Here are some Miva tips on the Google search engine and building lists of Miva Merchant sites from recent posts to the Miva Merchant users group.
1. Getting Listed in Google: Manual Submission vs. Getting a Link at Dmoz.org or Other Google-Crawled Site
As discussed in a previous article on Miva and Google, you can get your site listed by manually submitting to Google or by having a link from another site that is crawled by Google like the Open Directory Project. In a recent discussion on the merchant users list, the point was made that you can indeed get indexed by Google by manually submitting alone but this is not the most effective method of getting indexed by Google. Many Miva Merchant users can attest to this fact because they have had problems getting indexed by Google by manual submission alone. A more effective method is to get your site listed on another site that Google already indexes like the Open Directory Project (DMOZ) because Google will follow that link to your site and start crawling it. This doesn't mean you can't get listed by manual submission alone or that you shouldn't manually submit. We normally manually submit clients first and then start to get their site listed on sites already indexed. You should too. This covers all the bases when getting your Miva Merchant store indexed by Google.
2. Miva Merchant Link Exchanges: To Join or Not to Join?
A recent group of Miva Merchant store owners started compiling and distributing a smorgasbord list of Miva Merchant sites for all to place on their sites as part of a mass link exchange. If this was solely intended to promote Miva Merchant stores on a few sites, there would probably not be as much controversy. However, this has been promoted as a way to improve all participants in the search engines. This is also known as reciprocal linking where someone links to your site if you link to theirs. There are Miva Merchant stores about bunny rabbits promoting soap, reptiles promoting weddings, jewelry promoting
Epicurean Foods, and many other strange bedfellows. Non-relevant links are not the only problem. Many of these sites call and link to these pages with the word "links". If you have a store about bunny rabbits, you would want pages about bunny rabbits with bunny rabbits in the title linking to you (Bunny Rabbit Resources rather than links). Well-meaning posters on the Miva Merchant users list inadvertently mislead people into believing that they should go out and get as many links as possible without regard to quality, relevancy, or authority. They see sites that rank well with hundreds of links that don't seem very relevant. The assumption is made that it is the links that have brought the high ranking. They don't realize that there are many other factors besides the amount of links that play into where sites are ranked. These particular sites are most likely ranked high in spite of the amount of non-relevant links. We would advise against participating in these lists. Look forward to a more detailed article on link building.
