Once you buy a domain name, people will try to sell you various internet services. Some services are worth it, some aren't. Knowing the difference is valuable information.
Submit to Search Engines for Free
Some services want you to pay $30-80 to submit your web site to search engines. Apparently, people buy this because I've been receiving these notices (bills?) for years. You can easily do this yourself in a few minutes for free.
If search engines charged to list your site, they wouldn't have nearly as much information listed as they do. More web sites on search engines is better for everyone.
Search engines make money from their output, not from your input. The real power of the search engines, is sorting through the huge amount of information and providing searchers with the best information, maybe your website.
Search engines find your website, whether you do anything or not. Search engine crawlers have a single task, to find and crawl all pages. Send out invitations yourself at the following links. Even better is to include robots and a sitemap when you make your own web page.
Easy Submission to Search Engines
| Google Search Engine | Google Webmasters Tools |
The Google Search Engine has become the synonym of searching. If feeds other search engines including AOL/Netscape Search. Free serviceWebmaster Tools indexes your site according to a sitemap. Spiders in about 2-8 weeks and updates regularly. Includes tools to learn your traffic sources. PPC, Google AdSense to buy keyword phrases. |
| Bing Search Engine | Submit URL to Bing |
Once known as MSN or Live search. Microsoft Windows Internet Explorer always defaults Bing as the search page. Free serviceSpiders in about 1-8 weeks and updates regularly. Also has Webmaster Tools |
| Yahoo Search Engine | Submit URL to Yahoo |
Yahoo started as the Yahoo directory. Now they also spider your site. It also feeds Lycos Search Engine. Free service, but must sign up for a free account. Spiders in about 1-8 weeks. Includes entire website. Updates regularly. |
| Ask Jeeves | Ask Jeeves - Submit |
Ask Jeeves is a leading provider of natural language, question answering and search technologies. This search engine offers great relevant sites for your search. Affiliated with Teoma (used to be Direct Hit). Pay service, Fast inclusion. |
Meta Search Engines
Sometimes one search engine gives better results than another. Other times, the other search engine does better. Wouldn't it be great if we could get the best of several search engines from a single source? Well, meta search engines do just that!
Meta search engines are nice for those of us who submit to search engine sites. The meta search engine shows us our placement in several sites at once.
| Ixquick | Searches through AllTheWeb, AskJeeves, EntireWeb, OpenDirectory and Overture. |
| Excite | Powered by InfoSpace and iWon.com. Searches through Fast, Teoma, Inktomi, About, Looksmart, FindWhat and Overture. |
Once You've Submitted to Search Engines?
If your website still doesn't appear on the search engines, how would you know if you aren't listed yet or just have unrealistic expectations about where you'll rank once it is? Use this simple method to find out if you're web page is listed on Google yet.
90% of web site traffic comes from about 5 search engines
Once you have been found by search engines, they come back regularly to see changes to your web site. Most search engines take a couple weeks to list your web site, after all, there's a long line.
You should automate the ongoing search engine submission process by using the robot and sitemap processes.
Paid inclusions allow your site to take cuts to the beginning of the search engine waiting list. This ensures the listing is included much sooner, days instead of weeks. This is good if you have constantly changing information, like news. The paid inclusion process can check back on your web site much more frequently.
Different services have different levels of inclusion. You can even purchase web site traffic.
Does this mean you're done? Well, if you are running a site for personal or presence, then maybe. If you are running a site for profit, the work is never done. At least not completely.
Marketing is an ongoing process. You need to watch what is going on with your web site now. Watch the visitors come in. Find out where they are coming from using your server logs. You should be watching where your visitors exit. Are they just disappearing or are they using your profitable links?