[micha schraven]

Can you guys recommend any, like VSE be found or Submitwolf?

Are there any good shareware ones, or are the retail versions better?

[OSX Abuser]

Originally posted by micha schraven:
Can you guys recommend any, like VSE be found or Submitwolf?

Are there any good shareware ones, or are the retail versions better?

I guess the way you would promote your site would depend
a great deal on what your site is about.

PS...
I thought all of those sites promising site promotion and search rankings were a sham.

[KaptainKaya]

VSE BeFound is good, but its not updated for OS X yet.

[Macola]

PS...
I thought all of those sites promising site promotion and search rankings were a sham. [/B]

They are, pretty much. You can submit your site manually and achieve the same results, just takes a little more time. Or just wait for the spiders to find you.

The only way to "increase your ranking" is (unfortunately) to get paid listings in the search engines that use them.

[hyperizer]

Originally posted by Macola:
The only way to "increase your ranking" is (unfortunately) to get paid listings in the search engines that use them.

This isn't exactly true. In Google, you can increase your ranking by having a lot of sites which link to you. Google takes your site's popularity into account. On most other search engines, it depends on how frequently the search phrase appears on your page. If the phrase appears in your title tag or URL, your rank will be even higher. You can't just repeat the phrase indefinitely, though, because if you're using it an unusual amount of times, the engines will assume you're trying to spam them.

So in conclusion, make sure you have descriptive page titles. Meta tags for description and keyword will certainly help. And make sure your page has text on it. If your page is all images, or one big Flash file, you're in trouble.

P.S. Some search engines try to prevent automated submissions, so this is another reason to submit by hand.

[Macola]

Originally posted by hyperizer:

So in conclusion, make sure you have descriptive page titles. Meta tags for description and keyword will certainly help. And make sure your page has text on it. If your page is all images, or one big Flash file, you're in trouble.

These are all very good points, and you should certainly follow them, keeping in mind each search engine uses different criteria to rank the page. However, it also depends on what business you're in. Say, for example, that you're a web designer, and you want someone to find your site by searching for "web design". There are about 50 bazillion web pages out there for web designers, and you will eventually get lost in the shuffle. The only *sure* way to consistently achieve a top ranking is to get a paid listing (which, as I said, sucks...but it's true).

[hyperizer]

Originally posted by Macola:
These are all very good points, and you should certainly follow them, keeping in mind each search engine uses different criteria to rank the page. However, it also depends on what business you're in. Say, for example, that you're a web designer, and you want someone to find your site by searching for "web design". There are about 50 bazillion web pages out there for web designers, and you will eventually get lost in the shuffle. The only *sure* way to consistently achieve a top ranking is to get a paid listing (which, as I said, sucks...but it's true).

Well, there's nothing you can do about people who enter vague search phrases. But I'll bet you could get into the first page of results for "web design miami florida," for example.