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Don't submit your website to any search engines

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Subject:  Don't submit your website to any search engines Trenton Moss
Author:   Trenton:   view profile | all posts by this author | add to favourites
Date:   13:13:25 8 July 2004
 
We all want to get our websites high up in the search engines but how do you do it? Well one thing you shouldn’t bother doing is submit your site to any search engines. That’s right – I’m telling you not to submit your website to any search engines. Not Google, not Yahoo!, not AltaVista. Sound a bit strange? Read on...

Submitting to all the search engines

Submitting your website to every search engine is an incredibly time-consuming process. There are hundreds and hundreds of them out there - no doubt, you’ve come across the companies who’ll submit your website to 1000 search engines for you.

Search engine professionals know that the vast majority of these search engines have a very low usage rate and will drive hardly any traffic your way. In fact, it’s only a handful of search engines that drive the majority of traffic from search engines to websites.

The major search engines

Some of the most important search engines, probably accounting for over 90% of the search engine market, are:

  • Google
  • Yahoo! (released earlier this year)
  • Inktomi
  • Teoma
  • Fast
  • AltaVista
The new MSN search engine will roll out later this year and will also be very important.

Don’t submit to these search engines

“But there’s only six of them - why on earth not!?” Well, aside from saving time and a bit of money (some require a submission fee), quite simply there’s no need. Allow me to explain...

Search engines crawl the web every few weeks (or months) looking for websites to index. Here’s how it works:

  • Search engines start at one website with a large number of outbound links (usually a directory)
  • They follow every link they come across, indexing each page they arrive at
  • Once a page has been indexed they follow all the links from that page
  • And so on until there are no more links to follow
Unless today is your very first day on the Internet, you might have heard that inbound links into a website are extremely important in establishing its search engine ranking. If a search engine can’t find you by itself through crawling the web, then your website doesn’t have any inbound links. If so, you’ll never achieve a decent search engine ranking so what’s the point in registering?

Getting incoming links quickly

So, how do you get incoming links? Well, this is a vast topic which I won’t be discussing now, but if you want to get a few good links quickly then there is a solution: web directories. If your website is listed in the Yahoo! directory (http://dir.yahoo.com, not the same as Yahoo! search) and the Open Directory (http://www.dmoz.org, used by Google) all the search engines should find you within two to three months.

There are plenty of other directories you should get listed in too. Global, local and industry-specific directories abound on the Internet. To find them run a search for ‘web directory’ on your favourite search engine. The directories that come up highest in the search rankings will probably generate the most traffic. You can also check the directories of directories listed at the end of this article.

Another even quicker solution is webmaster forums. Search engines love forums because they include so much fresh content. Most have an area where you’re allowed to enter your URL to get feedback from other webmasters. http://www.webmastersterforumlist.com has a list of webmaster forums - sign up to them all and get posting!

Long term strategy

Search engine optimisation is a long term strategy. You’ll be successful if you:

  • Structure your pages correctly by positioning your keywords in effective places
  • Build a great site with unique content that other websites will want to link
Register with as many web directories as possible and then concentrate your efforts on these two things. Within a few months you’ll start to see success.

Directories of directories

Trenton Moss, Webcredible

 
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  • Don't submit your website to any search engines, Trenton, 8 Jul 13:13
    We all want to get our websites high up in the search engines but how do you do it? Well one thing you shouldn’t bother doing is submit your site to any search engines. That’s righ ...
    • Don't submit your website to any search engines, ChrisBaker, 9 Jul 16:56
      I have a concern about "Another even quicker solution is webmaster forums...sign up to them all and get posting!" Isn't posting to forums simply as a way of advertising your n ...
      • Forum contributions, WilliamCharlwood, 10 Jul 17:12
        I think that when people contribute to forums as opposed to abusing them, then any search engine ranking benefits are fair enough.  But the best benefit is not usually simply one o ...
    • This is not true in many cases, tpl, 14 Jul 13:27
      I would agree with much of the article but totally disagree on several points. 1. An article like this should not claim to be the universal truth. The advice may be true for man ...
    • Getting indexed by Google fast, Anthonys, 10 Feb 02:46
      I agree with the gist of the above article and would like to add that some free business classified sites also have rapid inclusion times, typically under three days, and posts on ...
      • Getting indexed by Google fast, LawrenceLadomery, 12 Feb 10:16
        Also, write a 'How to _______ in X number of steps' article in your blog and submit it digg, reddit, technorati, feedburner and other similar sites hoping to get people to comment ...
    • Don't submit your website to any search engines, LawrenceLadomery, 12 Feb 10:09
      Don't webmaster forum links usually include the nofollow attributes? Having said that, I do see quite a few referrals from forum and blog posts in stats. Participating in for ...
      • Don't submit your website to any search engines, Anthonys, 12 Feb 10:36
        Sure, they do. Although Google does appear to register nofollow links as links, it just doesn't pass on additional PageRank for them. Besides, if Google, like Yahoo!, are h ...
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