About 30 days ago I submitted my website, www.fashionfirst.net to a variety of search engines and to this day it hasn't shown up! I need advice on getting this thing listed ASAP without spending a fortune

Start by reading the information on the search engine sites. You'd find that they talk about weeks before your site may show up, and that's assuming your site meets their requirements (and is properly coded). Give it about 2 months for most of the majors.

I know you have to pay something like $200 to get listed in Yahoo.com. Yahoo.com uses Google.com for their personal homepage search. They only have the directory themselves.

Each search engine has its own criteria and you need to find out what are those and strictly follow to get best result without spending fortune.

Have a look at http://www.search.com/submit?tag=ex.se.fd.col.submit which will help you to find out these type of information on few major search engines. I will suggest you to submit you site one by one following instruction for each search engine.

Originally posted by zolbian
I know you have to pay something like $200 to get listed in Yahoo.com. Yahoo.com uses Google.com for their personal homepage search. They only have the directory themselves.
You don't *have* to pay $200 to get listed on Yahoo! (which is their "Business Express" option) but you definitely should. It's the largest and most important search engine. Make sure you read everything you can find about getting listed there before you submit.

Here's a couple of sites that should help with learning the "science" of search engines:
http://www.searchenginewatch.com
http://www.spider-food.net

Businesses do have to pay the $200 to be listed. Yahoo is not accepting submissions for them by any other means.

From their FAQ:
Can I still submit my site the standard way?
Yes, you can still submit your site through our standard submission process.
Only businesses submitting new sites to our "Business and Economy/Business to Business" or "Business and Economy/Shopping and Services" categories are required to use Yahoo! Business Express.

Personally I don't use Yahoo.... If a company wants to make it so difficult to get listed on their search engine, then I don't think it's worth it.

As a browser, wouldn't you want to search through a search engine offering a COMPLETE list of what you're looking for??

My 2 cents. :cool:

Rob.

Duster: Thanks for the info, wasn't aware that that Yahoo! had made the $200 mandatory.

CrazyHost: I understand what you're saying, but that doesn't change the fact that Yahoo! is--by far--the most popular search engine out there. A listing on Yahoo! should be one of your priorities in your online promotion strategy.

I agree with IntelligentHosting, having a listing on Yahoo is equivalent to making sure you are listed in the phone book, you may not need a display ad, but you should at least be listed.

Originally posted by stingya
to this day it hasn't shown up!Actually, it is listed -- at a minimum -- at goto, altavista, and Open Directory. For the rest, you'll just have to wait...

One piece of advice, though, if you want to get it listed at yahoo or other "discrimimating" directories: get rid of that "under construction" statement on the home page.

Originally posted by JayC
One piece of advice, though, if you want to get it listed at yahoo or other "discrimimating" directories: get rid of that "under construction" statement on the home page.
Better yet, finish the site before you submit a site to search engines and directories. Human edited directories like Yahoo and Open Directory will exclude sites with a substantial amount of broken links or under construction (whether you call it 'coming soon' or anything else". Others may exclude a site if spidering reveals broken links and/or incomplete sites.

Chris, you're welcome. Yahoo uses a bit of double talk so it's easy to be misled by what they say. I just happened to have occasion to dig into the matter on behalf of a client who could have submitted when it was still free only had no time to write the description. Yahoo has yet to make a profit and this is one of many attempts to increase income and change their finanical picture.

Duly noted!! :D

Cheers!
Rob.

Originally posted by Duster
Businesses [b]do have to pay the $200 to be listed. Yahoo is not accepting submissions for them by any other means.

I also noticed the change to Yahoo's business directories. You can still get listed in the regional business directories at no cost. Personally, I think a Yahoo listing is well worth a $200 fee.

Finally, a post I am qualified to get involved with. Hello everyone.

Firstly, Zolbian's point about Yahoo using Google as a 'personal home page search' is a little misleading. Google results back up Yahoo for ALL searches. The more precise a search done at Yahoo, the more likely searchers are to use the Google web page results.

Ie: a search for 'unix web host 50mb' rather than simply 'web host' would make the Google results more likely to be looked at.

Secondly, while it is still true that the regional directories do not require payment for business sites, in practice, you are extremely unlikely to be included unless you pay your $199.

Stingya: the main problem with fashionfirst.net is that none of the pages are optimised to get good results in the search engines. Your title should be more descriptive of the contents of each page and should include key words that people may search for your site on (ie: celebrities, celebrity pictures, movie star and so forth).

Similarly, you need to add the META description and keyword tags for each page- don't overdo the repetition of your keywords here or you will be penalised. And you need to include these keywords or phrases more often in your text, especially on the home page.

This will bring you some better rankings, but there is a lot else that can be done to get you good rankings in the Search Engines. The good news is that your site is designed in such a way that making these changes should be comparatively easy.

I would advise a visit to http://searchengineforums.com and take a look at the new member forum. You should get the idea here.

Once you have optimised some pages, your first port of call must be www.positiontech.com to get your pages into the Inktomi database (which provides search results for HotBot, Goto, AOL, Answerz, Canada.com and many others). You pay $30 for the first page and $15 per page after that and you are guaranteed inclusion. You may well see your site in some of these search engines in 3-4 days.

Hope this helps,

Mark

Once you have optimised some pages, your first port of call must be www.positiontech.com to get your pages into the Inktomi database (which provides search results for HotBot, Goto, AOL, Answerz, Canada.com and many others). You pay $30 for the first page and $15 per page after that and you are guaranteed inclusion. You may well see your site in some of these search engines in 3-4 days.

Do you really need to pay money to get into Inktomi? I thought Inktomi was one of the easiest search engines to get into. I think Inkomi is very likely to index your site if you submit for free into other search engines such as Canada.com, or if popular sites are linked to you? It might be a good idea to check if your site is indexed before paying the fees.

My non-business site took around 3-4 months to get listed.... I think a vast majority of people use yahoo at least occasionally, so it's good to be listed with them...

Thanks Mark for the helpful tips

Stingya,

no problem. Any time.

NVB- you are right in saying that Inktomi still indexes free submissions, through Canada.com. HotBot and so on. However, don't hold your breath waiting for your listings to appear. It seems to take months these days. Furthermore, paid-for listings are given ranking priority over non-paid listings. I'd still advise going the paid-inclusion route. It's not that much money.

Cheers

Mark