Press Releases: Anyone Else Want A #1 Ranking?Written by Jessica Dolce
Press Releases: Anyone Else Want A #1 Ranking? By Jessica Dolce As you may know, press releases are a great way to get word out about your business. If done properly, your website can get fr-ee publicity and exposure by media which can lead to alot of traffic and sales. But one thing many marketers don't realize is that press releases are great for search engines too. When major search engines "spider" these wire services, it's quite possible that your press release can get a top ranking for some major keywords. When writing a press release you should try to "optimize" it for search engines. Basically, same rules that apply for web pages should also apply to your press release. You should include your most important keyword(s) in title of press release. The body of press release, should also include your most important keyword(s) sprinkled generously throughout, especially in first paragraph. In other words, same rule for "keyword density" in your web page should also be applied to your press release. As you may know, "keyword density" simply means number of times your keyword(s) is used in a given page. But don't over-do it with keywords. Search engines frown upon this sort of thing which is called "keyword stuffing." You want a fine balance so that your press release makes sense not only to potential reader, and media, but also makes sense to search engines too. Now that you have some of basics covered on optimizing your press release for search engines, it's now time to write your press release.
| | How To Get Indexed By Search Engines...Fast Written by David Bell
Why Can't I Get Indexed by Search Engines? Unfortunately, this is an all too common question. If it makes you feel any better, you're not only one frustrated about length of time it takes to be indexed, or many pitfalls involved. It often takes anywhere from two days to as much as six months to be listed on a search engine. For example, last month Excite finally updated its index for first time since last August! Luckily, Excite is most extreme case lately, but waiting several weeks to a month can also be extremely frustrating. The WebPosition Submitter report will give you current time estimates for each engine so you'll know what to expect. However, an engine at any time could choose to delay their indexing beyond "norm" for maintenance or other reasons. On flip side, you could get lucky and submit just a couple days before an engine does a complete refresh of their database. Therefore, submission times can never be an exact science since we're all ultimately at mercy of engine. If you've submitted your site and have waited estimated time to be indexed and there's still no listing, what do you do now? Here are 16 tips that should help you solve this problem: 1. First, be sure you're not already indexed but just don't know it. Unfortunately, none of major engines are kind enough to e-mail or notify you as to if and when you've been indexed. The method to determine if a page or domain has been indexed varies from one engine to another, and in many cases, it's difficult to tell for sure. Never assume that you're not indexed just because you searched for a bunch of keywords and you never came up in first few pages of results. You could be in there but buried near bottom. In addition, it's not very practical to check status of a number of pages on each major engine each week. Fortunately, WebPosition has a URL verification feature in Reporter that makes this process much easier. Each time you run a mission, it will report which URLs exist and do not exist in each engine. 2. Make sure you have uploaded pages to your site before submitting them. This one seems obvious, but submitting a page that does not exist or submitting with a subtle typo in URL is a goof we might all make at one time or another. If you're using WebPosition's Submitter, there's a checkbox on tab 2 that forces WebPosition to verify that all your URLs are valid before submitting them. 3. If you have information inside frames, that can cause problems with submissions. It's best if you can create non-framed versions of your pages. You should then submit non-frames versions of your pages which can of course point to your framed Web site. Alternatively, you can enter your relevant text within NOFRAMES area of a framed page which most search engine spiders will read. 4. Search engine spiders cannot index sites that require any kind of registration or password. A spider cannot fill out a form of any kind. The same rule applies regarding indexing of content from a searchable database, because spider cannot fill out a form to query that database. The solution is to create static pages that engines will be able to find. 5. Dynamic pages often block spiders. In fact, any URL containing special symbols like a question mark (?) or an ampersand (&) will be ignored by many engines. 6. Most engines cannot index text that is embedded in graphics. Text that appears in multimedia files (audio and video) cannot be indexed by most engines. Information that is generated by Java applets or in XML coding cannot be indexed by most engines. 7. If your site has a slow connection or pages are very complex and take a long time to load, it might time out before spider can index all text. For benefit of your visitors and search engines, limit your page size to less than 60K. In fact, most Webmasters recommend that your page size plus size of all your graphics should not exceed 50K-70K. If it does, many people on dial up connections will leave before page fully loads.8. If you submit just your home page, don't expect a search engine to travel more than one or two links away from home page or page that you submitted. Over time they may venture deeper into your site, but don't count on it. You'll often need to submit pages individually that appear further down into your site or have no link from home page.
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