[nylan]

Has anyone used a service such as "blast engine" to promote your website to search engines? If so, did you have good results? Which service did you use?

[Stonehenge]

Don't bother with a service like that.

Think about what the job of a search engine is - it's to scour the web to provide it's users the most complete information about the topic you're searching about. If everyone has to submit their sites to search engines, then the search engines really aren't doing their jobs.

So those submission services are more scam than anything.

Besides, there are only about 5 search engines you need to concern yourself with: Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Ask, and whoever is in fifth place. That makes up 99% of all the search traffic.

The other 999,995 "search engines" probably won't net you any traffic at all. There are a few exceptions, but not many (out of that million they advertise).

What to do instead? Get yourself a few inbound links to get your site spidered. Submit your site to landscaping-directory.com. It's a site I run and in it's current format won't get you much traffic, but it will get the spider bots over to your site.

Many times associations will have sites with links to member sites - get yourself listed on those. Get 5-10 nice inbound links and you'll start seeing some improvement.*

You might also consider getting your own domain and putting your website there - more elikely to get traffic, and you'll look more "legit".

Hope that helps. Feel free to ask any more questions you might have.

*Conditional on a lot of things, too complex for this time of day for me.

[nylan]

I read your article on "Search Engine Opt." I have done what you have suggested there. Im a little behind on the learning curve with websites. Never really saw the need but have been doing some research and talking to a lot of people. Some say they dont even have a yellow pages book, they got straight to the net. Right now my site is a free home made bulletin board really. Over they winter I hope to have the time to ddesign a nice sight and get up to speed. Im kind oof a control freak so before it is over I plan to know all I can.

Wouldnt mind someone looking at my site and giving me some feed back.

[Stonehenge]

I think it's too early to review the site as it's a single page at this point.

That being said, the tiled background is OK, but doesn't seem to fit what you do. And it has words on it. That's distracting.

There are some graphic design rules about using different fonts, and how you often want to stick within the same font family and don't flop between serif and sans-serif fonts too much (some is good, too much is bad).

Having pics are nice - pics of you, pics of your work, etc.

But at this point it's really too early - get a full site up and then a more complete review is possible.

[nylan]

Thanks for the input Jeff.

[springfever]

Stonehenge,

How do we submit our site to the one you mentioned above?

Thanks!

[Stonehenge]

Click on whichever service is most appropriate for the things your company does. From there you wee see an "add URL" link in the middle of the page. Click on that and fill out the form.

[Jake Wolf]

No need to submit to anything. I never have and get indexed withing 48 hours of putting up new content on a 3 month old site.

Important part for top rankings is to have good clean content, update frequently and get incoming links from other sites.

Go to http://www.google.com/services/index.html and get listed for free in google local. Adding a sitemap really helps get all your pages included.

[Stonehenge]

Jake - You think that has anything to do with your site being a blog? Blog and ping is an easy way to get content indexed. Heck, I got a site ranking #2 for an important term for me in two weeks with zero backlinks - all because it's a blog, and the inherent interconnectivity of that platform.

BTW, I notice your blog about starting a landscaping business doesn't really have any updates about your challenge to build a landscaping business.

I am starting up a landscaping business and will be covering the whole process from start to finish including the sale of the business. I have nine years of experience working for landscapers specializing in fine gardening, estimating for landscape architects, roof top gardens, and even a New York City museum.

I have to call a spade a spade, Jake - yours looks more like an exercise in building a website than building a landscaping business.

[Jake Wolf]

Hey Stonehenge,

I'm sure you're right about blogs getting indexed because of the pings. Sitemaps also help as that's what search engines check first for guidance and in there you can let them know how frequently you update pages. They check back to see if you follow through and adjust accordingly. Plus you can ping google and others from normal website, not just blogs.

As far as my blog goes, I started that last fall and changed course as people started asking questions. I'd love to eventually write a book on local business to consumer marketing and this is just a way for me to play around and learn. So you're right. Shame on me!

[Stonehenge]

Why it rubs me the wrong way? It feels like you're using our site as a drive-by promotion of your non-landscaping website.

[spiderlily]

On the topic of search engines....

If I type "Lake Geneva Landscaping" (without quotes) into Google, our site comes up as #1 or #2. Good deal!

But if I type "Landscapers in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin" (without quotes), the GTX thread "What color are your trucks" shows up 5th (Bravo, Stonehenge), and I run out of patience before I find my site.

As I am in the process of remaking my site, I'd like to know if there is anything I can do to improve this?

Also, I seem to remember a thread about how to increase search engine results for keywords, but I can't seem to locate it. Help?

[Stonehenge]

Spider - You used to be top 10 for "landscaping wisconsin" (w/o quotes) in Google, but you've been bumped down to about 37 recently.

There's lots you can do to improve this - but I've started charging a nominal fee for this service. Of course, one lead could pay for this consultation fee. I'll provide a minimum of 10 action items to improve your site in the areas you want improvement.

[spiderlily]

I am sure this is a great offer.

Funny, I had already found your new site, greenvoodoo.com (which, I think, had it's GTX debut in this thread. Did it?) while I was looking elsewhere for the answers.

I suppose this is evidence of your SEO skills.

I have already learned a number of things. I think I might even know what may have caused the bump. I am working on the new site now. Maybe I will have you take a look when I am done.

[Stonehenge]

Sounds great - just let me know. I took a cursory look at a couple pages and found about 15 simple things you could do to improve.