Getting Listed in Google, Yahoo and Bing

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Getting listed in Google and the other popular search engines is one of the most effective ways of directing free, targeted traffic to your website.

Below you'll discover what the search engines look for when determining your page rank so you can optimize your pages for best results. This is often called SEO or search engine optimization.

To this day, the marjority of my traffic comes from the major search engines.

How Search Engines Determine Your Rank

Before you try to add your site to the search engines, you should understand what they look for when they decide how to rank your site. Just because you're listed doesn't mean you'll get traffic. You have to make sure your site is search engine ready.

The general rule of thumb is that most engines use a "formula" to determine keyword relevancy. The technical term is called an "algorithm", and each search engine has its own unique algorithm that it uses to rank pages.

Generally, this magic formula consists of your page title, overall body content and the number and quality of links pointing back to your site, social media influence, how long people stay on your site, etc.

It's important to note that every engine is different. Some may look at inbound links (number of people linking to you), others may place more emphasis on your body content.

You also need to know about meta tags. These are hidden descriptors that appear at the beginning of your HTML code, inside your <head> tag. They may be invisible to your visitor's eyes, but search engine spiders can read them.

They usually consist of a title, description, and keyword tag and they look something like this:

<head>

<title>Title of Your Site</title>

<meta name="description" content="Description of your site here.">

<meta name="keywords" content="keywords separated by commas">

</head>

Because of abuse, search engines now put less emphasis on certain tags when ranking pages, but you should still include them because they do use them to display information about your site.

For example, whatever is inside the <title> tag is what the search engines will use as the title of your site in the search results. You want to use keywords that describe your page and entice visitors to click.

Watch a Video on Adding Meta Tags

Note: Bloggers do not need to manually insert this code as there are places to insert your title, description, etc. in the "Edit" most when you are creating your posts.

Plugins like the All in One SEO Plugin allow you to specify a different title for your meta <title> than your actual page title.

Google, Bing and Yahoo

There are a handful of engines out there that bring traffic, but the reality is a very large percentage of search engine traffic comes from Google, Yahoo and Bing.

Yes, there are other engines like AOL, etc, but they pull their results from the big 3.

Getting Ranked in Google

Getting into Google is not hard. The challenge is getting ranked. How well you rank largely depends on how many quality sites link to you.

And as social media matures, now the engines are beginning to use your connections to influence your rank.

For example, if you're logged into Google and do a search for something, the results that show up may be heavily influenced by who is in your social circles in the Google Plus Network. You can connect with my website on the network here.

Also, if you are logged out of Google, the results may be altogether different from when you were logged in.

Google is moving more toward personalized search, which means no two people will see the same results when they perform keyword searches.

Getting Indexed

As far as getting listed goes, all search engines have spiders that roam the web and add sites to their databases as they find them. So the easiest way for Google to index/list your site is to get linked from a site already in Google's index.

The other way to let Google know about your site is to sign up with Google Webmaster Tools and create a Google XML sitemap (recommended).

If you use WordPress, install the All in One SEO plugin and that is all you really need to do. It will create and submit your sitemap for you. If you use Blogger, your sitemap is automatically created for you.

No matter what blogging platform you use, you should still create an account with Google Webmaster Tools.

Getting into Bing-Yahoo

Bing and Yahoo are now search alliances. In other words, Yahoo search has a Bing-powered backend. So once you setup a Webmaster Tools account and create a sitemap for Bing, you're covered for Yahoo as well.

Just like Google, Bing-Yahoo takes quality inbound links into account.

Less than 1% of my search engine traffic comes from Bing-Yahoo. I mainly focus my efforts on Google these days.

Keyword Research

One component of ranking well in the search engines is proper keyword research. It's all about finding less competitive phrases so you can optimize your search engine traffic.

See how I use Market Samurai to perform keyword research for my pages.

A Powerful Search Engine Traffic Generation Tool

If you're building a money making website then free search engine traffic is an absolute must. It's the reason my sites became successful, and ultimately the reason I was able to quit my job.

Site Build It! is a great choice if you want to create a content / affiliate site that receives targeted traffic from Google, Bing-Yahoo, etc.

It's only getting tougher out here to master the search engine's algorithms, and many people are doing it wrong as they sit and wonder why they can't find their site in the results.

Cheaper hosts will save you money, but they aren't in the business of educating you on how to create a search engine optimized website.

SBI! comes with a Brainstorm It! tool that will help you research proftable niches and choose the right keywords to target.

I bought it to see if the hype over SBI! was worth it. After 11 months, my other website, www.flat-stomach-exercises.com, earned $700 per month in Adsense income alone, and 90% the traffic comes from Google.

Of course, this was 2005 and things have changed. Nevertheless, their system is still one of the best out here. This site still earns a nice passive income today.

SBI! actually coaches you as you build every page to make sure it's completely optimized for the best possible results in the search engines.

Now, when I say "coach", I don't mean they teach how to "trick" or "cheat" the search engines. You will learn how to build content-focused pages that search engines will love for the long haul.

It amazes me when I hear of big businesses and dot com start-ups spending thousands of dollars a month on advertising while first-time web site builders are getting more traffic, just from using a web host like SBI.

Read this next paragraph carefully . . .

Over half of SBI customers rank within the top 3% visited web sites on the net because of their excellent search engine rankings. There are millions of web sites on the Internet right now, and to say that over half of their customer base ranks in the top 3% for traffic says a heck of a lot about this system.

See for yourself.

Let's not forget who's benefiting from SBI. There are sites created by stay-at-home moms, retired school teachers, aspiring entrepreneurs, full-time workers looking for part-time income, etc. Most of these people who are succeeding with SBI have no previous website building experience whatsoever.

I wouldn't recommend SBI if I didn't use it myself. And I'm not the only one with a success story. Check out these customers who have made videos showing how SBI changed their lives.