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Search Engine Submission - An Introduction
Once you optimize your site for search engines, your next step is to submit it to major search engines. When you submit your site to a search engine, it reads your site, indexes it, and assigns a rank for it according to its algorithm. In short, "Search engine submission" or "Search engine registration" means getting your web site listed in search engines. Remember, submitting your Website to a search engine does not guarantee a high ranking for your site. It simply means that the search engine knows your pages exist.
Submitting to 1000 Search Engines - A Myth
Well why submit to only select search engines when there are websites that promise submission to hundreds of thousands of search engines for a fee? Simply because there don't exist hundreds of thousands of search engines and most of the smaller search engines get their results from one of the top 5. Also more than 90 percent of all the searches are done through just five search engines: Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, and Teoma. You can submit your Website yourself to these major search engines by following the tips listed here.
Search Engine Submission - General Tips
- Get links from quality Websites: Most of the search engines find new sites by crawling the existing sites and following the outbound links from those sites. Make sure you get links from sites that rank high in search engines. Never get links from sites that follow unethical practices to increase their ranking.
- Submit your site to directories: Search engines consider directories as "expert documents" and pick up URLs from directories. Getting listed in directories also increases your site's page rank. For details on Directory Submission, refer to Submitting to Directories.
If you follow these two tips, there is a fair chance that most of the search engines will pick your Website. Apart from these two general tips, you can use the following tips to submit your site to individual search engines.
Submitting to Google
- The simplest way is to submit your website in Google's Add URL page available at http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl. The instructions provided by Google are pretty straightforward: submit your top-level page and Google will spider the rest of the Website. However, submitting your Website this way does not guarantee that you'll be indexed.
- Usually, Google updates its index once a month. After submitting your Website, periodically check whether your site is showing up in Google. If you do not find your site even after a month of submitting it, consider increasing the inbound links from quality sites and submit your site to more directories.
- Don't over submit to Google. If you need to submit a second time let there be atleast 30-45 days gap between the first and second submission.
Submitting to Yahoo
Yahoo provides two options to get listed in their search engine : free listing and paid listing.
1.Free Listing: Submit your site at http://submit.search.yahoo.com/. After the submission it may take upto a month or two for your site to be listed in Yahoo, so be patient.
2. Paid Listing: If you want to submit your site quickly, go for the paid option. But remember you will be charged whenever someone clicks your listing.
Submitting to MSN
Submitting to AOL
Submitting to Teoma
- Teoma currently doesn't have a free submission.
- Teoma picks up new Websites through the inbound links to them. So, if you have links from existing websites pointing at yours, you may get included.
- If you choose to opt for the paid option, your site will be listed within seven days.
Conclusion
Together, the above-mentioned search engines cater to more than 90 percent of the search requests each day and they also supply search results to some smaller search engines. So, don't confuse yourself with submitting to 1000+ search engines. Follow the above tips, concentrate on the top five search engines, and see your traffic increase.
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