Submitting Websites to Search Engines and Directories

Actually you don't need to submit your website to the major search engines as they can find you if you have just one link on another website that is crawled regularly. However you may want to submit to directories and other websites in your own special category. Following are several options for submitting your websites to search engines and directories that you should consider and also submission tactics you should avoid.

Paid Inclusion on Search Engines

Several of the major search engines and directories require paid inclusion when submitting websites (Yahoo Directory, MSN business directory, etc.) and this often costs from $50 to $299 per website per year. Other search engines are charging the fee for business sites only, or give you an option for a paid listing, which is faster, or a free listing which takes longer and isn't guaranteed. Sometimes paying for inclusion doesn't result in any better results than not paying. Google has a free submission service but your site won't rank well in Google without a lot of backlinks (links coming into your site), so again paying for a PayPerClick service may be needed until you gather enough links. Some search engines won't even guarantee you a listing, even with a paid submission, like Yahoo Directory, so read the fine print.

Provide Good Content and you Won't Need to Submit

Google has recently started devaluing traded links and penalizing sites for being involved in triangular linking schemes and also penalizing directories that sell links. That leaves only one-way links as a safe way to go and the best way to gather those is to provide information on your website that people will link to without asking. I provide a lot of graphic tutorials, HTML tips, articles on hosting and SEO scams on this website which brings most of my traffic and links.

Submitting Websites to Thousands of Search Engines

I do not recommend that you use submission services that register your website on hundreds or thousands of search engines at once because most search engines exclude automatic listings and some search engines will penalize or ban your website for submitting more than once. Any website offering this service is usually a scam (see the Submission Scams page for more info). Some of these cheaper searcj engines use non search engine friendly 302 redirects which can cause ranking problems for your website (see the Hijacking Web Pages for more info.) And some of those companies advertise submission to search engines that have closed down years ago. So, it really makes you wonder what they really gain from your signing up--possibly selling your email address to spammers???

Getting More Visitors to your Website

The more diversified your information, or the more popular your product, the more visitors you will have to your website. If you're not getting the amount of Internet traffic you desire consider offering information on your product or adding to your product line. Adding a FAQ page on your product or service or a testimonial page will attract more visitors. Adding a new page to your site every week or so will also keep the search engines coming back for more because they like fresh content.

For more info on finding websites to submit to check out:
Getting Good Backlinks
Directories that Pass PR (Page Rank)
DIrectories to Avoid
How to find Scraper Directories

Search Engine Faq
Technology that Blocks Some Search Engines
Dynamic Pages vs Static Pages
Keyword Ranking FAQ
Keyword Strategies
Maximize the Title Tag
Validate - Validate
Links to Your Site are Top Priority
Submitting websites to Search Engines and Directories
How Long Does It take to Rank in Google

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