Plug Your Book!, Steve Weber [the unexpected everything TXT] 📗

Google: #http://Google.com/ addurl.html#

MSN: #http://Search.MSN.com/ docs/submit.aspx#

Yahoo: #http://Search.Yahoo. com/info/submit.html#

Another way to get your site included in the search engines is to have at least one incoming link from another site that's already been indexed by search engines. The next time Google and other search engines crawl the other site, they'll follow the link to yours.

The essential ingredients for a high-ranking site change periodically. Many bloggers and Webmasters waste time and money chasing the "perfect" formula for getting to the top of search results, and then must start over when Google changes the way it evaluates Web pages. Rather than spending lots of time trying to game the system, you can better spend your time adding valuable content to your site.

One effective way to make your content more visible with search engines is keyword density. Let's imagine you're writing a blog post about how to wax a car in 30 minutes. You might write the title: "Waxing your car in less than 30 minutes: Here's how." This way, the most important words, waxing and car, appear at the beginning of the title. Your first sentence might be, "Waxing your car can be a time-consuming chore, but here's how to get it done fast." This reinforces your keywords. Repeating them again will enhance your keyword density and ensure your post ranks high in searches for those keywords.

Be consistent with word choices to maintain keyword density. Let's imagine you have a page on your site devoted to antique Ford Thunderbird cars. Naturally, you'll want Thunderbird to appear several times on the page to rank high in search results for that keyword. So you'll want to keep using the word Thunderbird instead of slang or nicknames. The sentence "The 1969 'Bird was a stylish car" would dilute your keyword density.

Although keyword density makes it easier for your target audience to find you, don't overdo it. If you artificially jam the same keyword several times in each sentence, search engines will detect this and penalize you for "keyword stuffing."

Another way to get penalized with search engines is by participating in so-called "link farms." These are sites that trade or sell Web links, but it seldom works. The only links that will truly boost your site are from high-ranking sites with content similar to yours. So forget about buying links to boost your SEO. Simply produce good content for your audience, and the links and traffic will come naturally.

You've probably seen advertisements for consultants who promise to make your site No. 1 in the search engines within 30 days. Don't waste your money. Chances are, anyone who makes such promises is incompetent, a charlatan, or both.

Your most important links will be from sites in your niche. Links from crowded social sites like MySpace or discussion boards won't strengthen your site's rankings much, says Dave Taylor, author of _Growing Your Business with Google. _ "Theoretically all links are good, but I don't believe that links from jungles like MySpace are going to give you any real boost," Taylor says. "Those sites that are easy to get links from just aren't going to have the value of, say, a link from the home page of Stanford.edu or Wiley.com."

Google provides an excellent tutorial for optimizing your Web site:

#www.Google.com/Support/ Webmasters#

Many factors influencing how much juice your Web site has are outside your immediate control. For example, if your domain is new--registered within the previous year--it will get short shrift in search results. Some experts call this the Google sandbox effect, meaning that new Web sites are given a probationary period.

Why would Google penalize new blogs and Web sites? Isn't a new blogger or Webmaster just as capable of producing valuable content? The answer is, newcomers are penalized to help the search engines deal with spam Web sites, a growing problem. Fly-by-night companies build spam sites using stolen content or machine-generated lists of keywords. The spammers sprinkle their sites with Google advertising and make a bit of money, at least until Google wises up and cuts off its ads. To limit their costs, the spammers register their domain for the minimum, one year--they don't want to pay in advance for a site they'll be abandoning soon. Google limits the traffic it sends to new sites to avoid helping these spammers make even more money.

How can you turn this to your advantage? By letting Google and the other search engines know your site isn't spam. Extend your domain registration several years into the future, instead of paying the one-year minimum. By paying your domain registration fees nine years in advance, you'll spend about $90 instead of the minimum $9 for one year. But the $90 investment can provide a big return. Bloggers and Webmasters report huge increases in search-engine traffic just weeks after extending their domain registration for multiple years, according to anecdotal reports.

Designed for independent publishers, this service provided by Dial-A-Book, Inc. displays chapter excerpts of your book in more than 1,000 library online public access catalogs and on these Web sites used by readers and book dealers:

Baker & Taylor, Title Source III

Barnes & Noble.com

Bowker, Books-in-Print Online

Bowker, Syndetics

Buy.com

EBSCO, NoveList/NextReads

Ingram, iPage

On-line Computer Center, WorldCat/FirstSearch

Publishers Portal costs $25 per book, and participating titles are added to Dial-A-Book's Chapter One database. To participate, send an e-mail to info@publishersportal.com or visit:

If you collect data from your Web site visitors, consider posting a disclaimer. Privacy policies explain how names, addresses, and other information is used or shared with third parties.

The Better Business Bureau provides this suggested outline for privacy policies:

#www.bbbonline.org/privacy/sample[underscore]privacy.asp#

Here are some of the most common ways author sites can be counterproductive:

Sure, your profit margin may be higher if a reader buys directly from your site. But you'll probably lose more sales to people who just aren't comfortable buying from a stranger, or prefer buying at a retailer where they already have an account or perhaps can combine their shipments.

Selection is important to book buyers, so the best strategy for authors and publishers is to be visible everywhere and available through every possible retail channel. "You need to be channel-agnostic," says Bill Schubart, president of Resolution Inc., a consulting firm. "All of the power has moved from you, the publisher, to your customer, the readers. They will buy the book how, when and where they want. Your job is to make it easy and intuitive."