Submitting your Website to Search Engines

If you have a web-based business, or if a significant portion of your business is done on the web, via your website, your best advertising and marketing is done through search engine submission. 

No press release, newspaper or radio ad, banner ad, spam email or newsletter will achieve the same results. However, if you submit a press release online through a company like www.PRWeb.com and pay to upgrade the release so that it is shown on Yahoo News, that's an excellent way to get your site on an authority site and hence found by the search engine spiders.

Companies that promise automatic submission of your website to hundreds of search engines are making false promises. 

The best way to submit your website for search engine ranking and inclusion is to do it yourself or to hire an expert to do it MANUALLY, by contacting the search engine companies and directories. 

Before you begin to submit your website to search engines and directories, be sure you are ready.  Don't submit websites that are incomplete. 

Have a plan for how and when you will contact these search engines and include information about your website, a description, keywords and any other information that may be pertinent, including the name and contact information for the business owner. 

Remember, that submission to search engines companies does not guarantee that your ranking will be high.  It only guarantees that they will look at your site and even then, it may be some time before they get around to your site. 

There are hundreds - no thousands - of new websites springing up every day, so you should expect these search engines and directory services to be somewhat busy :

There are many search engine submission services in business.  You can choose to do it yourself with a software package and service like this one:

Or visit these sites to find an expert to do the work for you:

• AddPro
• Submit A Website
• SiteLab

There are many other options available if you search online.  Just remember that you should try to avoid the automatic submission services. 

Most of them don't give you much search engine visibility and you are likely to waste your money!

Another good thing to think about including on your site is a google sitemap. This bascially tells google about all of the pages of your site. It doesn't guarantee or affect rankings, but it means that you don't have to worry about google not knowing about the existence of your pages. And you don't have to worry about submitting each one. See this article for more information.

You'll need software to simplify the process of google sitemap creation, although many web builders like XSitePro have it included.

Know the Players 

Here is a list of the best known search engines and directory companies:

Search Engines

• Go.com/InfoSeek
• AltaVista
• Google
• HotBot

Directories

• AOL Search
• Inktomi
• Lycos
• Open Directory
• MSN
• Yahoo!
• Snap 

You may not know that there are thousands of search engines and directory companies.  If you are adventurous and diligent, you may want to submit your website(s) to as many companies as possible. 

In that case, follow this link to find other search engines and directories.     
http://websearch.about.com/library/searchengine/blsearchenginesatoz.htm

http://websearch.about.com/library/tableofcontents/blsearchenginetableofcontents.htm

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