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How do you submit your website to the search engines?

There are a couple of ways to be listed in search engines. The first is by buying adverts which are listed with search results, and the second is by submitting your website to search engines for use in search results directly. Advertising has a guaranteed approach to finding visitors, at a cost, and submitting creates a random stream of visitors which cannot be controlled in an easy way. All of my visitors are from the submission approach as I don`t sell products, and I can`t afford to buy adverts to get visitors. I have tried advertising with google Adwords so that I understand the method, and can see how advertising can help my website in the future if I do start selling products. You should always remember, better quality, and better content will help to keep visitors, and to also increase your ranking amongst search engines, and people.

So, the process of submitting your website will be something like this, you find a search engine you want to be listed in. Lets say google, and you search for an area that says something like "submit your website" or "submit your URL". Fill in the details, submit your main page address, and then wait. Even if a search engine knows your website exists, the search engine can take months before it has scanned your website, and started listing your pages in results. The main search engines of google, msn and yahoo also accept sitemaps. These are lists of all your webpages in one file that can be submitted to the major search engines, and quite a lot of minor ones too. They are extremely useful as you can update your website, and your sitemap and then inform the major search engines that you have new pages to scan. Much quicker than just waiting for their bots to come and scan your website at some indefinite time in the future.

For more information visit sitemaps.org. To submit your sitemaps you will need to register at each search engine for member services.

Google accounts start here.
Microsoft/live search accounts start here.
Yahoo site explorer starts here.

There is one more place that non commercial websites can get listed that helps to find visitors and search engines Open Directory Project. It was established by Netscape many years ago, and this is the first place I submitted my website to. At the time, it was the only way for me to get listed on Google, as Google uses dmoz`s database of quality listed websites. To find the correct place to submit your site, go through the categories until you reach the deepest level you can that describes your website. For example, you`ll find my website listed here.

Look for:- Jonsay's English-Japanese Dictionary - Hyperlinked wordlists arranged into semantic categories. (UTF-8)

Once you find the right category, click on the suggest URL at the top of the page and fill in the details about your website. It will be reviewed, and if its quality is good enough should be listed in about 2 months. So many websites use the data in dmoz, that this should really be the first place you should consider submitting your site to.

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Last update 8th August 2008. Copyright @ 2005-2008 jonsay.co.uk