Search engine optimization (SEO) is more important than ever for getting your website noticed. You can take the chance that a crawler will stumble on your site, but why not improve your odds by submitting your site directly to search engines? Manually submitting your site to the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, and Bing offers a few advantages: it ensures that the search engines will crawl your site, and can help your site get into an index faster. Think of it as moving your site to the front of the search line. Here’s how to submit your website to search engines.
Submitting Your Site to Google
To submit your site to the Google index, all you have to do is go to google.com/addurl. Enter the URL for your home page into the appropriate box (including the http://), add any comments you might have about your site, and then click the Add URL button. That’s it! Google will now add your site to the Googlebot crawl list, and your site will appear in appropriate search results.
- Go to the following link: http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl
- Sign in to your Google account (i.e. Gmail)
- Type in your URL, example: http://www.yoursite.com
- Enter the captcha text shown in the box
- Select “Add URL”
Submit your URL to Bing
- Go to the following link: http://www.bing.com/docs/submit.aspx
- Type in your URL, example: http://www.yoursite.com
- Enter the captcha text shown in the box
- Select “Submit URL”
Submit your URL to Yahoo
- Go to the following link: http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html
- Click on “Submit Your Site for Free”
- You will be redirected to Bing. Follow the on-screen instructions for submitting your URL.
Submit your Sitemap to Ask
Ask does not have an URL submit feature. Until recently, you could submit your sitemap to them. But Ask.com has now retired this feature and says they will be crawling sites instead. So, the next best thing is to add a directive in your robots.txt file that specifies auto-discovery of the XML sitemap.
Sitemap: http://www.yoursitemap.xml
The sitemap location should be the full sitemap URL. That’s it! Once you complete the above steps, just sit back and be patient. It takes time for the search engines to index your pages. If you submit more than once, some search engines may consider this spamming which could result in not indexing your site at all.
Submitting to Other Search Engines and Directories
Why stop at the big three? The web has a lot of other search engines and directories; even though none has the reach of Google, Yahoo!, or Live Search, they can still generate traffic to your site. The following table details how to submit to them.
How to submit your website to search engines
- AOL Search www.search.aol.com Submit via Google (www.google.com/addurl/).
- Ask.com www.ask.com Does not accept site submissions.
- Best of the Web www.botw.org Paid submittal at www.botw.org/helpcenter/submitcommercial.aspx.
- Bing www.bing.com Submit at www.bing.com/webmaster/SubmitSitePage.aspx
- Gigablast www.gigablast.com Submit at www.gigablast.com/indexphp?subPage=addUrl&page=about&.
- JoeAnt www.joeant.com Submit at www.joeant.com/suggest.html.
- Open Directory www.dmoz.org Go to appropriate category page and click Suggest URL.
- Wikia Search search.wikia.com Click the Add button on any relevant search results page.
Using Website Submittal Services
As easy as this site submittal process is, some webmasters prefer to offload the task to a site submittal service. These services let you enter your URL once and then submit your site to multiple search engines and directories; they handle all the details required by each search engine. Given that many of these services are free, it’s not a bad way to go.
Some of the more popular site submittal services include these:
- 123 Submit Pro (websitesubmit.hypermart.net)
- AddMe! (www.addme.com)
- AddPro.com (www.addpro.com)
- SubmitExpress (www.submitexpress.com)
Beware those services that charge a high fee for search engine submission—they don’t do anything that you can’t do yourself, for free.
Increasing your search optimization is key to driving traffic to you blog or website, and the process couldn’t be easier. Good luck, and happy searching!