299 Steps to Website Heaven

Google themselves say to be wary of SEO companies that guarantee to get you to number one on Google:

Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a “special relationship” with Google, or advertise a “priority submit” to Google.

There is no priority submit for Google.

In fact, the only way to submit a site to Google directly is through our Add URL page or through the Google Sitemaps program, and you can do this yourself at no cost whatsoever.

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Another mistake lots of people make – submitting to 1000+ search engines.

Only surpassed by the people that promise to submit your site to 1000+ search engines for you for ‘just $19.95’.

Here’s some news – there AREN’T 1000 search engines. Most of the traffic that comes via search engines comes from ten main search engines. Google, MSN, AOL and Yahoo make up the bulk, Lycos, Alta Vista, Ask Jeeves, Hotbot, Follow on, and any one of about 5 smaller engines make up the rest.

What you WILL get from those 1000+ submissions is spam …. And lots of it.

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You’ll notice a funky new button on the right hand side of this page, below the blurb about 299 Steps to Website Heaven - that’s a Digg button and we’d love it if you could add us to your Digg account.

Haven’t got a Digg account? Why on earth not? That was one of the 299 Steps to Website Heaven!

Thanks to all of you lovely readers who decide to Digg us, in addition to those of you that have Stumble-d Us, Delicious-ed us and Facebooked us!

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White text on a white background, black text on a black background - just don’t do it!

Website owners do this to stuff the page with keywords, but because they’re the same colour as the background, casual visitors can’t see them, only search engine spiders.

Google doesn’t like it; it’s classed as spamming, and will get you into trouble

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It’s tempting to used automated submission tools that promise they ‘know the secrets that will get you to the top’ - trust me, they don’t!

However much time you think you will save generating pages with these tools and then submitting to thousands of search engines and directories, believe me, you won’t.

All you’ll get is spam and a possible ban from the important search engines.

Submit to Google et al by hand, not through software; it’s really not worth the risk. (Even better, get a decent link on a decent site and you won’t need to submit at all)

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