 Learning Corner Included in this section will be internet, e-business, website and other technical related articles. I welcome your article submissions, so feel free to email me with your Learning Corner contributions! Here is the Learning Corner article for this issue: ========================================================= How do I submit my website to Search Engines? Just the facts please. by Alyice Edrich All materials copyrighted 2002 If you want to get known on the web, you must get your site listed in the search engines, then work hard towards staying within the first ten pages of those search engines. One way to move your website up the search engine results pages is by having web copy and meta tags that are search engine friendly. Then you need to give away free articles associated with the content of your website, provided the publisher includes a nice byline with an active (clickable) link back to your website. And finally, you need to move up those results pages by finding great quality websites to swap links with you. But before you can even consider moving up the search engines results pages, you have to be listed in the search engines. But how do you go about getting listed in the search engines? Basically, you hunt down search engines you want your website listed with, find their "submissions", "add url", or "add your site" link and follow their instructions. When you submit your website to the search engines, you do not want to submit every single page of your site. Instead, you want to submit your domain name (otherwise known as homepage or index page) and allow the search engines to crawl (or spider) your website, finding every page within that website. Having a good site map is vital to allowing search engines to crawl your site. If there is a page not linked within your website, it cannot get captured and therefore, will not be searchable through search engines. You want to start with the major search engines, as they are the ones most frequently used, then work on the smaller, less known search engines. One way to think about this strategy, is to think about the times you do a search online. What sites do you utilize first? If those websites fail to provide the information you were looking for, where did you go next? Should you pay to get your website listed in the search engines using one of those submission programs? Personally, I think you are better off hand submitting your website as some search engines do not accept submissions from auto programs. Not to mention the fact that many auto programs tend to spam your website to companies and free-for-all links that do nothing for your search engine status. Although it can seem like a bit of a nuisance, it is best to set up two separate free email accounts... one for your newsletter subscriptions and one for submitting to search engines, link swaps, and article swaps. (I use Yahoo.) Also, pay close attention to these submission sites, there is usually a box that you can de-click or click-on that allows you to opt-out of their newsletters, product updates, or from giving your information out to their advertisers. Where should you start? http://www.google.com/addurl.html. Yahoo http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/. MSN and Inktomi http://free.submit-it.com/msnsubmit.htm. Dmoz Directory (AOL also uses this) http://dmoz.org/ . Other places to start submitting to: All the Web http://www.alltheweb.com/add_url.php. Alta Vista http://addurl.altavista.com/. Info Space http://www.infospace.com/info/submit.htm. Jayde http://search.jayde.com/cgi-bin/addurl.cgi. Northern Light http://www.northernlight.com/docs/regurl_help.html. Scrub the Web http://www.scrubtheweb.com/addurl.html. Starting Point http://www.stpt.com/?L=submit_form. Visca http://www.viscaonline.com/. What You Seek http://www.whatuseek.com/addurl.shtml. You can also find more places to submit your website to, by going to google.com and typing "add url" in the search engine box. © 2002 Alyice Edrich ======================================================= Alyice Edrich lives in Wisconsin with her two children and husband of 12 years. She is also optimizes web copy, freelance writes, and is a discount telecom agent. Visit her today a http://thedabblingmum.com. ======================================================= |