Help... The web site www.sunrisemarketplace.com and .org are sitting
on our local newspaper's website, www,sacbee.com. We thought this
would help us be found by search but we seem to be invisible for
logical search terms. Is there something we can do to change our site
to help people to find it? We are non profit and really offer the best
info on over 500 stores there, but don't know how to help folks find
us.

---

Request for Question Clarification by robertskelton-ga on 07 Jun 2004 15:34 PDT

Could you give an example of the search terms you feel are logical?

Well eyeballfarmer, the location idea was good, but it will often take
more than just location.  You need to submit your site to the engines
themselves, then the search engine will included your site to its
index. Its often free, since your really helping them, but sometimes
they will charge small fees or large fees for advertising like on
Google's Adsense witch will deliver advertisment about your site
directly to the people who are searching for services like yours, but
like i said its often pricey.  Heres some free (or cheap) methods i
would use to submit your site:
://www.google.com/webmasters/index.html,
http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html, http://sitesubmit.ask.com/,
https://secure.ah-ha.com/guaranteed_inclusion/teaser.aspx?network=dogpile.

Well i hope that answered your question!!

search engine discussion forum:
http://www.jimworld.com/apps/webmaster.forums/

I am by no means a pro at this, but I'd suggest:

get your own domain.  It's not that expensive.  SE's read a page from
the top down.  Your company name should be in text, not an image. 
Open your page and select view ... source by right-clicking or using
the pulldown menu.  This is what the browser reads.  Your page could
be choking the SE with all that javascript.  Also, your meta tags are
empty.  The SE will read the table across the top, then the table on
the left from the top down, then the body of the document.   Select
the SE keywords you are targeting.  It will be hard for you because
the service you offer is a diversity of services.  When you have
selected the handful of key words, place these high in the document as
much as possible without mindless repetition.  It still has to make
sense.  You may wish to have multiple sites, each optimized for a
different keyword.  Use the description tag for your images.  Create
content-rich pages that coincidentally repeat the keyword over and
over.  Get listed in the google directory:
http://directory.google.com/Top/Shopping/Directories?tc=1/

and at http://www.dmoz.org/
Submit your site to the main SE's as required.  Yahoo is difficult,
from what I read.

You may also wish to try pay-per-click advertising, which is also
discussed at the SE forums.  Overture.com and Google offer these
services as well as many others.

I forgot to mention simple html header modifications (called META
TAGS) to help increase logical search term results.  This after all is
how META search engines work (witch includes all the major search
engines i.e. Google, Yahoo, AskJeeves/Teoma).  Search google for
something like "meta tagging for search engines" to find tutorials for
meta tagging in html, its real easy.  Here is a tutorial i thought was
great in explaining Meta tags:
http://www.wdvl.com/Search/Meta/Tag.html

Once again, i hope i answered your question, your site, by-the-way, is
really great, all-the-more reason to GET IN IN THOSE INDEXES!!!

http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,63755,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_4

The owner of an online forum won the first round of a worldwide
search-engine optimization competition Monday, by using a backlinking
strategy that scored his site as the top Google result for a made-up
term, "nigritude ultramarine."

The contest, called the SEO Challenge, tasked webmasters and site
owners with using any optimization method to try to claim the top spot
on Google for the odd term, which loosely means "dark blue" in Latin.
DarkBlue, an Australian affiliate-marketing company, and
SearchGuild.com were the sponsors of the competition.

"SearchGuild exists for two reasons: to understand search engine
ranking and to have fun," said Chris Ridings, SearchGuild.com's owner.
"The competition is essentially for the same reasons, which is why we
wanted to do it. It's very easy for somebody to say, 'This ranking
technique works because I say so.' The competition provides a stage
for them to actually demonstrate how strong particular ranking
techniques really are. In essence, you can't bluff the competition --
you're either first or you're not."

These days, many site owners believe placement in Google's rankings is
an all-important factor in a business' success or failure. But Google
frequently changes the way it ranks sites, partly as a way of fending
off those who game the system with new search engine optimization
tricks. And some believe that Google, while being the undisputed
search leader, does not always return the most relevant results.

"The competition really gives the opportunity to stand back and say
this is what one engine does badly and another does better," Ridings
said. "Nobody's ever really had that so clearly before."

Since the SEO Challenge began May 7, more than 1,000 site owners and
webmasters have built hundreds of thousands of Web pages using
"nigritude ultramarine" in just about every imaginable manner.

Brandon Suit, whose online community was judged the first-round
winner, said that his success was based largely on backlinks -- a
technique in which the required words on other people's sites are
hyperlinked back to Suit's site.

"I had a professional (search-engine optimizer) who had contacted me,
and he said he would help me," Suit said. "I feel that his help, along
with others, was the main reason for our win. It's all about quality
backlinks"

Philipp Lenssen, who writes a blog about Google, just missed winning
the first round. He used a combination of three optimization methods,
but according to Ridings, Lenssen's entry slipped into the second spot
just at the moment of judging.

Lenssen said his main strategy, too, was building a tremendous number of backlinks.

"I asked readers of my blog to link to me using 'nigritude
ultramarine' as link text," said Lenssen. "I also have several sites
under my control. They are template-driven, so it's easy for me to
create, say, a backlink on 60,000 pages in five minutes of my time."

In the end, SEO Challenge entrants were allowed to do anything to win,
even things that some might consider underhanded.

"If the point of the competition is to prove which methods work and
don't work, then it's silly to place rules that say you can't use such
and such a technique," Ridings said. "If they really can't use it then
the assumption is that Google would boot them out of the index, so
they wouldn't win."

Hello

http://www.sacbee.com/static/live/ads/sunrise/ I looked at the website
and came to the following results [Courtesy www.ranks.nl]
Your keyword density are as follows [ignoring 1 word density]
2 words
phrase repeats density Prominence  
Total 2 word phrases: 6 - Total Repeats : 21 
phrase repeats density Prominence  
professional services 8 L 9.70 % 63.26  
consultants professional 3 L 3.64 % 66.67  
services consultants 3 L 3.64 % 60.40  
sunrise marketplace 3 T 3.64 % 46.26  
services professional 2 L 2.42 % 63.03  
specialty services 2 L 2.42 % 51.21 
3 words 
phrase repeats density Prominence  
consultants professional services 3 L 5.45 % 66.67  
professional services consultants 2 L 3.64 % 66.36  
services consultants professional 2 L 3.64 % 65.76  
services professional services 2 L 3.64 % 63.03  
4 word 
phrase repeats density Prominence  
professional services consultants professional 2 L 4.85 % 66.36  
services consultants professional services 2 L 4.85 % 65.76 

And if we check the words popularity with overture tools
http://inventory.overture.com for top on all words we get the following results
Count Search Term 
 33  consultant professional services 
22950  professional services 

So you should increase the professional services prominence if
possible though the results are satisfactory
Now the next step for you should be increase page rank and backward links

You can do that by posting your links to as many sites as possible and
in exchange post there links on your site.For this you should have a
links section on your site. You can also buy the links that are
available and which will increase the PR of your site.

Also putting a site map helps the search engine crawlers to crawl the
pages easily and you can put that too.

Thanks and hope this helps a bit.
Shabbir Bhimani