I stumbled across another website design company today and did a little snooping around. Sure enough, three pages deep in their list of services they listed “Search Engine Submission”. Excellent.

Truth is, there is no need to ever pay someone to submit your website to any search engine. Think about it - search engines make money by discovering websites and indexing them. Their main function is to find websites and rank them according to which they think is the best for what you are looking for. So it is in their best interest to find websites and add them to their index. You don’t have to pay someone to tell them what they already know.

Now, it doesn’t hurt to expedite the process by joining something like Webmaster Tools and verifying your website, which takes you less then a few minutes from start to finish. Letting Google know that there’s a real human behind a website goes a far way towards your site getting indexed.

Another way to get indexed is simply to get a link from another page to your website. Ask your web designer to link to you in his/her portfolio. Get a link from your Chamber of Commerce. Submit your website to DMOZ (although that one may take a while to reveal itself). Add a signature link to your website on your favorite forum. Reply to a few blogs using your link.

The search engines will find you. I promise.

I’ve noticed a new trend this year now that school is in full swing. I’ve got a whole houseful of kids, and all of them generate a nice stack of paper each friday in their “Friday folder”. And I’ve noticed a common theme: teacher websites.

Teachers are starting to pull away from the generic .edu website (or k12.state.us) and create their own class websites thanks to some third party websites like TeacherWeb and ClassJump - and they’re getting some pretty crappy URLs as a result.  For example, here’s my son’s teacher’s page.  (Check out that URL - which shows up on every newsletter she sends home.)  In total, there are about 8 teachers at the boys’ school that have their “own websites”.  There are around 45 teachers total in the school.

While the concept of websites for your kid is great in elementary, once they start going to middle school and have upwards of 8-9 teachers, then what?

Several years back, I wrote a totally custom CMS for a local parent’s club.  They could admin it from the back end, they could add events, change colors, all that jazz.  I then decided it was nice enough to package and sell to other parent’s clubs, and I did so successfully.  I bundled the CMS with a hosting plan to make more money.  But I ran out of excitement for the project and it’s lapsed.  Looks like I was a few years ahead of the curve.  Now they’re all doing it.  Maybe I should gear that baby back up.

This trend is going to continue.  Next year I’ll bet half of the teachers in our local elementary school will have sites.

Are you cashing in on this trend?

I see a lot of things these two example sites could offer to increase their visibility and usage. Why doesn’t TeacherWeb offer a ‘free’ domain when a teacher signs up?  They could park the domain on this URL and then link back to themselves, thus increasing their backlinks.  If they don’t want to do that, why not a shorter URL for teachers via Mod Rewrite?  Don’t they realize how silly these links look when printed on paper?

Another idea - why not offer RSS?  Or an email list that teachers could blast when something special is coming up?

There are a lot of areas for someone with a really good plan to swoop in and kick butt in this area.

Hey St Louis - Anyone interested in starting a Meetup group in Saint Louis for SEO gurus?  Currently there isn’t one.

My buddy just called and said that GoDaddy had 99c domains.  I went and checked it out.  Looks like you can only register one domain at this price, but what the heck.  I reg’d one and then tried a second time, but it wouldn’t work at the 99c price.

Nonetheless cruise over there and getchaself a domain name.  .com too!

Use the code ‘test99′ at checkout.  Now, where is that dang affiliate link?

Excellently done commercial.  But what is it about? Who is it for?

I have a voicemail account at the place where I worn on web design for the Army. I never check it. I’ve forgotten my passcode.

Today an exec passed me in the hall and said “Hey I left you a VM, stop by my office when you have a minute.”

Shit. Now I’ve gotta check it.

So I had my passcode reset and finally got in.

First message dated October 11, 2007.

Whoops.

I’ve had a lot going on this week, and have been trying my best to keep my wits about me in relation to this site.  I’ll be posting several things today, hopefully.  Playing a little catch-up!

This post is for those really small businesses (that are usually based in someone’s home).

I’d define a really small business (RSB) as one that operates out of someone’s home or other residential location.  The RSB does not have a ‘main office’ or even a place for customers to drop off checks or view products.  A majority of these businesses have a website, and rely on it for most, if not all, of its revenue generation.  Most of these businesses have one to five employees.

Since these RSBs rely on their website, and thus their marketing/ranking of their website for a majority of their income, it would make sense that they need to rank well for local terms.  It would also make sense that they would prefer not to use their local address (ie home) on places such as Google maps, Yahoo local, etc. - yet they really need to be listed on these sites.  Plus, these websites won’t accept PO Boxes for addresses.  They want a real physical location.

Well, these businesses can have a ‘real’ address, not a PO box, and can use that street address to add their business to these sites.

Everyone knows that the UPS store will ship things, but you may not know that they also provide post office-type services as well.  They have PO boxes, but with a twist.  Instead of your address being PO Box 123, you can use their street address and then use a Suite # or Room # to distinguish your business.  This gives you a real street address for your business.

For example, my hosting business is run from my house.  But I don’t want people showing up at my house, and I don’t want to list my house address for my business on Google maps.  So I went up to the UPS store and bought a box, at a whopping $8/month, and now I have a real address which I can list on all the various websites.

Lighthouse Technologies Web Hosting
1243 Water Tower Place
Suite 180
Arnold, MO 63010

I could also say

1243 Water Tower Place #180

or even

1243 Water Tower Place
Room 180

The goal here is to get a physical street address, which this accomplishes.

I should also mention that there are other companies that do this as well.  MailBoxes Etc is a good example, and there are other local ones that may work for you.  The trick here (pay attention) is not to get the cheapest one, but to get the service that is physically located the closest to the center of your town, or the town you are targeting.

Why? Because when someone searches Google maps (for instance), they may type in something like ‘widgets in Utopia KS’.  If your fake PO Box address is located closest to the center of Utopia, KS, chances are you’ll be the first listing for widgets in the area.  This, of course, means you’ll have to optimize your business listing to have the word ‘widgets’ on it, which isn’t a hard task.

So how do you find the ‘center’ of town? Easy. Simply type in the name of the town into Google maps.  This will give you what Google maps considers to be the starting point of reference for anything related to that town.  In most cases, it will actually give you a street address.

Now you can go do a search for local mail box providers (make sure you weed out mailbox manufacturers and sellers, like hardware stores), then get a box there.

It should also be noted that it’s not necessary to get a box in your town.  If your ‘target town’ is one of more affluent people, then get a box in that town!  Wherever you think more people will search for your products or services, that’s where you need to list your address!

Lastly, there’s no rule that says you can’t have more than one address, neither.  If you can afford it, get a box in several target towns!

Advance warning - this post has absolutely nothing to do with search.

My wife is a gambling nut. She just loves to go play the slots, and lately she’s getting in to video poker.  She does well most times, and it makes her smile, so I don’t mind going to a casino now and then.

The new Lumiere Place casino in downtown Saint Louis is our latest hangout.  We are probably there 2-3 times a month, sometimes more.

Well we’ve been saving up for vacation so we’ve kinda laid off going, but last night I took her down there for a while.  I don’t mind going, particularly if there’s a Cardinals baseball game on.  I’ll sit in one of the bars, drink beer and watch the Cards.  I usually sit in a bar that’s right in the middle of the casino because it’s actually fairly quiet in there, surprisingly.  But last night I ventured over to another bar, dubbed the “Burger Bar” (how original!).  It’s a nice little place, and best of all its non smoking.

The wife wanted to play video poker, so I met her over at the Burger Bar and she went to it.  She has some crazy strategy which usually works to her advantage.  I just sit and stare at the TVs.  But last night I was starving, so I asked for a menu.  I ended up ordering the turkey burger with blue cheese and skinny fries.  Man oh man was it good!!

I was a little cautious about ordering turkey, but it was worth it.  I’d order that baby again today if I were there.  It had the normal tomato, lettuce and onion. I got a wheat bun and put some mustard on that bad boy.  Good stuff.

Oh - and the wife did well.  She hit four of a kind on about three or four different machines there, totaling about $300.  Not bad considering we walked in with about $140.

I have a friend who is a bona fide member of the YTB travel group.  She promotes her stuff, and claims to make a nice commission each month.  She is trying to get me to sign up, since she knows I’m already an Internet marketer and a good public speaker.

I first talked to her about YTB about a year ago, and today I stopped in and asked her how it was going.  She claimed that they (her and her husband do it together) were doing well and once again she urged me to check it out.

So I’ve done a little research online.  Some people call it a scam, others debunk the scam myth.

I’d like to hear from some people who have dealt with YTB before, both those who are currently working the system, and those who signed up and then quit.

For those currently promoting travel via YTB:
How are you doing?  Are you averaging, say, $300/month in commissions?  $500? $1000? More? Or are you finding out that bothering your friends and family to sign up through your website is a pain?

For those who were members and quit:
Why did you quit?  Big promise but no real money? You don’t know how to promote it beyond just friends and family? They screwed you?

Leave your comments and thoughts below.  I’d love to hear them.