Welcome to part six in this search engine positioning series. Last week we discussed importance of internal linking. In part six we will cover obvious and yet often overlooked importance of its appeal to a real-live human being.

While not directly related to SEO it is so often overlooked in quest for higher search engine positioning that it has become a fundamental step in our ten step series.

Over this series we will cover ten key aspects to a solid search engine positioning campaign.

The Ten Steps We Will Go Through Are:

1. Keyword Selection
2. Content Creation
3. Site Structure
4. Optimization
5. Internal Linking
6. Human Testing
7. Submissions
8. Link Building
9. Monitoring
10. The Extras

Step Six - Human Testing

The most important part of your website is to reach visitor. You have taken all steps to create a great design and added SEO elements to your site, you have created perfect online presence. Now to see if all that hard work has attained main goal, to reach visitor and steer them in direction most desirable.

First things first, now's time to check for careless errors that happen along way, things like spelling mistakes, paragraph breaks, incorrect wording etc. Once you have given your new beauty a once over pass it around and get others to do same, preferably people who have never read content before. The problem with relying on yourself to proof read is that you already expect what you are going to see and do not read it in its entirety way someone would at first glance.

Once text is out of way have some fresh eyes again take a look at site. Are there images that they find appealing, unappealing, distracting? Is there anything in layout of content that is too busy or confusing? Once you've done a check of visual appeal of site you will move onto navigation.

When having someone test your site navigation it is again very important to use fresh eyes, make sure these people have no idea what to expect or where to find anything - this way they will be free to follow your beautifully laid out website or fumble and stumble into some dark hole of your site, lost screaming for help. Okay, perhaps I may have given worst-case scenario however, how many of us can say we have never been in that horrid place? These human testers will be sure to let you know just how your site navigation works for them. They are average visitor and if they find what they are looking for easily then you can congratulate yourself on having such great intuition and move on to rest of tests to come. If there are problems in navigation I cannot stress enough how very important it is that you address these immediately. You must get desired information across as easily and quickly as possible.

While on topic of navigation let's discuss different possibilities of placement of your main navigation. The majority of sites out there either have their main nav on left or top of page. Is there one that is better? Well, they both have their perks, either is good, anything else is bad. The majority of visitors look in these two places to navigate because that is where it always is. There will be other navigation elements throughout your site that will not be listed in your main navigation area, these internal text and image links should be well placed and easily followed IN BOTH DIRECTIONS. It's great to give visitor option to check out information further into your site but you really want to be sure they can get back to where they came from, especially if you are sending them off to information and away from product pages. Ways to achieve this are to have information open in a new window, add a "back to previous page" link or add breadcrumb navigation. What you choose will depend on overall structure of your site as well as size of your site. If main nav includes all of your pages (as in some small sites) then there is no need to add these nav elements however in larger sites it is easy for a visitor to get lost if navigation has not been tried and tested and designed specifically for ease of use. All in all, play with navigation and test and retest it until there are no problems. The site navigation is so very important - your visitors MUST be able to browse through your site easily and without frustration.

Welcome to part seven in this ten-part search engine positioning series. Last week we discussed importance of human testing. In part seven we will cover best practices of website submissions, where to submit your website to, and how to do so.

With services offering to help you get more traffic and higher search engine positioning by submitting your website to "18 Bazillion Search Engines For Just $19.95 Per Month!" and other such claims, there has grown much confusion around website submissions. In this article we will clear up many of misconceptions around submitting your website and may even save you "Just $19.95 Per Month!" in process.

Over this series we will cover ten key aspects to a solid search engine positioning campaign.

The Ten Steps We Will Go Through Are:

1. Keyword Selection
2. Content Creation
3. Site Structure
4. Optimization
5. Internal Linking
6. Human Testing
7. Submissions
8. Link Building
9. Monitoring
10. The Extras

Step Seven - Website Submissions

While there are definitely more critical areas of website optimization process there is perhaps no area subject to as much misinformation and to such a vast audience. Here are some common misconceptions that are often believed about search engine submissions:

1. You need to submit your website often to keep it indexed by search engines
2. You need to submit your website to thousands and thousands of search engines to get decent traffic
3. Submitting your website often will keep you at top of search engine rankings

These beliefs are all incorrect and those who can make a quick buck selling this disservice perpetrate them. If you have not recently received an email offering to "Submit Your Website To More Search Engines Than There Are Websites On The Internet For Just $19.95 Per Month!" then I can pretty much guarantee that you will in not-too-distant future if your email can be found somewhere on your website.

An irony of this can be found in Google's webmaster area where they note:

Amazingly, we get these spam emails too:

"Dear google.com,

I visited your website and noticed that you are not listed in most of major search engines and directories..."

Reserve same skepticism for unsolicited email about search engines as you do for "burn fat at night" diet pills or requests to help transfer funds from deposed dictators.

Good advice as I'm sure Google has their website submissions taken care of. Just because you receive such an email, doesn't mean that you're missing out on anything. Let's first look at a breakdown of which engines are responsible for which traffic.

According to research major search engines are responsible for following percentages of traffic as of June 2004:

Google - 41.6%

Yahoo - 31.5%

MSN - 27.4% (MSN draws their results from Yahoo!/Overture)

AOL - 13.6% (AOL draws their results from Google)

Ask Jeeves - 7.0%

Lycos - 3.7%

Netscape - 3.0% (Netscape draws their results from Google)

AltaVista - 2.7% (AltaVista draws Yahoo!/Overture)

Source: Neilson/Netratings Note: These numbers total over 100% as people may use multiple search engines if they don't find information they are looking for at first one they try.

So what does this tell us? This tells us that very vast majority of search engine traffic does not come from many thousands of search engines but rather, relatively few. This would lead to obvious questions, "Is it worth paying to be submitted to thousands of search engines?" The real answer, "No."

Then How Do I Submit My Own Website?

Automated search engine submission systems simply access existing and readily accessible "Add URL" pages of search engines and automatically submit your site. You can do this yourself simply by visiting search engines and submitting through these same pages.