Recognizing the importance of search engine visibility, one of the first questions new website owners have is, "How can I get my site listed in Google?" Many services and programs offer an answer, promising to submit new websites to "thousands" of search engines and directories. These services promise quick results, at varying prices. But do they really work, and are they even necessary?
Recognizing the importance of search engine visibility,
one of the first questions new website owners have is, "How can I get my site listed in Google?" Many services and programs offer an answer, promising to submit new websites to "thousands" of search engines and directories. These services promise quick results, at varying prices. But do they really work, and are they even necessary?
Search engine optimization experts universally recommend against these types of programs, for various reasons which are discussed toward the end of this article. The good news for webmasters is that it doesn't cost anything to be listed in Google, Yahoo, or MSN, and you can easily submit your site directly to the search engines at no cost, and with no gimmicks.
Google: Simply go to http://www.google.com/addurl/ and enter your site's URL.
Yahoo: Go to https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit. You may be required to sign up for a free Yahoo! account, if you don't already use some of their other services, such as Mail.
MSN/Live: Visit http://search.live.com/docs/submit.aspx and complete their simple submission form.
Before submitting, you should see if your site is already indexed by Google, Yahoo, or MSN. To do this, simply search for site:yoursite.com in each search engine. This query will show you any indexed pages of yoursite.com.
With that said, it is important to understand that brand new websites will generally not achieve good rankings for several weeks. This is commonly referred to as a "sandbox" period, and will vary depending on the search engine, the site, and the number of other sites linking to it. Google is most famous for the "sandbox", and has publicly stated that new websites may rank poorly because they haven't had time to perform many of complex calculations that help them understand a site's place in their index.
Many sites find their way into search engine indexes without ever manually submitting their URL. This is because search engines are constantly crawling the Web, looking for links and finding new sites. In fact, by getting others to link to your site, the manual submission process is something you can skip altogether. Many SEOs also believe that it is better for your site to be discovered "naturally", via a link from another site, than for it to be hand submitted to a search engine. And while getting others to link to you may seem challenging, it is absolutely vital if you want your site to rank well for your targeted terms.
So why do professional search engine marketers advise against mass submission programs?
These programs often involve submitting your site to extremely low quality "web directories" with no editorial standards. These directories basically amount to spam, and are not given any weight by search engines. These types of sites are often referred to as "bad neighborhoods". Google is incredibly smart about determining the general "neighborhood" that your sites are linked from, and thus, the quality of your sites. Sites with a high concentration of low quality spam links, especially if they are new, are likely to be penalized.
The core offering of these paid services - submission to the three major search engines - is free. Anyone can submit their site to the three major search engines (and by extension, many smaller search engines which get their data directly from the big three) for free in under five minutes. This service is by no means worth paying for.
Search engines like Google may penalize a site that receives a disproportionate number of links in a given time period. If a new site receives hundreds of links from a directory submission service, then receives few or no links in the months that follow, a red flag is raised in advanced anti-spam algorithms such as those used at Google.
For these reasons and more, it is not recommended that you employ mass submission services.
The bottom line? To get search engines to find your site and index it as quickly as possible, get others to link to you. This is not only the most effective way to get "noticed" by search engines, it is the only way your site can rank for valuable and competitive search terms.
