Search Engine Registration & Company Profile Pages?

Question

Hello Biggerpockets Community,Once again I am coming to you wise folk for some advice… I am trying to get my website’s presence known and registered with as many search engines & online sites as possible to increase the ease and ability for people to find & interact with my company among the masses online. I am learning fast but up until a few months ago I would have referred to myself as technologically challenged or at the very least out of touch with it. My goal is to be registered with every search engine of importance as well as have established company profile pages on every site that would benefit my company’s web presence, accessibility/functionality, and overall image.I was contacted by a company called Yext yesterday. This company supposedly offers a site registration service with various levels/programs with various supposed benefits/features for various real costs/fees.The bottom line top dog sales pitch for the whole shebang supposedly registering everywhere you was a wopping $449.00.Up until I received this call (although once I heard its name it sounded vaguely familiar) I knew nothing about this company or whether or not this service is worth it, or appropriately priced.My questions are as follows:Is site submission something I should handle on my own or through 3rd party companies?Is the whole shebang from this company a worthwhile cost effective proposition for someone with a limited marketing budget looking to get the most out of their advertising dollar?Can anyone recommend the best, most inexpensive, least time consuming means of accomplishing the goals that I have set forth my company’s web presence etc.?In closing I thank anyone who replies to this post with some much needed information or advice on these matters.

Jeff B. · Answer

@Major Robertson AMEN, second that motion. 'What was known as SEO' is DOA today (dead on arrival). The search engines no longer trust meta Keywords content=' x y z' but chose indexing based upon Title, Url, H1 and paragraph content.Moral: save your money and certainly $499 is outrageous.

Major Robertson · Answer

I know this post is a little old but what I'm about to say is VERY important. Submitting your website to search engines like Google and Yahoo DOES NOT WORK any more to increase SEO or even speed it up. Their crawlers are to the point where they can find any website. I'd be very hesitant to use any compnay that includes search engine submission as a service let alone Thier entire buisness model.The best way to have your website "registered" is by creating quality content.

Jim Pellerin · Answer

@Dan DwyerThe first thing you need to do is to start thinking in terms of your customer, not in terms of your company web site. Depending on which strategy you have will depend on what customers you are trying to attract and what keywords you will need to focus on.For example, are you looking for buyers, sellers, renters, investors or tenant buyers? I personally have 1 web site for each customer (sellers, tenant buyers and investors), each with a different brand or sub-brand. Each web site focuses on different keywords specific to that customer. Then you can go about building an online presence for each. And how you do that will vary considerably depending on the type of customer. For example, you probably aren't going to have tenant buyers follow you for very long. They may be interested in credit repair and mortgage type content. But I don't spend a lot of time on content for that customer. For them I just use pay per click advertising and have a good site that converts them. Get's me more leads than I can handle. For investors, I have a bigger following and provide good content on a regular basis. I write regular articles and make sure those articles are going towards building my online presence for that site.I cover a lot more information about SEO in this posthttps://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/87/topics/240...

Sean Dolan · Answer

Yext does not offer search engine submissions, they offer local business directory listing profiles filled out on your behalf. Let's not get emotional about it, just do the math. If they are offering 100 listings for $499, that's $5/submission. See how fast you can complete a few buisiness listings, and figure out if you'd rather do it yourself, or pay someone else to do it.Moz Local is another local business submission service. Our employees are too expensive for us to have them fill out business listings on new ventures, so we use Moz Local.Yext sponsors many of the conferences I speak at, and I've heard nothing but good things about them. They recently partnered with Yahoo.