I am receiving a ton of phone calls about solicitation emails, letters and phone calls concerning various methods to promote web sites. This page will hopefully clear up some confusion about what is a scam and what you really need to do to get your web site active.

Internet rules change on a continuous basis. Big companies, such as Google, change the search engine rules to keep out SPAM web sites. Search Engines are there to find the site you want when you type in a keyword or phrase. It's their job to find your site, search engines use robots to crawl the internet looking for content information. This brings us to the first myth.

1. DO NOT pay someone to submit your site to the search engines. A quote from Google "Don't use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate our terms of service. Google does not recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Gold™ that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google. " Read the rest of the article from Google. I received a call from a local business owner who is paying a company $50.00 per month to submit her retail business to the search engines! Please save your money!

2. You can submit by hand to Google and directories. Links ARE important, but please be careful to list your web site in only high quality sites. Do not list your web site on link farms.

Suggestions for places to list your web site (link exchange):

3. Google Ad Words and Overture are worth checking into for promoting your business.

4. If you get a call from a business 'guaranteeing' to list your web site at the top of the search engine, ask them if the OWN Google or whatever search engine they are talking about. That is the ONLY way someone can guarantee your listing results. If you want at the top of a certain keyword or phrase then see AdWords or Overture or you can hire a specialist in SEO.

5. Remember, a well built site that follows ethical, professional guidelines will be enough to get you listed in the search engines. See Googles excellent article on guidelines for webmasters. Ranking within the search engines is trickier. It can sometimes take time and knowledge to increase your rankings to your choosen keywords. Having good, detailed statistics about your web site is a must for optimizing your web site. Ask your host or webmaster about your stats.

Be patient, be persistent and be creative!

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