Many of you have heard of submitting your website, but what does
this really mean? What places should you really submit your
website? What about submitting to thousands of search engines
and directories through some website promotion service?
WHAT PAGES TO SUBMIT:
At the minimum, you should submit your home page. Many search
engines will promise to find and crawl the rest of your website
automatically (in their own good time). But if they don't
discourage you from doing so, I would submit several of the
important pages in your site. For example, a site map is
definitely something I would want to submit, since it should
have direct links to the rest of your website.
Also, if I get another webmaster to link to my website, it I
like to submit that page as well. I want the search engines to
recognize that this resource has changed - it has a link to my
website and I want the credit for it.
WHAT TO PREPARE:
For the search engines, I would make sure that the website is
properly optimized. At a minimum, I would do a double check the
meta-tags to ensure that the title, meta-description and meta-
keywords properly describe the web pages and have some of my
desired keywords in it. I would also run a website validator on
the pages I intend on submitting - to keep the search engine
spiders from choking on my website. (http://validator.w3.org/)
For more information on optimizing a website for the search
engines, go to http://website-optimization-2.blogspot.com/.
For the directories, I would normally prepare some commonly
requested information. This really helps to speed up the process.
I normally use a generic text editor like Microsoft Notepad and
save the following data before I go and submit to the different
search engines and directories. This enables me to use copy and
paste.
This should have:
* Your email
* Your website url
* A good title for your website
* A description for the website
Since Yahoo will allow you to submit a list of URLS that are in a
text document (or an RSS feed) I would encourage you to prepare
one to help them out. These should be at the root directory of
your website and be updated whenever there is a change to your
pages. That way you can just submit the location of the RSS feed
or the text file and let Yahoo use that to find the rest of your
pages. It is a nice time saver. Personally, I like using an
automated RSS feed since Yahoo can use it to determine when the
last changes occurred and decide what pages to re-crawl first.
(If you don't know what RSS is, here is a great article on it:
http://feedvalidator.org/docs/rss2.html.)
Google uses a similar technology to help it find all of your web
pages. It is called a "Google Site Map". That is the subject of
another article. I wrote one that has a lot more info on the
Google Site Maps (
http://www.spiderweblogic.com/GoogleSitemap.aspx ), for when
you are ready to build one. Google also has a special way to
submit these. Just follow their instructions. If this is too
complicated, contact a webmaster or a SEO specialist who is
familiar with this feature.
WHERE TO SUBMIT:
I would recommend submitting your home page to the major search
engines individually, at least initially. However, there are
several services that do groups of them for you - and is a big
time saver for the rest of your site. The following is one of
my favorites: http://www.freewebsubmission.com/ I have always
deselected Google, though, since I submit to them manually
through the Google website. I submit my web pages to the
following search engines manually (without a special tool) just
to ensure that it is done.
* Submit to Google
http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl
* Submit to Yahoo
http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request
* Submit to MSN
http://beta.search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx?FORM=WSUT
You will need a Yahoo account to submit to the Yahoo search
engine. And don't fret if you don't see immediate results. Your
site should normally exist in MSN within about 6 weeks, in Yahoo
in 8-12 weeks, and in Google within about 3 months. (You will not
likely get much search results from Google for the first year
though - but hold out and keep working on the other tricks. In
the long run, Google will normally give you about 60 - 70% of the
search engine traffic if you follow these methods.)
Also, if you have the Alexa toolbar (
http://download.alexa.com/index.cgi?p= ) installed, navigate to
your website and click on the "info" button on the toolbar. Then
you will have to fill in information about your website. Once
this is registered, you will start seeing how your website's
Alexa rating looks. There has been some rumors that Google
considers the Alexa description in its searches - so make sure it
is relevant to your website as a whole and has at least one of
your keywords.
You should also submit your website to DMOZ (
http://www.dmoz.com/add.html ). This is a massive directory that
is republished in several other websites. It is managed by
humans, and is therefore considered to be of special relevance by
other search engines. I strongly recommend reading all their
rules before submitting - and follow them closely. Make sure that
you try to get listed in only one category - the most relevant
one for your business. It can take a month or two to get listed,
but it really helps with your backlinks and overall relevancy as
a website.
After DMOZ, here are the most important list of directories to be
listed in.
* Yahoo Directory website submission ($299 annual fee)
https://ecom.yahoo.com/dir/reference/submit/
* Business.com website submission ($199 annual fee)
http://www.business.com/
* Microsoft Bcentral Directory website submission ($49 annual
fee) http://sbd.bcentral.com/addsite.aspx
* Best of Web website submission ($40 annual fee)
http://www.botw.org/
* goguides.org website submission ($40 lifetime fee)
http://www.goguides.org/
* gimpsy.com website submission ($40 lifetime fee)
http://gimpsy.com/
* joeant website submission ($40 lifetime fee)
http://www.joeant.com/suggest.html
* Tygo website submission ($40 lifetime fee)
http://www.tygo.com/smart/
* Skaffe.com website submission ($40 lifetime fee)
http://www.skaffe.com/info/addurl.php
* wowdirectory.com website submission ($25 lifetime fee)
http://www.wowdirectory.com/howtoadd.php
If you haven't used directories before - try browsing these
before you fill out the form to submit your site. They are
organized by category. You need to find the most relevant
category to put your website before you start to fill out the
form for each of these. Have a pen and paper as you browse -
and write down directory paths of where you want to be.
Being in some directories just adds some good backlinks. (When
another webmaster links to your website, this is considered a
backlink.) Others, like Yahoo and DMOZ, tend to get some special
relevance to certain search engines. After you get familiar with
these well-known directories, look for niche directories that are
specific to the type of business your website is about.
There are specialized directories that focus on a particular
category of links. These can be valuable - you will just have to
do a bit of searching to find them. These may be considered as
part of your overall strategy.
Being listed in a search engine there doesn't guarantee that you
will have a good ranking - this is just the first step - letting
them know that you exist.
IF YOU SEE AN OFFER TO GET LISTED IN HUNDREDS OF DIRECTORIES AND
WEBSITES AUTOMATICALLY - BEWARE! Many of these will list you in
hundreds of FFA (free for all) sites. These sites are considered
SPAM by search engines and I would strongly encourage you to
avoid them. Did I mention to avoid these? Check out what Google
has to say about these: http://www.google.com/webmasters/seo.html
. They may get you quick backlinks, but they are from the "wrong"
type of site. These are just a list of sites - and they stay
there temporarily. Only the latest 100 submitted or so are
displayed there and you need to be resubmitted regularly to stay
there. Few humans use this - it is just a linking game to trick
the search engines about your popularity (and search engines
don't like it). Don't bother.
TO WRAP IT UP:
Get backlinks - but avoid FFA sites. There are some important
directories, but being listed in "THOUSANDS OF WEBSITES AND
DIRECTORIES" is likely a promotional trick to get you listed in
FFA sites. The most important backlinks are from web pages with
content related to your website and those that your customers
visit. If it isn't likely to draw your customers, it may not be
very important for your website traffic.
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