-------------------------------------------------------------------------- This mail is never sent unsolicited. This is a PostMasterDirect.com mailing! You have subscribed to receive this information at Submit Express. TO UNSUBSCRIBE, forward this message to deleteall@postmasterdirect.com (be sure to forward the ENTIRE message, or it will not unsubscribe you!) To mail to lists, go to http://www.PostMasterDirect.com/ PostMasterDirect.com: 100% Opt-In Email Marketing -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================== TABLE OF CONTENTS: 1- Intro 2- Search Engines and Link Popularity 3- How to find out who is linking to you 4- Domain Name Importance ========================================================== 1 - Intro This month we have a few tips on how to improve your search engine rankings. It is getting harder and harder every day to get sites on the top of the search engines. Many of them keep changing their ranking algorithms all the time. In this issue, we will tell you about the link popularity and the domain name ranking factors. Please note that these are not the only ranking factors the search engines will look at. There are many other ranking factors, and they are different for each search engine. If you are really serious about getting your site ranked in the top 10, it will take you a long time to research and experiment to achieve this goal. We could, however, give you some suggestions on how to improve your rankings for free with every 800+ search engine submission order. See details at: http://submitexpress.com/cgi/banners/count.cgi?s2.html We are happy to announce that we have over 14,000 subscribers now. If you are interested in advertising in our next issue, please visit: http://submitexpress.com/cgi/banners/count.cgi?ad.html If you find our newsletter helpful, please forward it to all your webmaster friends. ========================================================== Check out Star Wars Episode I T-shirts, posters, stickers and stand-ups at: http://submitexpress.com/cgi/s.cgi?http://mystarwars.com/ Webmasters can win a free T-shirt by linking to MyStarWars.com. Mention this ad and receive $5.00 off on all T-shirts from Liquid Blue. Regular price $24.50, Submit Express Newsletter readers only $19.50. Offer good through Month of August 1999. To get the lower price, just write SUBMIT EXPRESS in the comments box and you must follow the link above. ========================================================== 2 - Search Engines and Link Popularity *** What is Link Popularity? A number of search engines are starting to use new methods to rank websites. One of these methods is called Link Popularity. The way Link Popularity works is by search engines tracking down sites that have referral links to your site. The more links you have pointing to your website from others, the better ranking you will get. Currently the following search engines use link popularity in their ranking algorithms: AltaVista, Infoseek, HotBot, MSN Search and Excite. There is also a new search engine called Google, which uses link popularity as their primarily ranking factor. http://www.Google.com/ We would like to stress that although some search engines use link popularity as a means for ranking, this is still not the only criteria, and there are many other ranking algorithms that the search engines use. There are typically three factors that determine top ranking based on referral links. Search engines may use some or all of these methods: 1. Number of sites with referral links to your site _ The more sites linking to you, the better ranking you will have. 2. Importance of the site with referral link - Importance of a site is usually based on its popularity, meaning the number of hits it gets. Specifically, Infoseek considers a link from an important site as one of its top determinants for top ranking. For example, if a site like Disney.com is linking to you, you will have a better ranking. 3. Relevance of the site with referral link - Having links from sites that are in the same category listing as yours is usually the best relevancy boost. One way this can be accomplished is by sending emails to your competitors to see if they are willing to trade links. *** How do I get many sites to link to me? One way to get a lot of sites linking to you is to get your site listed in as many search engines, directories and Free For All links pages as you can. Once you are listed in several places, the major search engines will pick up your listings in their next visit of the site and automatically boost your ranking. However, to get your site listed in many places takes a lot of time and in order to save time we recommend that you use our 800+ search engine submission service. By using this service, your site will be submitted to 800-1200 search engines, directories and Free For All links pages for only $24.95. It will take you several days, if not weeks, for you to submit to these sites manually. CLICK BELOW FOR DETAILS: http://submitexpress.com/cgi/banners/count.cgi?s2.html One other benefit our service offers is that we will review your site before submission to make sure it does not have any problems that will penalize your search engine rankings. Before submission, we will send you a report of several things you can do to improve your search engine rankings. So please take a look at all the benefits at the following link and order now: http://submitexpress.com/cgi/banners/count.cgi?s2.html ========================================================== 3 - How to find out who is linking to you *** AltaVista and Infoseek In the search box type: link:mydomain.com where "mydomain" is your domain name. If your site has a sub-page or directory, then you can type: link:mydomain.com/page1.html OR Link:mydomain.com/directory/page1.html where "page1.html" is your page name, "directory" is one of your directories. *** HotBot and MSN Search Do the same as above, but instead of "link" use "linkdomain". However, this only works for root domains. If you want to find a sub-page or directory, you should use their advanced search options pages and choose "links to this URL". *** Excite In the search box type your URL without the "http://". One thing to keep in mind in searching to see who is linking to you is that not everybody linking to you will be listed in the search engines - for two reasons: 1) They never submitted their site to the search engines, and 2) Your link will only show up if their site has been indexed by the search engines after they have linked to you. BTW, a link search in AltaVista for our domain reveals that there are more than 1,000 sites linking to us. We would like to thank everybody that has been linking to us by placing our banner on their sites. ========================================================== 4 - Domain Name Importance Having your own domain name is beneficial in many ways. 1) It will make your business look more professional 2) Having an easy-to-remember domain name will result in more traffic to your site 3) It will result in better search engine traffic Many search engines give higher relevance ranking to sites with a root domain name than those without. Some of the search engines in this category include Excite, Webcrawler, AOL Netfind and Infoseek. Also, it is very important to have a domain name to get accepted in Yahoo, as Yahoo rarely will add personal sites or sites with a low quality content. Having a domain name will convince Yahoo to take a look your site for possible inclusion. Otherwise your site may be completely ignored. Some search engines may even rank you better if you have your keywords in the domain name. For example, Yahoo will look at the URL when searching for sites, and if a site's URL contains the keyword you are looking for, it will be one of the ones displayed. Some search engines will not even accept sites from free hosting service providers, as they consider these to be of lower quality and not have valuable content. Also, they get a lot of spam from people who try to get their sites in the search engines more than once by getting a free hosting provider. Usually, these types of sites are penalized in the rankings and will be listed towards the bottom of any search results. So we highly recommend getting your own domain name if you are serious about doing business on the net. We would also like to tell you about a special offer. We have recently signed up as an partner with Network Solutions, who is currently the only domain name registration provider. We are offering a free submission to 800+ search engines, if you initiate your domain name search from our site and end up registering a domain name with them. Please visit the below link for more details: http://submitexpress.com/cgi/banners/count.cgi?d.html ========================================================== Webmasters join affiliate programs offered by leading websites and enter in a chance to win $5000. CLICK ON THE LINK BELOW FOR DETAILS http://submitexpress.com/cgi/banners/count.cgi?a.html ========================================================== In case you missed our last month's issue, it contained the following information: - Yahoo Submission Tips - Search Engine Placement and Optimization Services - Common reasons why some sites are rejected by search engines - How to find your site in major search engines - New affiliate program - Make money with your site You can view it online at: http://www.submitexpress.com/newsletters/june99_yahoo.html Please feel free to send us any questions or any subjects you would like to see covered in our future issues. ========================================================== Submit Express Website: http://www.submitexpress.com/ Email: newsletter@submitexpress.com Submit your website to 40 top search engines for FREE! ========================================================== Copyright 1999 Submit Express - No part of this newsletter may be copied or published without prior permission, but please feel free to forward this to all your friends as long as you keep it in its entirety.