The importance of submitting your web site to a search engine is 
paramount. If you consider the methods that most people use to 
search the internet, you will begin to understand that the search
engines are how most people find what they are looking for on the
internet. Even though you may spend a great deal of time thinking 
of a catchy easy to remember domain name, many people will forget
it, will be unsure of the exact spelling, or forget where that 
dash was supposed to go in the name. These are just some of the 
reasons that people will turn to a search engine to find your 
particular web site. 

Most sites can rely on search engines for any where from 40% to 
a full 100% of their overall site traffic, depending on the types
and volume of other advertising sources in use. Even sites that 
use zero advertising can rely upon search engines to send them 
traffic, so long as the site is in the search engines databases.

The volume of traffic received from the search engine depends 
strongly upon how well a site is positioned in the search engine
result pages (SERP’s) for keywords relevant to the stated purpose
and product/service offerings of the website. For best results, 
a site seeking traffic from the search engines should be in the 
first two pages of results --- generally the top 20 sites listed.


AN OVERVIEW OF THE MOST IMPORTANT SEARCH ENGINES

When looking at the statistics for various search engines and 
the traffic generated by the search engines, it becomes even 
more apparent that being listed in the search engine results are 
crucial. According to http://www.searchenginewatch.com/, from 
December of 2004, search specific search engine results were 
derived from:

Google    - 35%
Yahoo     - 32%
MSN       - 16%
AOL       -  9%
Excite    -  4%
AskJeeves -  2%
Others    -  2%

These results are consistent with other search engine statistics 
found on the Internet. Far and away Google and Yahoo are the top 
two search engines that deliver results, followed by MSN and AOL. 

Each of the above is a Spider Search Engine. Most of these sites 
also include an internal Directory. A Directory and a Spider are 
two different types of engines. A Directory is an organized set 
of links put together by human beings. A Spider is software that 
visits a site and archives what it finds. Some spiders archive 
an entire site, while others archive only the first few hundred 
words on each page. Google takes all of the data found on a 
website and generates their SERP’s from all of the content taken 
from a site. 

Some of the most well known Directories are:

Yahoo
DMOZ.org (Open Directory)
LookSmart


HOW TO SUBMIT DIRECTLY TO POPULAR SEARCH ENGINE DATABASES

Below are direct submission links for some of the more popular 
search engines-

Google- http://www.google.com/intl/en/addurl.html

Yahoo- http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html

MSN- http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx?FORM=WSDD2

AOL (now takes all of their search results from the Google 
     database) http://www.google.com/intl/en/addurl.html

Excite- https://secure.ah-ha.com/guaranteed_inclusion/teaser.aspx

AskJeeves- has discontinued accepting submissions 
http://sp.ask.com/docs/ad/p8a.html


AN OVERVIEW OF SEARCH ENGINE SUBMISSION SERVICES

Search engine submission services can be a great asset to those 
who do not wish to spend the time or energy doing it themselves. 
Different search engine submission services offer a variety of 
pros and cons depending on what kind of service you are wanting. 

www.addme.com offers a free submission service that will place 
your web site into 14 different search engines. For a fee, based 
upon how many sites you wish to submit, they offer a submission 
services that places your web site into 1,500 search engines. The
paid services also offer a page analyzer and many other features. 

www.freewebsubmission.com offers, as the name implies, a free 
submission service. Signing up with them is a very simple 
straightforward process. They offer a no frills type service, 
just a cut and dry submission of your web site into 20 search 
engines.

www.submitexpress.com is similar to addme.com in services 
offered. You have a choice between a free submission service 
that will place your site into 40 search engines, or a paid 
service that will place your web site into a reported 75,000 
search engines. They also offer special features with a paid 
subscription. Prices are comparable to those at addme.com.

www.submit-it.com does not offer any free search engine 
submission. They have only three available pricing packages 
but do offer a number of special features that come with the 
paid subscription.


AUTOMATE TASKS USING SEARCH ENGINE SUBMISSION SOFTWARE 

Smart web site owners utilize search engine tools in the process 
of getting their web site submitted to search engines. These 
search engine tools automate much of the process for you and can 
save you a great deal of time. Doing all of the necessary tasks 
on your own would take hours upon hours to complete. Two examples
of search engine software tools Are Web Submission Gold, and 
MaxmillianSoft MaxEasy Website Submitter.

The Web Submission Gold software optimizes web pages and submits 
them to top ranking search engines, while tracking search engine 
rankings and web site traffic. It also offers advice on how to 
optimize your web pages as well as suggestions for keywords that 
will increase your sites traffic. This product will support up 
to five web pages and can generate a large amount of data for 
you to analyze if you wish. This product retails for $349.00.

The MaxmillianSoft MaxEasy Website Submitter offers website 
submission to 66 search engines. While other search engine 
tools state that they will submit to more websites, it is rather 
futile to worry about these other search engines that actually 
provide very little traffic. Once MaxmillianSoft MaxEasy Website 
Submitter places your website into Google, it will show up in 
nearly all of the other search engine databases as well! Another 
advantage of MaxEasy is that it is very simple so understand and 
use. Why overload yourself with data that you do not need. Best 
of all, this software retails for a mere $9.95, quite a price 
difference!


HOW OFTEN TO SUBMIT YOUR SITE

One question that website owners often ask is “how often should 
I submit my website to a search engine?” This will vary dependent
upon the search engine that you are utilizing. As a general rule 
for search engines you should resubmit your website every time 
you make any major changes or add new content to it. Others 
recommend once every 90 days for spider search engines and once 
for directories.


IN CONCLUSION

So as you can see there are many reasons to submit a website to 
a search engine. Primarily, if you do not submit it, you will 
hardly get any traffic whatsoever. If you want traffic, you need 
to submit your website to the search engine databases; and if 
you want more traffic than your competitors, then you need to 
utilize a website submission tool that will allow you to stand 
above the competition. If you do not want to spend a lot of your 
time working to beat your competitors to the top of the search 
engines, then you need to use a search engine tool, because most 
likely they are using them too.  

All articles in the Maxmillian's Gold Series are written by:
Ronald. J. Saunders, owner of http://www.Maxmillian.com

~~~ Maxmillian.com Provides Turnkey Website Services ~~~
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