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WEBSITES
Submit Your Site to the Top Search Engines
How many times have you seen the typical spam email or banner promising to "submit your site to 500 billion search engines now!" We've seen it way too often, and we feel it's time to set the record straight.
First of all, there are really only 50 or so search engine websites that are actually worth anybody's time, and there are only 10 or so unique engines that get significant traffic. On top of that, 95% of the market share is controlled by a handful of companies: Google.com, MSN.com, Yahoo.com, and AskJeeves.com. AOL.com is powered by Google, and Overture.com is powered by Yahoo.
Next, submitting to these Big Dog engines is fantastically easy and free. You just have to know where to look to find the "Submit Your Site" link. Epoch Online found them a long time ago and has made search engine submission a part of its basic website package since 2000. We submit all our clients' sites to Google.com and Yahoo.com (MSN recently disengaged its free submit feature).
It's no magic wand; nothing ever is. Getting listed usually takes several months. Your rank is based on the quality of your content and how many sites link to yours, so developing some business relationships and exchanging links with people will greatly help your site's rank. Be aware that both Yahoo and Google have instituted and "aging delay" for new sites, meaning that although they will index your site quickly, it will not rank competitively for 6-8 months. They do this to make sure your site is going to stay around awhile. Too many spammers are out there setting up temporary sites to create the illusion of link popularity for other sites. Generally, the older your site is, the more competitive edge it will have.
But submitting your site is just the first step. Once you're in the search engines, you'll likely be at the bottom of the ranks. This is where optimization comes in. It's the real work: making sure your content is solid, that your title tags are concise, and other factors you can read about in our Search Engine Optimization page. To get the most from your website, you need to optimize. Contact us for more information.
To give you an idea of just how easy the submission process is, we'll do it for you for free. Just enter your website's URL (www.yournamehere.com) into the box below and click "Submit." We'll do the rest.
Please Note: This is not
an automated form. Please submit a top-level URL only
(www.yoursite.com) a valid US phone number, and submit
it only once. We reserve the right to not submit any site as we see fit.
PLEASE DO NOT submit any site that is already in the Google, MSN or Yahoo cache - you can see if your site has been successfully submitted to those engines simply by searching on your site's URL.
Your site's entry into the search engines is never
instantaneous; generally it will take 1-3 months. The
single most important thing you can do to get into
the search engines' databases is have links to your
site from other websites that the search engines have
found.
Always beware of any unsolicited sales promises, particularly when it comes to
web solutions. If someone sent you an email that you didn't request, then that's
spam, and doing businesses with companies that employ spammers is often risky.
You don't know if the company is one guy in his mother's basement or a multinational
corporation. Always check for a physical address and a company profile to find
out if that business is legitimate.
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