by Robert Fuess
As
webmasters or homepage owners, 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, 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 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. 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, 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: 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.
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 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 have 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.
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.
Seems to be expensive at first glance, and in
reality you never know if the investment will pay of, resulting in
lotīs of visitors to come, either directly from the web directory or
indirectly, by means of higher google rankinks as a result of the
directory entry. You can either make a fortune out of this small
investment, or may not have the results expected, which especially is
annoying in regards to anual fee listings. It is a little difficult to
track these results, especially for the indirect results and listing
benefits. So keep a close eye on it.
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 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
SP@M 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. 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.
