Dear Homesalediy,
First of all, and that is very important - Google Answers is not
linked with the Google Index, and I am not a Google employee. I am,
though, sort of an expert on search engine submission and in
particular in Google submission.
Google Index (the search engine) is not related with the human edited
DMOZ project, which is a directory of sites, not a search engine. Both
are two completely different ways to get listed and found online. So,
though it helps to be listed on the DMOZ directory, it is neither a
precondition, nor a necessity, in order to be found by the Googlebot -
the robot that indexes the sites found in your search results, and to
be indexed in the search engine.
As a matter of fact, you are already indexed in the Google Index, as
this link demonstrates:
://www.google.com/search?num=50&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&safe=images&q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.homesalediy.com%2F&sa=N&tab=gw
As you could see, there are five parts in the Google announcement:
First, there's a link to the site, which is registered in the index.
(1) Show Google's cache of www.homesalediy.com/ - that is the
"picture" of this page, in the last time the bot crawled there.
(2) Find web pages that are similar to www.homesalediy.com/ - there
are no results in this category. I'll explain bellow.
(3) Find web pages that link to www.homesalediy.com/ - again, no pages
found that link to you.
(4) find web pages that contain the term "www.homesalediy.com/" - this
has results <://www.google.com/search?num=50&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&safe=images&sa=N&q=%22%2Bwww.homesalediy.%2Bcom/%22>,
but most of them are from your own postings in message boards as well
as some directory listings (for example, in Yahoo, which is good!).
If your sites are totally unknown and were never ranked in Google, the
solution is to get the sites known. This could be done by linking to
other sites dealing with the same issue (real estate, even to
governmental sites with legal advices), by submitting yourself to
search engines and by maximising your keywords.
Your site has virtually no keywords or Metatags that would help the
search engine find your site. If a user searches for "free for sale by
owner", which is one of your few keywords, they get 5270 results,
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%22free+for+sale+by+owner%22,
and the first ones are better linked, better keyworded, than yours.
You have to add more keywords that will draw users to find your site.
So, the first step, in your way towards successful submission, is to
have the right key words in your site.
Several sites offer the most searched words, those that would bring
you up in the results list, although probably not in the first place:
http://www.wordtracker.com/
http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Internet/Searching/Search_Engines/Specialized/Internet_Keywords/?tc=1
http://www.goodkeywords.com/
http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Data_Formats/Markup_Languages/HTML/Tutorials/Meta_Tags/?il=1
http://www.keywords.com/
These are only few, and as you could see, I put here several
directories with more than one site. It should be noted, that the most
searched words might not always help you. If the most searched word in
technology is "mp3" (see Google's "Zeitgeist" -
://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html), then it wouldn't really
contribute to people looking for your specific business, right?
In your case, as I showed before, thousands of sites have the same
keyword as yours - you must have many more keywords that describe the
services of the site. For example, you have a glossary of real-estate
terms, and a calculator, but if I look for ones - I will not find your
site, since nothing in your keywords leads me there.
Google ranks sites, according to the number and quality of sites they
are linked with. That means, that the more listings you have in other
site's links, the more chance you have to be listed and ranked. You
could enhance your linking in several ways.
First of all, you could market your site in online business
directories, real estate sites, and general human-edited web
directories. This is where DMOZ gets into the picture, but there is no
necessity to use or to be listed in DMOZ. Lately, many DMOZ editors
ceased to volunteer, and there's stoppage in many directory pages.
Quiet honestly, as a Researcher, I find it less and less reliable.
However, if an editor doesn't response on one category, maybe another,
in a similar category, would?
You could also post rich, interesting content that would generate more
traffic and voluntary linking to your site. Your glossary is good, and
more pages like that would be helpful.
Another way is to use Word-of-the-Mouse marketing, telling everybody
you know, plus some people you don't know, about your new site, hoping
that the more links to your site, the better the chance you'll appear
first on the search results. The information about your new site
should be part of your email signature, known to all of the people in
your address book, and for those of them who care enough - also to all
of the people in their address book and so on (this is different than
spamming, which I certainly advice to stay away from - this is
illegal, immoral and irritates more than brings customers).
There's a book I recommend in cases like that. It is a bit simplistic
(like all advice books) but gives several helpful tips on online
marketing in free venues. You can get it at amazon.com
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0935047298/ltc-political/002-8658478-2156038>
Let Your Fingers Do the Talking: Using Word of Mouth Advertising on
the Internet, by Tom Clarke-Hill, but also probably in some libraries.
There are many other search engine submission and maximising tips and
tutorials out there:
http://searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/
http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Internet/Web_Design_and_Development/Promotion/Help_and_Tutorials/?il=1
http://www.addpro.com/
http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Internet/Web_Design_and_Development/Promotion/Free_Search_Engine_Submitting/?il=1
http://www.addme.com/
http://www.buildtraffic.com/indexnew.shtml
http://www.esiteblast.com/
http://www.college-scholarships.com/free_search_engine_submission.htm
I hope that helped and answered your question. In order to find an
answer for you, I looked at your site (if you go to "View" --->
source, you could see the source of the site), as well as in Google,
for solutions to your problem. If you need any further clarifications
on this answer, please ask before you rate/tip this answer. |
