Building and designing your site to be
search engine friendly is only one level of search engine optimization. The next
level is making the search engines index it. The general opinion of the
Seo professionals is that it is better to be found by the search engines than to
submit your site.
Even if it is true, not everybody have the
time and the ability to build a net of links that will bring the spiders to your
site. Therefore, there is always
a place for some submitting.
Before you start submitting, be careful of
all those promises for free submitting to thousands of search engines and
directories. There are no thousands of
search engines, actually there only a few of
importance. If you already did use one of
those tools, in the best case no good will come out of it and in the less
appealing scenario you are doomed for eternity to be
spamed. Another action to avoid
is submitting for a "free for all" links
farms. Search engines usually ignore pages that are
made only of links. This is of course part of the
linking strategy but, while submitting you will meet some of those for sure, so
remember to avoid them.
The first place to submit is dmoz - the open directory
project. Google gives a more weight to sites that are
listed on dmoz. There is a long
waiting period until your site will be reviewed but be careful not to submit it
hastily.
Be sure that your site has no broken links
or missing graphics, Check and recheck spelling and don't submit a site that is
"under-constraction".
Dmoz gives great consideration to the
content; your site must contain noteworthy
content. Sites that are made mostly from links
will not pass the dmoz editors without good
content. Most important, write an
honest description; this is not the place for promotion text. Make
the editor's work easy. The less editing he
will need to do, the higher are the chances for approval.
Another important place to submit is Yahoo! There are few
possibilities: one of them is to submit your site for
the visit of the search engine spiders. It is free but takes a lot of time (7-8
weeks) and nothing is guaranteed. The second is to be listed on yahoo directory.
Submitting to yahoo directory will cost you 299$ and again, no guarantee, but
you will get result shortly and actually most of the sites do get
in. the other possibilities are pay for
performance by keyword and as a sponsor.
LookSmart is another
important directory it offers a free submission to a non commercial site thru Zeal, and a cost per click for commercial sites.
The major advantage of the CPC method is that, as a LookListings advertiser, you
will be charged only after a potential customer clicks on your listings in
search results and visits your web site.
