What exactly is search engine optimization?
Definition: Search engine optimization is the practice of guiding the development or redevelopment of a website so that it will naturally attract visitors by winning top ranking on the major search engines for selected search terms and phrases.

How long does it take to submit my site after I send payment?
We will review your site and then begin the submission process within 48 hours of receiving your payment.

How Long Does it Take to Get Listed after that?
Here's the length of time it currently takes to get listed at each of the major search engines once you have submitted your web page.

MSN                              Up to 4 months
Google                         Up to 8 weeks
AltaVista                     Up to 3 weeks
Fast                              Up to 5 weeks
Excite                           Up to 12 weeks
Northern Light           Up to 8 weeks
AOL                               Up to 4 months
HotBot                         Up to 4 months
iWon                             Up to 4 months

What exactly IS a spider, anyways?
A spider is a piece of software that follows links throughout the Internet, grabbing content from sites and adding it to search engine databases.

Spiders follow links from one page to another and from one site to another. That is the primary reason why links to your site are so critical. Getting links to your website from other websites will give the search engine spiders more opportunities to find and re-index your site. The more times they find links to your site, the more times they will stop by and visit. This has been true since spiders began. Recently there has been an incredible amount of attention paid to links. That's because Google came clean and said in public that the number and quality of links to your site will directly impact its rankings in the search results.

AltaVista, AllTheWeb, Teoma, and Google all factor in the number and quality of links to your site when giving your site its ranking.

Spiders find Web pages by following links from other sWeb pages, but you can also submit your Web pages directly to a search engine and request a visit by their spider. In essence, that is search engine submission. Because so many millions of web masters have submitted their sites over and over, the search engines have responded by putting more emphasis on sites that their spiders find naturally and less and less emphasis on sites submitted directly. So, being found is better than submitting directly for some search engines, yet for others, it simply increases your ranking.

Some SEOs offer the ability to come up when customers type keywords directly into their browser address bar. Can your company do that for me as part of a package?
We do not offer that type of service. Most such proposals require users to install extra software, and very few users do so. Evaluate such proposals with extreme care and be skeptical about the self-reported number of users who have downloaded the required applications.

Can't I just buy better rank in the search engines?
While Google never sells better ranking in their search results, several other search engines combine pay-per-click or pay-for-inclusion results with their regular web search results. Some SEOs will promise to rank you highly in search engines, but place you in the advertising section rather than in the search results. A few SEOs will even change their bid prices in real time to create the illusion that they "control" other search engines and can place themselves in the slot of their choice. This scam doesn't work with Google because their advertising is clearly labeled and separated from our search results, but be sure to ask any SEO you're considering which fees go toward permanent inclusion and which apply toward temporary advertising.  Submit URL Pro may pay for an express listing, to get the website included faster, but we do not use search engine advertising to temporarily boost your ranking.  What we will do, is purchase quality banner advertisements on related websites, in addition to a variety of other services, designed to bring you targeted traffic.  This is just one of the many things we do for you with our Yahoo SEO Gold and Yahoo SEO Gold packages.