SUBMIT YOUR SITE TO 10,000 SEARCH ENGINES!!!

NO, don't bother! It's a waste of time, and you'll probably just receive lots of unwanted e-mail.

Instead, submit your site to the major search engines and directories (i.e. Google, and a few others). Monitor your results, and resubmit only if your site isn't listed yet.

Repeat this process for any new content you create.

== Aside == Your site does contain good page content, decent page title and useful keyword and description meta tags, doesn't it? Read my 'Use Keywords And Meta Tags To Get The Click!' article if not! - http://www.howipromotemywebsite.com/keywords == Aside ==

You *can* use an auto-submission tool, or you can hand- submit to each site. The latter approach takes more time, but at least you know that your site *has* been submitted!

Either way, the site-submission process doesn't take long, but it may well take a few months before your efforts are rewarded by search engine traffic.

=> SUBMIT YOUR SITE TO GOOGLE

Nowadays, your site must be listed on Google.

Google is now *the* dominant search engine on the web. Not only do most people use it for search, but it also provides results for AOL and other major sites.

Submission to Google is easy - you need only submit your home page. Other pages, linked to from the home page, will then get added to Google's database over time.

In fact, you don't actually have to submit your site to Google (Google prefers that you don't). It may well find your site anyway, especially if another site (already on Google) has links to your site.

== Aside == Want to know how to go about swapping links with other sites. Read my 'Reciprocal Link To Boost Your Website Traffic!' article if not! - http://www.howipromotemywebsite.com/link-swaps == Aside ==

It's worth reading what Google says about getting your site listed. (The 'add your site' links follow.)

Google Information for Webmasters - http://www.google.com/webmasters/

Add your site to Google - http://www.google.com/addurl.html

Add your site to Google UK - http://www.google.co.uk/addurl.html

=> ADD YOUR SITE HERE, TOO...

After submitting your site to Google, you should hand-submit your site to these other major search engines and directories, also (listed in alphabetical order):

AltaVista - (Search results are provided by Yahoo!)

AllTheWeb.com (Fast Search) - (Search results provided by Yahoo!)

AOL Search - (Search results provided by Google and DMOZ)

MSN (Inktomi Search Index that powers MSN search) - http://submitit.bcentral.com/msnsubmit.htm

Open Directory Project (DMOZ) - http://dmoz.org/add.html

Scrub The Web - http://www.scrubtheweb.com/addurl.html

Yahoo! directory - http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/

Yahoo! search (new) - Yahoo! registration required. - http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request

Note: regional (and maybe more appropriate) versions of the above search engines exist too.

== Aside == These 'add-your-site' lists go out of date, very quickly. So here are a couple more links to similar resources, just in case: - http://www.trafficology.com/submitlinks.html - http://www.isitebuild.com/major-search-engines.htm - http://www.freelinks.com/ == Aside ==

You can also pay to get your site listed on search engines.

Ask Jeeves, Looksmart, Inktomi (and more) all accept payment for including a particular website page in its database. Take a look at http://www.positiontech.com (Inktomi) for more details.

And if you want to pay per click, then can I politely suggest you read my 'Pay Per Click To Guarantee Targeted Traffic!' article - http://howipromotemywebsite.com/pay-per-click

=> BE LAZY, AND USE THIS AUTO-SUBMIT TOOL

AddMe.com is a great free website promotion resource.

And it includes a useful auto-submission tool. The free tool - the first auto-submit tool I ever used!! - submits your site to 13 major search engines. Whilst the paid-for professional tool submits your site each month to 2000 search engines and classifieds - http://www.addme.com/submission.htm

I recommend hand-submission, but it's your choice!

=> THEN MONITOR RESULTS!

After a month or so, check to see if your site exists on the particular search engine database.

And only resubmit your site if you can't find it listed.

(Do a search for your website URL; e.g. do a search for www.yourwebsitename.com .)

Or you could use the following position checking tools, and see how your site ranks for the keyword of 'www.yourwebsitename.com'

- http://www.marketleap.com/verify/default.htm - http://www.free-webmaster-tools.com/PositionAnalyzer.htm

Note: there are much more sophisticated ways of checking to see if you need to re-submit your site, but they are out of the scope of this article!

=> EVEN DO IT YOURSELF!

For the programmers out there, you might like to create/ modify your own site submission and position checking tools. CGI Resources is the best place to find such resources - http://www.cgi-resources.com

And some site building tools come with automatic site- submission and position-checking tools built in; e.g. Site Build It!

=> READ MORE...

You can find out a great deal more about search engine submission from the following excellent resources. Just do a search for "search engine submission" and off you go! (You can also find out more about paid search engine submissions here too.)

http://www.sitepoint.com http://www.google.com

--

Search engines and directories can still be a great way of getting free traffic to your website. But you only need bother with a few search engines these days (particularly Google). So add your site to the major search engines /directories and monitor results. And only re-submit if your site does not get listed.

Happy submitting!

PS There is much more to website promotion than just submitting your site to search engines. But then you knew that, anyway, didn't you? ;-)

© Copyright 2002-2004 Steve Nash. All Rights Reserved.

About the author: STEVE NASH is the owner of free website promotion guide http://HowIPromoteMyWebsite.com. His popular site covers all the basic aspects of web site promotion. Visit now!

HIS BEST TIP? Use Site Build It! to develop a profitable business online! Learn more, here! http://site-buildit.com (SBI hosts, built and promotes HowIPromoteMyWebsite.com!)