You may have recently finished your first Las Vegas website. You may have spent a lot of time designing the layout, writing code, or creating other kinds of content for your site. However, without web traffic for your Las Vegas web site, your efforts may have been wasted.

What you should know is that the reason most websites get any traffic at all is because they are “crawled” by search engines. Being “crawled” refers to a search engine “spider” recognizing your web page. These spiders are computer programs that visit websites for the purpose of later indexing them so they can be added to particular search engines.

To be crawled by a search engine, you typically need to submit your website to that search engine. There are of course many different search engines out there. Ones you may have heard of are AltaVista, Ask.com, Dogpile, Excite, Go.com, HotBot, Info.com, Lycos, and WebCrawler.

With so many apparent choices, you may be wondering which search engines you should submit your website to. Don’t worry. It will not be necessary to submit your website to a hundred different search engines. This is because many search engines, such as Dogpile and WebCrawler, are actually “meta search engines.”

Meta search engines are search engines that are actually powered by results from multiple different search engines. WebCrawler for example draws its search results from Bing, Google, and Yahoo. Other search engines only draw from one source, but again may use a different search engine to power its search results.

Some years ago, there were still many search engines that used their own databases to draw search results from. However, a lot of once profitable online businesses, including search engines, have experienced economic hardships. The result of this has been that many search engine companies have been consolidated, and many previously independent search engines now simply act as facades that produce the same search results as the big three search engines.

The big three search engines today are Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Bing is what Microsoft calls its search engine today. Past incarnations of Bing have included MSN Search, Live Search, and Windows Live Search. Since pretty much all of the supposed competition to these big three draw search engine results from their databases, these are the only three you really need to submit your website to.

Submitting your website to these three sites is very simple and completely free. All you really need to do is enter your website and a short description. Once submitted, it may take a while for your website to climb to a high search engine ranking for certain keywords. However, you will be well on your way to finally directing traffic to your website. Below are links to the website submission pages for Google, Yahoo, and Bing in that order.

http://www.google.com/addurl/

http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html

http://www.bing.com/webmaster/SubmitSitePage.aspx

Website marketing in Las Vegas has become a fierce competion with the proliferation of new Las Vegas websites, search engines and affiliate marketers. Following a multi-strategy marketing approach can help a web site avoid disappearing into the abyss of cyberspace.

Most website marketers agree that the most important key to getting a site known is to follow Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, guidelines. Internet surfers readily use search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN Search and Bing to find their desired information. SEO techniques focus on ensuring that the content of the website’s pages include key words that will maximize the site’s page rank for search results. Savvy marketers always aim to be on the first page of a search.

Search Engine Marketing, or SEM, is a broader and typically more expensive approach to promoting a web site. It involves paying a search engine company to include the site’s link in its directory. The link appears in advertising top bars or side bars when a person searches for specific keywords related to the website. Paid advertising on Search Engine Result Pages, or SERPs, has become a competitive business.

Another option for marketing a website is to place Pay-Per-Click (or PPC) ads on related websites. Each time someone clicks on the ad, which can be either a text only link or a small graphic button, he will be channeled to the advertising site. The advertiser determines the monthly budget limit which caps the amount to be paid for clicks.

Affiliate marketing has also become a huge force among webmasters. Websites may choose to do a joint marketing campaign in which they cross-promote each other’s site. This strategy can be effective when the sites are related in theme or product. This approach can be set up as a free or PPC agreement.

Email blitzes can also get the word out in a consistent fashion. Weekly emails promoting sale specials or informative newsletters can increase awareness of a site. Purchasing a list of email addresses is one way to build a quick audience; a less expensive and possibly more effective approach is to build one’s own email list. An attractive benefit of using emails is that people who enjoy reading its content are likely to forward the email to their circle of influence.

Promoting a website does not mean using online methods only. Offline promotions may include including the website’s URL in magazine or newspaper print ads. Some advertisers promote their website’s address on bumper stickers, billboards, flyers and business cards. Other media such as short television and radio spots are alternative avenues to market your web site.

The most compelling way to market and promote a website is to use a combination of approaches for maximum exposure.

Found a few links to valuable free SEO tools so that you can judge and measure your search engine optimization efforts for your Las Vegas website.

http://tools.seobook.com/

http://www.seomoz.org/tools

http://www.seotoolset.com/tools/free_tools.html

http://www.seocompany.ca/tool/seo-tools.html

http://www.socialseo.com/the-top-15-free-seo-tools.html

http://www.webuildpages.com/tools/

http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/tools/

http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/

The Best Online Directories for You Las Vegas Website

It is a well known fact in the internet world that the DMOZ directory is the best online directory to submit your Las Vegas website to. DMOZ, The Open Directory Project (ODP), is a huge categorized directory of web sites and pages which is staffed by volunteer editors. Each and every website page added to the DMOZ directory is manually reviewed before it is added to their directory and it can sometimes be a challenge to get added as DMOZ editors are backed up with inquiries for additions… it can take month or years to be added. Being listed in their directory is free.

Alternatives and Supplements to Submitting to DMOZ

In addition to submitting your website to DMOZ, you can also submit it to hundreds of free online directories . Submitting site to online free web directories can quickly increase your google page rank and rankings on the google search engine. PageRank is an major part of google’s website ranking algorithm, and the higher the PageRank of your website, the higher your organic listing can appear on a google search. The PageRank within your Las Vegas website is increased by pages from other websites linking to it, and the higher the PageRank of the websites that link to it, the better it is for the your web site. 

When submitting your website to free online web directories, be sure to take time to find just the right category for add it to Don’t be tempted to submit your website to a category that is higher up the tree structure than it should be, because it probably won’t be accepted and will increase the chance of delays in getting your website added.

For a list of major search engines and directories visit searchenginewatch.com.

It seems everyone has joined the blogosphere lately, especially in Las Vegas, well, at least anyone with a computer and the ability to string a few sentences together coherently.

Blogging has quickly become an enjoyable pastime for many and a profitable adventure for a select few. Famous celebrities, movie stars, sports icons, and even our Commander-In-Chief have taken to blogging. For the most part, bloggers began writing to share some part of their life with their readers, with as wide a range of topics as there are bloggers.

Blogging is obviously an exclusively internet endeavor, and as such it is important that blog writers keep this in mind when composing their blogs. Internet readers typically have a shorter attention span, and with such a vast store of reading material at their fingertips, one can hardly blame them. The average time a reader spends on a blog is 96 seconds, so retaining readers can be a challenge. Most blog experts recommend a minimum blog length of 250 words with a top word count at around 1000. If the article is too short, the subject being written about isn’t able to be comprehensively discussed, but if the article is overly wordy, readers are going to be tempted to click onward to a more compact article.

There are also other ways to keep the reader interested. Many bloggers have found that using subject-appropriate links in an article can enhance the reader’s experience, and if these links are to the author’s own writings, then they have another chance to cement the relationship between the reader and writer. Using keywords in your title is another excellent way to pick up new readership from those using search engines to find articles on the topic about which you are writing, and repeating these keywords in the text will add to your article’s ability to be picked up in a keyword search.

Another easy but useful method to gain the attention of a reader is by tagging the article with appropriate tags. Most articles can be tagged from a number of different angles. For example, this article could be tagged as “blogging”, “writing”, or “blog topics”. Tagging gives the reader a quick glance at the article to see if it’s something they’re interested in reading.

Success in the blogging world can be more readily attained by following these reader-friendly suggestions. Happy blogging!

Search engine marketing (SEM), is going to make or break your business in Las Vegas. Relax, maybe you know a couple million people and can do the word of mouth thing. For those of us who would rather keep our voice, there is search engine marketing.

This method of marketing is designed to increase your websites chances of being found by consumers on internet search engines. This is done by using key words and key phrases that best describe your site. The design of your site also plays an important role in search engine marketing. The design of your site is important because it will help your sites ranking in the search engines. This can be done through using key words within your site. This includes META tags, titles, and even images. Keywords will prove to be your best friend with SEM. These key words and key phrases can appear when visitors to google perform a search and your Las Vegas website could appear.

I use search engines as if they are going out of business. The statistics prove that most internet users are under this impression as well. Most people who utilize the web will use a search engine to find what they are looking for. This involves using key words to find the best that the web has to offer. If your site is within the top 30 ranked for your particular niche, you are one of the best. If you are not, I might still click in to see why you are ranked so high. You might even get me to do some impulse buying. That is the point of search engine marketing. You need key words that will attract people to your site.

If you sell collectable cars, the word car is obviously a keyword. I have to warn you however, you will bid higher on such a popular word. Yes, you have to bid on key words. That is a part of advertising and business, we all know that. The more you spend, the more face time you get. A part of search engine marketing is also finding the best deals.

The best deals will of course be words that no one else might think of. As slim as that possibility might sound, with a little creativity you can think of phrases such as “loud cars” or “pretty cars”. I am sure you can be more creative than I am, but you get the drift. You will pay less, and will of course attract more traffic to your website.