How to submit a site to Web search engines like Google

virgo17

A friend of mine is developing a web site to cover a special interest group, which potentially could attract visitors from all over the world. Knowing that I am a bit of a techie, he has asked me how he can submit his web site to the various search engines like Google to attract visitors.

I have to admit that I am stumped. I remember years ago that you could purchase software that did it for you, but nowdays I am not sure.

Anyone have any ideas of how he can accomplish this at zero cost?

Thanks,


V.

gaming_guy

http://www.google.com/addurl/

zenmaster

I have used webceo before.

It's quite useful and FREE.

You do get about 1 email a month inviting you to upgrade to the paid for version but they are not overly pushy.

sweven

Nowadays submitting your site to Google, MSN and Yahoo covers you for 99% of searches.

http://www.google.com/addurl/
http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx
http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html (needs registration)

It's also a good idea to try to submit it to
http://www.dmoz.org
but don't worry too much if you can't get the site listed there.

If the site is going to be regularly updated, or is eventually going to have hundreds of pages or more, then it's well worth looking at creating an xml sitemap for the site which SEs will then revisit regularly.

See
[SIZE=-1]http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ for more info.


[/SIZE]

martindow

http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/
This is good for creating google site maps in xml

Moneymaker

I agree with martindow and sweven. Create a sitemap.xml file and upload it. Notify Google of it. This will guarantee entry into Google's database within 3 days and full registration within 7 days (if your site is ready. If it isn't ready, DON'T do it! Make sure there's a robots.txt file, too. Make sure the pages have lots of content. Make sure the index page has at least 100 words of text. If you use javascript for links, include the normal link HTML for every page between "FORM" tags si Google can find them).

You can easily test for full registration. Make up an imaginary word that Google can not currently find (such as "igglyplopups") and include that on one of the web pages. Search Google for that "word" each day.

virgo17

Moneymaker wrote:

I agree with martindow and sweven. Create a sitemap.xml file and upload it.

Thank you all for such excellent advice.

V.

Moneymaker

Let us know how you get on. Here's another tip to improve your Google PR. Put a link to your site here and get your friends to include a link to it from their sites. The link is "improved" by adding an explanation of what the web site is about. For example http://www.marketingtips.uk.com/ This site is intended to help UK residents to make money. It has lots of free information.

Darksun

Moneymaker wrote:

Let us know how you get on. Here's another tip to improve your Google PR. Put a link to your site here and get your friends to include a link to it from their sites. The link is "improved" by adding an explanation of what the web site is about. For example http://www.marketingtips.uk.com/ This site is intended to help UK residents to make money. It has lots of free information.

While some Search Engine Optimization techniques are effective, beware of some techniques you may read about (such as keyword spam). This can lead to your site being unlisted.