Submissions

The right way to get a search-engine listing is not always just to submit to the search engine. It’s NEVER going through a service that guarantees submissions to hundreds of search engines each month. Don’t even be tempted by that sales pitch. Both Google and Yahoo “prefer” to find your site while they’re out crawling other sites. This usually is accomplished through links.

Here is the strategy that I use for Google and Yahoo… After a new site is fully optimized, I will link it up from another site I manage or try to get 1 or 2 listings from a high quality directory (probably paid directories) using my keyword phrase. I will then wait a few days to see if Google’s Spider will automatically pick it up. The big search spiders are pretty active; they usually find it on their own. After the few days have passed, I’ll go ahead and submit the root domain of the new site to Google and Yahoo. This method has proven successful in getting pages ranked a little quicker than just submitting the page from the beginning because it gives the search engines a keyword link from a popular site to follow as well as a new submission.

Here are the submission URLs for Google and Yahoo:
http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl
http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request

Another way to improve your chances of making it into the Google and Yahoo engines quickly may be to buy some Google Adwords and Yahoo Sponsored Search (Overture) advertisements. Usually an investment of $50 each is enough to get your site listed initially. However, be aware that it may drop out of the index fairly quickly if you do not also work to obtain other outside links.

Just Released: Google Sitemaps
Google has recently released a beta version of Google Sitemaps. I haven’t seen any reliable info as of yet saying that Google Sitemaps are worthwhile or not. I tend to be skeptical of anything Google does to “help” webmasters. But, we are testing Sitemaps and will keep you posted on our results. There’s a lot of buzz about them going on mow and if you do a web search you’ll find a lot of discussion. Here is the link: Google Sitemaps

Remember, you can’t predict or guarantee placement in the Search Engines, and sometimes placement takes a while by any method. So be patient; you may have to wait weeks or months before you show up in the index. If your site does not show up in 30-45, definitely go through your site and look for anything that may be holding it back.

Also be aware that Google has a habit of putting you in their index fairly quickly but not giving your site decent rankings for up to six months. SEO experts call this the Sandbox Theory. Meaning, if you search for your domain (www.yourdomain.com) you’ll find your pages, but they’re not found when searching for your targeted keywords, or any keywords for that matter. Unfortunately this is just a fact of life.


Tagged as: SEO, Optimization Tips