Search
Engines...
The wonderful
world of search engines. It is a generally accepted fact now that Google is probably
the number one search engine anywhere on the Internet. Therefore, getting a listing
in Google should be a top priority to anyone wishing to have a serious presence. Google
also happens to be one of the best search engines for crawling through websites
all over the world. Currently, it is widely estimated that Google crawls close
to four billion pages just about every month in order to refresh its large database.
The
proper way to submit to Google is simply to add the address (URL) of your website
and Google will eventually spider your whole site. One very simple way to check
if Google has indexed your site in its database is to type your URL into its search
box. Please note that Google currently takes about thirty to sixty days to completely
index and re-index all the pages in its master database. We
know from experience and even representatives from Google have said in the past
they prefer to find websites on their own, rather than you submitting them through
their form. These same representatives also state that you should nevertheless
also use their submittal form. As of today, Google has no immediate plans to initiate
any pay-for-inclusion program. For Google to find your site it is best
to have a link placed in an established site they already crawl thru. Google will
find your link and follow it to your site. Submitting to Global Business
Listing
Getting more
and more popular, Global Business Listing is a Pay-for-Inclusion (PFI) search
engine. What makes Global Business Listing truly exciting for most site owners
and Webmasters is that, for only $ 99 for a whole year, depending in which industry
your business is in, Global Business Listing can help place your site higher on
the results pages in Google, sometimes in the first position on the results page.Submitting
to AltaVista
In the pre-2000
days, dubbed as the “good old days” of the Internet, AltaVista used
to be one the fastest to index new pages. For some reason, AltaVista doesn’t
index pages as rapidly anymore, unless you use their paid inclusion program. AltaVista
has developed a good submittal procedure, in an effort to seriously reduce unwanted
spam & clutter in their database. When
you submit a website to AV's free "Add-URL form," you can see a graphical
image of strange-looking letters and numbers. AltaVista instructs you to type
those letters and numbers into a box in order to continue your submission. Once
you have done that, you can then submit up to five URLs.
This
procedure is a good idea, in an effort to reduce the large number of so-called
“automatic submission programs”, which we strongly believe should not
even exist in the first place. Since we always manually submit every website anyway,
it's not a problem for us. As long as all our submissions get added in an acceptable
period of time, our clients are happy. AltaVista
currently takes anywhere from 2 to 4 weeks to spider a site, although it is our
experience that such numbers can vary widely from one site to another depending
on the amount of backward links and such.
Submitting to Yahoo!
With
all the many recent acquisitions Yahoo has made, it is now the number two search
property on the Web. Although Yahoo, by definition, is still considered a directory,
this could change soon, with their acquisition of Overture. Overture is a Pay
per Click (PPC) search engine. There
used to be a time when submitting to Yahoo was free. Today, some categories are
still free, but on many of the others, Yahoo now charges US $ 299 per year for
inclusion. If you are lucky enough to find a free category, then submit your site
to it. Currently, it takes approximately anywhere from two to six weeks to get
listed in Yahoo’s directory. Submitting to the Open Directory, or
DMOZ
Submitting your
site to DMOZ, or the Open Directory Project, is one of the most important directories
you should consider. Google and many other major search engines now build their
own directory from the DMOZ database, so being listed in the Open Directory Project
is one of the best things to do in order to add significant visibility to your
website. Prepare to be patient
As
with anything in life that’s really worth it, be prepared to be patient!
Once you have carefully submitted your website to the search engines and directories
listed in this article, the next best thing for you to do is wait and do nothing.
Unless you have paid for inclusion in any of their optional programs, you should
keep concentrating in improving the quality of the overall content of your site.
On top of updating your existing pages, you should regularly add new pages to
your site. After any submittals,
we suggest you wait for about sixty days. After this period, you should check
back with all the engines, as noted above. Sixty days could be interpreted as
a long waiting period for most of you, but it's usually the best strategy. We
must admit that we personally check at least every two to three weeks after submission,
but for the average webmaster or site owner, waiting 60 days is the recommended
time period.
Here is a couple of links to sites that
was mentioned above .. |
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