores, irritating sales clerks, and even avoid pickpockets.

Offbeat or unusual products and services often attract online attention and sell strongly. You would generally not try to sell items people can get at the corner store. Thus, few toothbrushes are sold on the Net; the same thing with daily food and beverage purchases. But special cheeses, rare cigars, Turkish plates, long-aged wines, even diamonds, can and do sell on the Net.

Most products sold by catalog and mail order also sell well on the Net. However, people tend to buy only those products that could be shipped at a reasonable price. Higher shipping costs diminish the price competitiveness of online products and turns-off a lot of potential buyers. In fact, high shipping costs is the primary factor that discourages people from buying online more than any other single reason. An Ernst and Young report shows that 53 percent of online shoppers are concerned with shipping costs that are too high, compared to only 19 percent who are concerned with credit cards being stolen.

As an online merchant, you have to work out the advantages as well as disadvantages of selling either products or services. However, in the recent past, online services have known to flourish. Nevertheless, if you chose to sell products you need to rethink your product offering if the total costs of the product and the shipping are higher than what is offered elsewhere.

Before we get down the road too far on what tactics to use
when marketing our products or services, we first need to
address the most basic question any Internet business owner
will have to answer at one point or another…

”What should I sell?”.

After the settling down of the dot-com bubble, sanity checks
have brought realistic expectations to the fore. Initially,
a backlash was seen, forecasting the doom of the Internet.
Finally, merits have made the Internet gain its rightful
place. In breakthroughs that show the promise of e-commerce
wasn't all smoke and mirrors, four dot-coms recently
reported their first quarterly profits. The list of the
Internet’s publicly held moneymakers includes eBay Inc.,
Amazon.com Inc., Yahoo! Inc., Overture Services Inc.,
Expedia Inc., FindWhat.com Inc. and E-Trade Group Inc.
Several privately owned dot-coms, including search engines
Google and DealTime, say they have been making money, too.

In 2001, the last full year where numbers are available, the
Department of Commerce broke out e-commerce sales versus
total U.S retail sales which revealed the $3.16 trillion
retail industry saw a total of $37.7 billion in sales take
place online -- comprising 1.2 percent of the total. This
year e-commerce is tracking about the same. Through the
third quarter, the last full quarter where numbers are
available, total retail sales were $856 billion versus $11
billion in e-commerce, about a 1.3 percent share.


There were big gains made in Home and Garden, a 78 percent
increase; Furniture and Appliances, a 75 percent increase;
and Toy shopping online with a 61 percent increase in the
year 2002. There is no doubt that online shopping is
growing.

Nielsen//NetRatings found that more than 35.5 million U.S.
Internet users made shopping trips to virtual department
store sites during the week ending November 3, 2002 - that's
a 20 percent increase from the week ending October 20 and
roughly 14 million more than almost the same time period in
2001.

There is a growing tendency amongst Internet users to pay
for valuable content online. There are many reasons for
this. First, only a few websites operated by big companies
can afford to provide valuable content without being
compensated. The rest of us can't be so generous. And trying
to recapture our expenses by selling advertising on our
websites has failed to pay the bills. Online advertising and
click-through rates are on the decline.

Second, many people are now more than willing to pay to
receive quality services and products even if they were
offered for free earlier. Several paid content websites have
already proven this unmistakable trend. The discerning buyer
values his/her time as also the quality of information or
service and is willing to pay for it.

However, not all products can be sold on the Internet. Some
products may be better suited for online sales than others;
others simply will not work on this new commercial medium.
According to an Ernst and Young study, the most popular
online purchases are computer related products (40%), books
(20%), travel (16%), clothing (10%), recorded music (6%),
subscriptions (6%), gifts (5%) and investments (4%).

Businesses offering paid services have also prospered
enormously. The top three categories (Business
Content/Investment, Entertainment/Lifestyles and
Personals/Dating) accounted for 62% of all paid content
revenues in the first three quarters of 2002. The total
market for paid online content in the U.S. grew to $361.4
million for the quarter, a 14 percent gain over the previous
quarter and a 105.3 percent gain over Q3 2001. An
interesting statistic put forward by this report is that 85%
of money spent by U.S. Consumers for online content goes to
the top 50 sites in most of the categories.

The graph below (Top 3 Content Categories) is indicative of
this change.

In terms of “stickiness” of different categories, Business
sites - especially finance and investment rank the highest.
In other words, users are more likely to spend longer time
surfing through a business website compared to other
categories. This study was conducted by Nielsen//NetRatings.
The table below shows the most addictive web categories for
2002.

Category Time per person(hr:min:sec) Audience
Business – Finance and Investment 0:21:33 51,586
General News 0:15:47 64,822
Entertainment 0:14:32 45,922

Source: Nielsen//NetRatings

According to the above figures a person spends about 22
minutes on a finance website on an average.

Should you be selling a product or a service?

The Internet is primarily used to communicate, entertain,
educate and research. It is thus no wonder that
nonperishable, information-intensive products - including
computers and software, books, travel, consumer electronics,
magazine subscriptions - are the most popular online
products at present. Content-rich sites, subscription-based
sites to advertiser-supported sites focusing on a wide range
of topics, have been sprouting all over the Internet.

Services such as hotel reservation, air travel and
investments have successfully translated themselves to the
Internet.

Unique services such as Online driving schools have been
prospering. Some states in the US have set up online payment
sites for Government services. Residents of a state can log
on to a common site to pay all bills and other expenses,
such as parking tickets to the local/County courts.

However, all kinds of services cannot be run entirely on the
Internet. The Internet is less effective when face-to-face
selling is needed to close a deal. The Internet can give
lots of preliminary information that's useful in setting the
scene for the closing. But the actual closing takes place
offline - i.e., not on the Internet.

Products can also be marketed and sold successfully on the
Internet. The kinds of products and services that sell best
on the Internet are those that take advantage of the
convenience of the Net. Remember that convenience is the
primary reason why consumers flock to the Internet in the
first place. People can shop any hour of the day at any
site. They can avoid crowded stores, irritating sales
clerks, and even avoid pickpockets.

Offbeat or unusual products and services often attract
online attention and sell strongly. You would generally not
try to sell items people can get at the corner store. Thus,
few toothbrushes are sold on the Net; the same thing with
daily food and beverage purchases. But special cheeses, rare
cigars, Turkish plates, long-aged wines, even diamonds, can
and do sell on the Net.

Most products sold by catalog and mail order also sell well
on the Net. However, people tend to buy only those products
that could be shipped at a reasonable price. Higher shipping
costs diminish the price competitiveness of online products
and turns-off a lot of potential buyers. In fact, high
shipping costs is the primary factor that discourages people
from buying online more than any other single reason. An
Ernst and Young report shows that 53 percent of online
shoppers are concerned with shipping costs that are too
high, compared to only 19 percent who are concerned with
credit cards being stolen.

As an online merchant, you have to work out the advantages
as well as disadvantages of selling either products or
services. However, in the recent past, online services have
known to flourish. Nevertheless, if you chose to sell
products you need to rethink your product offering if the
total costs of the product and the shipping are higher than
what is offered elsewhere.

Take some time to evaluate your products or services. There
is a growing market of potential customers on the Internet,
you just need to offer the products and services they are
looking for.

1. Trade links with other web sites. They should be
related to the subject of your web site. Instead of
trading links, you could also trade banner ads, half
page ads, classified ads, etc.


2. Start an e-zine for your web site. When people
read each issue they'll be reminded to revisit your
web site. They'll see your product ad more than
just once which will increase your orders.


3. Form an online community. It could be an online
message board, e-mail discussion list or chat room.
When people get involved in your community they
will regularly return to communicate with others.


4. Write articles and submit them to e-zines, web
sites and magazines that accept article submissions.
Include your business information and web address
at the end of the article.


5. Give away an electronic freebie with your ad on
it. Allow your visitors to also give the freebie away.
This'll increase your ad exposure and attract people
to your web site at the same time.


6. Combine your products or services into one big
package deal with other businesses offerings. You
could share a web site and advertise the package
deal; which means double the traffic.


7. Submit your freebie to the online directories that
list your particular item or service for free. If you're
offering a free e-zine, submit it to all the free e-zine
directories on the internet.


8. Participate on message boards. Post answers to
other people's questions, ask questions and post
appropriate information. Include your signature file
at the end of all your postings.


9. Exchange classified or sponsor ads with other
free e-zine publishers. If there is a huge subscriber
difference between e-zines, one can run more ads
to make up for it.


10. Post your ad on free advertising areas on the
internet. You can post it on free classified ad sites,
free for all links sites, newsgroups that allow ads,
free yellow page directories, etc.