Website Submission - A SEO Specialist Shares His Secrets
By Robert Fuess (c) 2006 Spiderweb Logic
http://www.SpiderwebLogic.com
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. (http://validator.w3.org/) 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 (http://www.spiderweblogic.com/GoogleSitemap.aspx),
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: http://www.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.
* Submit to Google
http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl
* Submit to Yahoo
http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request
* Submit to MSN
http://beta.search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx?FORM=WSUT
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 (http://download.alexa.com/index.cgi?p= )
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 (http://www.dmoz.com/add.html ).
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.
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 SPAM 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: http://www.google.com/webmasters/seo.html. 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.
About the Author
Robert Fuess is a veteran website designer who specializes in making dynamic
search engine optimized websites. http://www.SpiderwebLogic.com |
http://www.SchoolAndTeacher.com
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