How to Get Your Web Site Listed in the Major Search Engines

by Herman Drost

More Search Engine Optimization Articles

Published on this site: January 2004 - See more articles from this month

Getting your web site listed in the major search engines is an absolute necessity. Why? Because 85% of all people on the Internet use them when searching for information. When they type the keyword or keyword phrase in a major search engine, up pops your web site, or at least you hope so.

The easiest, fastest and free way to get listed in any of the major search engines is getting links from other related sites that point to your site. Once you get your web site listed in one major search engine or directory, your site will appear in the others.

Besides working on your link building strategies, you can also submit your web site to the major search engines.

Here's how to submit to the major search engines, listed in alphabetical order:

1. AllTheWeb.com - owned by overture which also provides results for Lycos.
   
   Free Submission www.alltheweb.com/add_url.php
   
   Only submit your homepage and a couple of inside pages. It takes about 6 weeks before your pages appear. There is no guarantee to get listed.
   
   Paid Submission
   
   AlltheWeb doesn't have a direct paid inclusion program but uses Lycos Insite Select http://insite.lycos.com/../..undefined
   
   Price $35.00 It takes 72 hours to get listed. Your pages will be visited every 2 days for 1 year. This is a good option if you want a new site to quickly get listed.
   
   
2. Altavista - owned by overture
   
   www.altavista.com/addurl/new
   
   Free Submission
   
   This gives you a basic submission. You can add up to 5 URLS to be considered for inclusion in 4-6 weeks. Submit your homepage and one or 2 other pages. There is no guarantee of inclusion.
   
   Paid Submission
   
   AltaVista Express Inclusion www.infospider.com/av/app/signup
   Submit your homepage. Your pages will be listed within 2 weeks and revisited regularly. Price $39.00 I URL for a 6 month subscription
   Guarantee: Your pages could be dropped if you don't renew your subscription.
   
   
3. Google
   
   http://www.google.com/addurl.html Google is the top choice for searchers. It's search engine results also appear in Yahoo and AOL.
   
   Free Submission
   
   It is free to submit but there is no guarantee of a listing. Submit your homepage and a couple of other pages. It takes about a month for your pages to appear.
   
   The best way to get listed in Google is to find a lot of related inbound links - links from other sites that point to yours. This will vastly improve your search engine rankings and your site will probably show up more quickly.
   
   
4. Infospace
   
   www.infospace.com/info/submit.htm
   
   Free to submit, however you need to fill out a form to get listed.
   
   
5. Inktomi - it was recently purchased by Yahoo, so it may provide results for Yahoo in the future.
   
   www.inktomi.com/products/web_search/submit.html
   
   Free Submission
   
   As with all other major search engines, building links to your site is the best way to go if you want to get listed for free.
   
   Paid Submission
   
   Inktomi's search engine has an extensive network of Web search partners, including MSN, About, HotBot, Overture. It refreshes your site every 48 hours, to keep your content up to date in the index. Submit your homepage
   Your site will be listed in 2 days and will be regularly revisited up to one year. Price $39.00/year. Each URL thereafter costs $25.00/year.
   
   Guarantee: Your pages may be dropped if you don't renew your subscription.
   
   
6. Teoma - provides results for the popular web site Ask Jeeves
   
   http://ask.ineedhits.com
   
   Ask Jeeves owns the Teoma search engine. Teoma partners include:
   Ask.com, Teoma.com, Metacrawler, Excite, iLor, MySearch.com, MyWay.com, Ixquick, Mamma.com, Hotbot.com, Search123.com.
   
   Free Submission
   
   Like the other major search engines, get links from other web sites to point to yours and the search engines will eventually find you though their linking structure.
   
   Paid Submission
   
   Ask Jeeves Site Submit (http://ask.ineedhits.com) Submit your homepage Your site will be listed within one week.
   1st URL $30.00 2 - 1000 URLs $18.00 each
   
   Guarantee: Your pages may be dropped if you don't renew your subscription.

Tips

1. Just submitting your web site to the major search engines is not sufficient to get a good ranking. Make sure your web site is correctly optimized before you do your submissions. Read "How to Use Keywords to Optimize Your Site for Search Engines (www.isitebuild.com/keywords)
   
   
2. Getting massive amounts of traffic doesn't guarantee sales. Your web site copy must pull your visitors through the page for them to take action. Get others to read your copy and ask for their opinions.
   
   
3. To achieve higher rankings (and therefore more traffic) in the search engines, you need to continually refine your web site. Monitor your web site rankings and if necessary, adjust the keywords in your meta tags and web site copy.
   
   
4. Search engines should be only one of your marketing strategies. One week you could be at the top of a search engine, the next week your site may disappear. Therefore don't just rely on traffic from the search engines, but use other methods to drive traffic to your site.

Now go and submit your site to these major search engines. When you succeed in getting a top listing, as a result of taking action on this article, drop me a thank you note - I'll be cheering for you!

Part 2 of this article will explain how to get listed in the Major Directories.

Herman Drost is the author of the popular ebook: "101 Highly Effective Strategies to Promote Your Web Site"
www.isitebuild.com/web-site-promotion Subscribe to his "Marketing Tips" newsletter for more original articles. mailto:[email protected]. You can read more of his in-depth articles at: www.isitebuild.com/articles.