How can I promote my site within the search engines?

Answer by: Stuart Pierce, Knowledge Base Support

If you want to promote your web site within the search engines, your first choice should be Aplus.Net’s eTraffic program. The eTraffic service means that Aplus.Net will manage a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) program on search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN, to drive potential customers to your website. PPC has become recently very popular in the eCommerce community. It is a method of advertising and it turned out to be one of the most cost effective tools for online business. For a detailed guide on the features of eTraffic please click here.

Aplus.Net provides also some web-based tools to help you promote your site with the world’s most popular search engines. You can find them on the Marketing page in the Control Panel. Here’re instructions on how to access and use each of these tools:

1. Start by logging into the Aplus.Net Web Control Panel at http://cp.aplus.net using your Registration Number and Customer Password.
2. Select Web Hosting from the top navigation menu.
3. Next, select Hosted Domains and click on Manage Hosted Domains.
4. On the Web Sites Management page, select the domain that you’d like to promote.
5. Click on the Marketing tab.

The description of the different tools follows below:

Search Engine Optimization: helps you automatically insert <meta> tags into your web page HTML files in order to better position them for keyword searches. Here are complete step-by-step instructions on how to use the Search Engine Optimization tool:

• How can I add meta tag information to my site?

Search Engine Submission service: searches for details about your website and then submits them to the Search Engines of your choice.

1. Select the Search Engine Submission icon.
2. Enter a valid email address into the My Email text field. Some search engines will send you a confirmation notice that your website submission has been received.
3. Select the search engines that you want your information to be submitted to. Hold down the CTRL key in order to make more than one selection.
4. Check the box next to Send me a confirmation email message.
5. Check the box next to Submit my site every (month or two weeks) in order to re-submit your website details automatically.
6. Click the Submit URL button.

That’s it! It should take 1-3 weeks for your submissions to be processed by the search engines. You may or may not receive a confirmation notice from the search engines depending on their particular policies.

Quick Ranking: once your site has been submitted to search engines, you can use this tool to check how relevant your site is for searches with certain keywords.

1. Click the Quick Ranking icon.
2. Enter the URL of the site in the My URL field, or select a submitted page (or site) from the Previous Records field.
3. In the Keywords text box, put a selection of keywords that you expect users to enter into a search engine in order to find your site.
4. Finally, click the Check Ranking button. On the following page, you will be able to preview the results from All The Web, Alta Vista, Google, and HotBot.

Search Engine Saturation: shows the number of pages top search engines (All The Web, Alta Vista, Google and Hot Bot) have in their index for your website. You can also compare your site with other web sites, e.g. those of your business competitors.

1. Click the Search Engine Saturation icon.
2. Enter the URL of the site in the My URL field, or select a submitted page (or site) from the Previous Records field.
3. Now, you can enter up to four competitive URLs.
4. Click Check Saturation to view the results.

Related links:

• How do I sign up for eTraffic?
• How do I use my Google Adwords coupon included in my shared hosting plan?