totally new to crawlers and spiders and they're creepy to me

[candle]

Have been building my website www.realitytour.org via a webmaster for 12 months in preparation for launch of non-profit agency. The launch is going very well, we were even featured on Pgh, PA PBS-TV. Now I want my website to do more. I have developed my key words and looked at the optimizer packages on statcounter. I know as soon as I choose a 1 yr contract, I'll find it wasn't the right one.

In my category - drug abuse prevention programs - there's not a lot of competition and our program is the only one of its kind 'reality based drug prevention education'

Please excuse my lack of know-how. Any tips will have to be fairly elementary.

Any one have the time for this?

Thanks!
Candle

[motorwatchercounter]

Save your money with optimisers. There is plenty you can do for free. Keywords, description and title should have common words. The site should be key rich www.webmaster-toolkit.com and use the SEO tools. Try and pick words that are searched more so drugs may have more searches than narcotics www.webit21.com/keyword-checker-tool.htm will help.

I hope this is OK for a start.

[candle]

using a free optimizer doesn't 'mark' me as spam ?

How quickly can I anticipate results?

Thanks !

[motorwatchercounter]

In my opinion no. I think that you need to tie all your words in and make the key words in the message you are going to get accross the most used. This should/can also include links. You can also sign up to google and MSN url submissions which are free.

How long. No one really knows I'm afraid.

[Proteus]

Excuse my poor brain but I didn't get what the question exactly is?...

[robinev]

It is a minefield, largely because there are too many sleazy operators out there who charge high prices to 'optimize' web pages for search engines.

If you don't have the time to learn a few simple guidelines, it might be worthwhile to hire someone else to do that kind of thing for you. But beware of outfits that spam-mail or cold-call you offering their pricey services.

If you still prefer to contract the work out, ask the folks who designed your site for recommendations. Ask local businesses that have good web sites for recommendations. Look on web forums like WebProWorld (http://www.webproworld.com/forum.php) for warnings. Do the same kind of work that you'd do if you were hiring a contractor to remodel your kitchen.

Don't expect magic. If an SEO contractor guarantees top-10 placement, you should probably be wary. If they won't tell you what they're going to do and won't give you a clear, precise explanation of how they'd change your site, then you should be wary of them.

Getting your site added to relevant directories is one of the more important (and time-consuming) things you can do to improve its positioning in many search reports. If the directory allows you to specify a link-text phrase, then be sure to use whatever you consider to be your most important keyword phrase. Most don't allow that, but do allow you to write a short description of the site. You should be careful to use your search phrases in that description.

Find relevant directories by submitting a search similar to the following in Google:
drug-abuse-prevention +" submit site"
Automated submission services may help a bit, but will often throw your url into directories and link farms that are unlikely to bring you many visitors, and probably won't help your positioning all that much and might even hurt it.