Search Engine Optimization

There are different ways to get a good rank with the search engines. If you can manage to get a gazillion links from other sites, this will boost your rank with some SEs, particularly Google.
And then there are paid listings. The more you pay for a URL, or bid for key words and phrases, the closer to the top you get. Or so I hear; I have little experience here. Supposedly this can run well into the thousands of dollars. And no matter how much money you have, someone else probably has, and will spend, more.
And, your competitors can log on and endlessly click, which drives the cost up.
"It is a jungle out there". The competition is cutthroat. Something to think about.

SEO 101
The usual way to get a decent rank, defined as within the first 30 listings (not including the paid ones) is to build your site so that it is SE friendly. So that the many spiders that will visit you have something to eat. Spider Food.

This means carefully writing the text that goes at the top of the page; the part that isn't visible to viewers but is to spiders and robots. Titles, Meta tags, hidden text and headers,  pixel graphics, alt tags, and like that. All carefully hand crafted using the most appropriate key words and phrases. And a number of other things that help. Naturally, we aren't giving away all of our 'secrets'.

Now, you can spend a considerable amount of time, searching and learning these techniques, and implement them yourself, or you can hire someone who already has. And as with most other things, there is the caveat: How do you know who can improve your rank and who will just take your hard earned money? And speaking of money, how much are you willing to spend?

One of the best, far as I know, is CoastalSites They offer a money back guarantee, and have something called Request-a-Quote. The minimum fee is two thousand dollars. Now, if you aren't ready to spend that much money,  read on, please.

Google: 36.5% Yahoo: 30.5% Microsoft: 15.5% Time Warner (AOL): 9.9% Ask Jeeves: 6.1% Infospace: 0.9% Others: 0.9% Source: ComScore Google is by no means the only search engine. Nor is it necessarily the best. More than a few times I have found what I was searching for on other SEs, where Google struck out. AltaVista, for one. And for serious searching, consider Copernic.

At FusionSites, we offer Web Site promotion, or SEO , at an intermediate level; advanced but not beginner, mainly to small business and personal sites.

The process begins with an analysis of your site source code, and a determination as to whether or not we can make a significant improvement. Your site may already be optimized to the point where we can not, in which case we will decline the project.

If you decide to hire FusionSites, we will begin to select the most effective and appropriate keywords and phrases to be used. In this, we work directly with you, using your suggestions and checking a particular test site for words/phrases most frequently used in searching.

Once we have agreed on what is to be used, we prepare a text only document attachment, ready to cut and paste into the head of the HTML code by your webmaster. It includes titles and Meta tags and 'hidden' or 'comment' text. This document also includes a list of other techniques that can be utilized by your webmaster; things that the search engines will look for and use;  again,  "Spider Food".
This is entirely hand coded; no automated applications are used.
The next step is to list you with some of the major search engines; those that are not fee based or 'Pay per Click'. We also do this manually, one at a time. Automated processes are never used.
Again, there are a number of other techniques we use, but are not revealed here. If you knew what we know, you would not need us.

The cost of this service, for the first page, which is the most important, is $200.00. Each additional page is $50. We recommend only five pages, as some spiders don't go beyond that level. Terms are half down, the balance on completion. Once the basics are done, and the URL is submitted to the major search engines, there is nothing for you to do but wait a few weeks, during which time I will be making random checks to see how things are progressing.

About Search Engines, Spiders, and Time
It may take six to eight weeks, or even longer, for some search engines to find your site, or some might spider you within a day or two after the site is published, though at some point in time, they will. This is a very complicated process. Now, just because a given SE has found your site does not necessarily mean they have indexed you; placed you in their listings. This, too, may take time.
For example, a few days ago I published a draft of the site www.woolydogs.com. Google found the URL. They had not yet indexed or listed it using their key words. So, it had nott yet shown up in a search for the key words and phrases I used. But sooner or later, it will.

Advanced SEO
Just how well is your site ranked? How do you find out?
Well, you can't base this on the amount of traffic you get. If you are selling buggy whips or button up shoes, or membership in the Flat Earth Society, no matter if you should somehow happen to be at the very top of Google, don't expect much traffic.
Now, you can look your site up on some of the major search engines, manually, one at a time, for each keyword/phrase, which is very time consuming. Days rather than hours.
Or, you can have us run WebPosition Gold Pro.

WebPosition Gold Pro

This application produces a detailed and comprehensive nine part report showing your rank, if any, on the major search engines. The results are automatically archived to use as a comparison if and when WPG is run again. A sample report, from FusionSites is available to clients who purchase basic SEO.
Note that there may be situations where we recommend not starting with WPG. For example, a new site that has been online only a few weeks, or a site that has incomplete titles, missing Meta tags or uses frames. This will be determined by client information and examination of the site source code.

The cost of the first WPG run is $. TBA
If you elect to have it run a second time, the total, for both runs, is $___.
The cost of preparing new key words, etc. for ten pages, is $___.

In either case, the reports belong to you to use as you see fit. Note that this is the total cost. There is nothing else to pay, period.

Guarantee
We will make a significant overall improvement and will get you on the first or second page of at least two major search engines *. In the unlikely event this has not happened at the end of six weeks, we will repeat the process and continue to do so until this has been achieved. No matter how much work is involved.

References

Until now, we have promoted only the sites we still maintain. Only recently have we decided to make this affordable service available to other site owners. However, these numbers speak for FusionSite's skill at site promotion.

Between these three sites, we have aproximately 30 Page 1, Number 1 key words. Search engines include, but not limited to, AltaVista, AltaVista Canada, Ask Jeeves, AOL Web Sites, AlltheWeb, Excite, Extra New Zealand, Google, Hotbot, ICQ, IWon, LookSmart, Lycos, MSN, Open Directory, Overture, WiseNut and Yahoo.

Search Google for 'electronic surveillance'. The listing, Page 1, #1, (of more than 5 million) is for SWS Security, a site I built and maintain. Search for 'Minox cameras'. SWS is Page 1, # 2 and 3. Search this site for 'manuscript proofreading'. I have two listings on Google. Page 1, #4 and 5.
Try google for 'SEO inexpensive'. FusionSites is Page 1 #1.

Search Ask Jeeves for 'computer eavesdropping protection', or All The Web for 'commercial broadcast vans' or AltaVista for 'windows signal monitors' or Excite for 'intelligence gathering equipment'. CSE-Assoc. another site we maintain and promote, has the number one listing for all of these search phrases.
The total number of key word/phrase listings on the first two pages of the major search engines used, for these three sites, is 464. Add page three and four, and it is about 1000. A thousand listings for sites we have promoted.
 

Some listings for FusionSites and a few that we maintain: I just started this on 10 July 05. More will be added as I find them with real time log file analysis. Explanation: I sometimes run an app on another machine, which shows me in real time, who is logged on to FusionSites and SWS Security. If I see a referral, such as from AltaVista or Google or any other search engine, I look to see what key words/phrases were used, then plug them into that SE to see where FusionSites and SWS ranks.
Interesting!
Note: The SWS site has about 120 pages and about 260,000 words, So, the number of page one hits will be well into the hundreds.

How Much Is Your Time Worth?

Note: The following are from Page One only; first ten listings of the SEs

*1 http://www.fusionsites.com/written/Humor/Beans/beans.html

*2 An example of how one of my 'tricks' works; I intentionally spelled Knoppix wrong knowing some people would search for it that way. As you can see, it worked.

*3 Search.com returns results from AltaVista and other SEs.