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Submitting to Search Engines

Search engines can provide a nice additional source of traffic for your websites. They are especially nice because they usually refer people who have an interest in your products, services, or information.

While many engines are free, some do charge yearly for inclusion or a one-off charge for express inclusion. The major search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN do not charge.

There are two standard methods for getting included in search engines. These are through submitting your site directly to the search engine itself, or by getting links on sites that are already listed that point to your site. It usually takes anywhere between a few days and a few weeks to get listed, so please be patient.

The smartest move is to do a combination of the two, because different search engines may prefer one method over another.

Adding websites to each engine manually

You can add your site directly by going to each engines site submission page. Some of the major ones are:

• Google - http://www.google.com/addurl.html
• All The Web - http://addurl.alltheweb.com/add_url
• I Need Hits - http://ask.ineedhits.com/sitesubmit.asp (directhit is now Ask Jeeves and pay for inclusion)
• HotBot - http://www.hotbot.co.uk/?command=submit (Hotbot is now pay for inclusion using Inktomi results)
• Lycos - http://insite.lycos.com/
• MixCat - http://www.mixcat.com/addurl.html

Getting incoming links

Some search engines (such as Google) recommend that the best way to get included in their search engine is to get a few links from other web pages to yours. From our experience this works well.

There are several ways to gather links to your website. The easiest way is to create your website well, so that other websites find value there and link without you even having to ask.

While it can take some time to build your site to this point, it is the best strategy.

To compliment the sites that voluntarily link to you, try submitting your site to directories. There are always directories related to your website topic that link to relevant information elsewhere. Make sure they know you exist.

A great starting point is the Open Directory Project (DMOZ). Not only will you be included in the directory if your site has great information, but many other sites display the links included in DMOZ as well. In effect, you get several links by submitting to the one place.

See further general website hosting FAQs or our FAQ categories for more information.

Please contact us if you have a question that is not answered on our site.