At Blast Engine we take pride in providing the highest level of customer service in the industry. The links below provide answers to the most commonly asked questions about The Blast Engine Service.In an effort to answer your questions as quickly as possible, we have included below a list of the most commonly asked questions about Blast Engine.

What is Blast Engine?

Blast Engine is the industry leader in website submission services that allows you to submit your website to over 1,000,000 search directories with one easy form.

Does Blast Engine submit to Google and the rest of the top search engines?

Blast Engine submits to all of the top search engines including: Google, Yahoo, AOL, Excite, MSN, Alta Vista, LYCOS, Looksmart, DMOZ, Netscape, HOTBOT, IWon, AlltheWeb, TEOMA, Ask Jeeves, Dogpile, GO.com and many more.

Why do I need to submit my site to all of these search directories?

Search engines and directories are the main source of traffic to every website. Using Blast Engine will get your site listed and boost your linking popularity. This is critical in getting your website's ranking on search engines. The more links you have to your site, the higher natural listing you will get.

What is Natural Listing?

A natural listing is an un-paid for search engine listing position.

How do I login to the control panel for the first time

To login to your customer control panel for the first time, please use your e-mail address that you used to sign up and use your order number as your password. You will be prompted to create a new password once logged in.

How do I edit my submission information?

login to your control panel and click on the submissions tab. Then click the edit information button under website information.

How do I change my credit card on file?

login to your control panel and click on the account preferences tab. Then click the edit information button under billing information.

Where can I see my submission reports?

login to your control panel and click on the submissions tab. There you can view your last 10 months of submission data.

What do I have to do to submit my website?

Blast Engine is the most common website submission service and is the easiest to use anywhere. All you have to do is complete one simple form that describes your website and your web address and hit submit, that's it.

How much does it cost?

Blast Engine is $29.95 for the first month of service. After that we charge $9.95 per month to submit to all of the search engines and directories which also includes our website monitoring service.

Blast Engine is so cheap compared to others, why?

The Blast Engine team has invested countless hours to develop our own patent pending proprietary software that does all the work. Blast Engine is totally automated and is able to submit your website quickly and passes this savings onto you.

How long does the Blast Engine process take?

Blast Engine starts submitting your website as soon as you complete your order. Some of the smaller search engines will have your site listed within 48 hours, some larger engines may take up to 90 days to list new sites.

Do I get confirmation of my order?

Yes, we will email you a receipt as soon as you complete your submission form. The receipt will have a order # for your records. Use this order # when contacting us about your account.

Why is there a pre-authorization for $9.95 on my credit card?

To ensure your website receives top placement, Blast Engine submits it monthly to all of the search engines. This service is $9.95 monthly and is pre-authorized one month in advance to prevent a lapse in service. To cancel monthly submissions, please click here

How much does Website Surveillance cost?

Website Surveillance TM is available free to Blast Engine customers with Monthly Blast!

Why do I need to monitor my website?

Website downtime is responsible for more than $2 billion in lost online sales on an annual basis. The Average website experiences service interruption 14 times per month. That is lost opportunities for your business. Website Surveillance is the best real-time solution to keep you informed if your site goes down.

How often does the Website Surveillance software check my website?

Website Surveillance technology surveys your site every 5 minutes. If there is no response, we conveniently alert you that your website is down by text message on your cell phone or pager.

Will the Website Surveillance software use bandwidth on my server?

No. Our software verifies that your server is up and loads your home page but never downloads any images from your site; therefor it does not use up your valuable bandwidth!

Will the Website Surveillance software affect my websites hit counter?

No. Website Surveillance uses proprietary technology that has been proven to verify your site is up without causing additional "ping" or "hits" to your site.

How will the Website Surveillance software notify me when my site goes down?

If your website goes down, Website Surveillance sends you an SMS (text message) to your cell phone or pager. Blast Engine will also send a detailed email report at the end of each day that your website is down.

My website has never gone down before, why does it go down now?

The average website goes down 14 times per month. It is impossible for you, as an individual, to monitor your website 24/7/365 like the Website Surveillance system. Your website has probably been offline many times in the past and you were never notified. If a visitor experiences problems with your website, there is no way for them to contact you if they can't view any information on your company. The question is: how long was your website offline before it came back online? And, how many visitors tried to view your page and received and error message? Now with Website Surveillance, you will know instantly and you can get your website back online ASAP.

How do I cancel my Blast Engine subscription?

To cancel your Blast Engine subscription, please login to your control panel and click on edit billing information. From there you will see an option to cancel your account. You may also click here

What is a SEO or Search Engine Optimization?

SEOs specialize in techniques that optimize your website in higher placing on the search engines and to make sure your website is search engine friendly.

What is a "search engine friendly" site?

The term describes a website that uses highly targeted keywords, the correct usage of meta tags and that does not contain broken links. There are many more variables that contribute to a search engine friendly website.

What is PageRank™?

PageRank is a system designed by Google, it measures a web page's importance by calculating the link and links related factors. The PageRank scale is from 0-10. A higher PageRank is obtained by having links from sites that have a higher PageRank.

Why is my site not in the search engines?

The website might not be "search engine friendly." The site may be missing information crucial to indexing your webpage. The site can contain scripts that prevent spiders or bots from crawling through your website.

What is a Search engine spider or Googlebot?

A spider is used by search engines to visit pages and then process them to be indexed later. The spiders can also be used to check for broken links and validating HTML. Googlebot is Google's version of the spider.

How can I attract spiders to my site?

Spiders must find your page through links from other pages that are already indexed by the search engines. Spiders will re-visit your site more often to look for updated content.

Why are keywords important?

Keywords are what lead search engine users to your site. Keywords should be specific to your site. Choosing appropriate keywords is crucial to your site achieving higher ranking.

What is a Landing Page?

Landing pages are pages that serve as an entry point for search engine users. These pages when properly optimized provide additional detail relevant to the content in the search listings.

Will I need to re-design my website in order to be "search engine friendly"?

You will not have to re-design your website. You can adjust content and codes to focus on your keywords. Sites with high flash or image content and sites that are dynamically generated may need to be re-designed.

When should I start seeing results?

It takes search engines about 2 weeks to 4 months to index your site. It may take longer for the search engine spiders to update the ranking of your site. The search engines usually update quarterly.

How do search engines work?

The search engines rely on three factors:

• Crawling - search engines use automated systems called spiders or crawlers. The spiders index content, images text, links and meta data.
• Index - information obtained by the spiders that are organized describing what information was taken from the pages visited.
• Algorithm - a complex formula used by the search engines to determine the importance of each page.

What is your site W3C compliance and is it Section 508 compliance?

W3C compliance entails clean code without errors.
(Abstract from the University of Bath Web Publishing Guide) http://internal.bath.ac.uk/web/standards/about.html
Web standards is the term web developers use to refer to the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) specifications and guidelines for markup languages (such as HTML, XHTML, XML and, for document layout, CSS, XSL). The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) develops open specifications (de facto standards) to enhance the interoperability of web-related products. Writing web pages in accordance with these standards significantly reduces the cost of web site production and maintenance and ensures that we develop sites that will work across current and future browsers and other devices, including assistive technology.
Section 508 compliance involves enabling your site to be readable and usable by users with various disabilities

What are keyword meta tags?

Meta Tags are lines of HTML code embedded into webpages that are used by search engines to store information about your site. These "tags" contain keywords, descriptions, copyright information, site titles and more. They are among the numerous things that the search engines look for, when trying to evaluate a web site.

How can a Header tags help my site?

Use them to define your page's organizational structure and simplify page navigation. Well-written header text informs visitors and helps them navigate through your page - maybe keeping them at your site longer. Effective header tags will even increase your site ranking on some search engines.

What are Reciprocal Links?

Reciprocal links are arranged when two web sites agree to link to each other. Reciprocal links are also known as "link swaps", "link exchanges" and "link partners".

What is internal link?

An internal link allows you to link to another section on the same web page, so it basically scrolls the page up or down to the desired location. This is helpful to the user to quickly jump to the information they are looking for.

What is an HTML Title and why should I use it?

An HTML Title describes the contents of your web page in one sentence. It's likely to appear in search engines' results and in bookmarks. It's also the first thing a search engine's spider sees on your page. Since your title will be seen by both readers and search engines, it's particularly important.

Why use image tags?

If your webpages use images, image maps or photos, you should make use of the ALT image tag. ALT image tags are an extension to images which displays alternative text for users who cannot read images (such as Search Engines). This is most beneficial with search engines that index full text, because you are now providing search engines a textual representation of your graphics and the ability to index more content about your website. The more images, the more advantage you have in using the ALT image tag, giving you room for more descriptions to include in search engines. This technique has shown to be quite effective, especially for users who have graphics at the top of their pages and with users who use a large number of images. The syntax for the ALT image tag is included below including a sample usage.

What is a sitemap and what does it do?

Sitemaps are a great way for a search engine spider to crawl all the pages of your website, and there are two different types to use. Google allows webmasters to create a Google Sitemap XML file to tell the Googlebot all the pages that are in your site. The other kind of sitemap is on your website and lists the pages of your site with links. If your website is very large, break up the sitemap into multiple categorized pages.

What are External links?

External or "inbound" links are links that point to your site. Most search engine algorithms, Google and Yahoo specifically, look at the sites pointing toward yours to determine "popularity." The more high-quality links, the more popular your site and the higher your position in search engines. ("High-quality" is the operative word here. Links from link farms are not considered "high-quality" and may get your site penalized.)

What is an optimized page name?

Page name is a complete description of each indivual page on your website. In example if your webpage's title was about us your page name should be about_us.html or aboutus.html.

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