Hello, Is there a way to find where my site is listed on yahoo and google search results? I'm trying to find whether I'm #50 or #500 in their listings. Thanks, chuck

check your sources, Google has denounced webpostion and similar as violating bots.

Who are you addressing? The link in my post is just to a site that runs a check on your site's position by engine and gives you a report. No other suggestion about them or their services intended.

How do you go about advancing your website without paying for hits?

It takes a little time however it works. I put up my site around November of last year and now if I use the search key words for Chester, VA Real Estate It hits in the Top 10 in Yahoo. It's what you name the web page, not the URL. Search for what you think normal people in your area will be searching for. Right Click on the pages that come up. Left click on View Source. When you see the Hyper text look for the "Page Name" Now you can figure out what to name your page.

I got curious and went and looked at your site. The title of the page is what I ment to say earlier. Unless they are searching for you by name your site is going to have a hard time moving up. Some of the search engines use META tags. Be creative. Mine might not be the prettiest however just starting out and finding everyones had out for the money I haven't made I decided to do all my own web work with Front Page, power Point, and yahoo Small Business.

Title is one important factor but there are MANY more considerations and there are no simple answers. Before you start building anything whatsoever. Forget about what terms you "think" people will use. Find out exactly what they are using,(wordtracker). Once you have all your keyword research done it's time to check the first 20 or so results in all the major serps. Comprehensive analysis , once complete, will give you some basic guidelines in terms of many other factors ie. keyword density, placement, frequency and many others... then it's time to map out a basic nav structure... then it's time to begin a design.... then it's time to begin to build your pages and write your copy specifically constructed for 1 or 2 key phrases per page depending on several factors... throughout the process you will be rechecking and refering to the sites placing for the terms for each page.... adjusting and tweaking as you go... once the site goes live...the process of identifying QUALITY, SITES, to begin building links to each page the right way... This explanation is a VERY oversimplified example of what it takes tosatart a site and compete for organic results.... Copying others tags or trying to cut corners or doing most anything else will likely result in little more than frustration and wasted time.. irt's not rocket science but there's whole lot thst goes into it and realistic expectations are paramount. There are plenty of folks here to help so continue to ask questions and formulate your own opinions. Other options are going the all ppc route or getting help.

As I said mine hit #4 and 5, on yahoo, after only a couple of months and cost me $3.50 a month at GoDaddy.com. How much would yours cost me to get that high?

Getting your site to the top of the engines involves a huge amount of planning and work. There are literally dozens of techniques you need to apply. A few hints... don't buy and programs that promise to submit your site to thousands of engines and get top results for $19.99. That is far more likely to get you banned than get you results. Second, when you are thinking of keywords and trying to optimize for keywords, specific keywords may be easier than generic since there is less competition. For example, my site does very well for Edmonton Real Estate source, Edmonton real estate company, Edmonton real estate agent, but we're on page 5 or so for Edmonton real estate. Last tip, blog. Our blog is generating a ton of traffic to our site. The search engines love blogs because they always have new, relevant content. Create a blog, keep it up to date, and drive people from your blog to your website.

I use www.rumbletool.com so I can see myself in comparison to my local competitors. It has a cool head to head comparison tool. It just makes you confirm your email the first time you use it and then you can do as many checks as you want.

It depends on keywords that you want your site to be founded. So what for what keywords?
It's very simple to do.
1. go to google.com and set google to show per 100 results for a page
2. type your keywords
3. find "yoursitename"
Good luck

Google API is a system run by Google that tracks what position your URL is for what keywords. For example, it may list "Fort Worth Real Estate" at a 4 for your URL. That means when someone types in "Fort Worth Real Estate" into Google, your URL shows up 4th in the search results. It may also list "Fort Worth New Homes" as a 10, which means your URL is 10th for that keyword phrase.

You do have to register and pay to use this system though. However, it is VERY helpful.

Google API is a system for tracking your web rankings...huh Not exactly

Careful people... the info is flying fast and loose in this whole thread

Wow... I've never seen a thread with so much bad advice/information and half-truths. My best advice to everyone is to completely ignore all info in this thread.