Search engine submission

When it comes to acquiring traffic, a good basic strategy is one consisting of two layers. The first layer is based on links from directories and sites that are related to the content of your site. These will funnel traffic to your site, but more importantly, they will decide how well your second layer will work.

So, what is this second layer? Search engines. These days, "search engine" is pretty much just another word for Google. A mind-boggling amount of searches is made through Google every day. Your task is to ensure that two things happen. First, Google must find and index your site. This is the easy part - and the one this article will deal with. Second, your site must rank well under the keywords of your choice.

Where to submit and how?

Don't bother. Remember that bit about getting links from directories and other sites? This is a situation where the links will work for you. The fact of the matter is that search engines are constantly crawling the web, chasing after new content. If you have multiple incoming links from different, valuable sources, your site will be spotted and indexed within a reasonable time.

Many search engines offer submission forms, but using them is usually a waste of time - both yours and theirs. Why? The guys running the search engines figure that if a site has plenty of incoming links, it must contain something that is worth looking at and thus deserves to be indexed. On the other hand, submitting a site with no incoming links will not help. If no human judges your site to be worth a link, then it's probably of low quality and doesn't deserve a place in index of the search engine.

Besides, even if using the form would get you indexed, what good would it do to you? With no incoming links, it's very likely that when a search is made, your pages will be buried under all the other results. Forget about submitting, concentrate on links and content. Google and the rest will find you sooner than you think.

If I don't submit, how do I know my pages are included?

Usually, your service provider will give you access to data regarding the visits to your site. It will come in handy often, for example when you are trying to determine the success of your latest promotion efforts. You can also use it to see if a search engine spider has paid a visit - just look for Google or Googlebot. The spiders used by other search engines will also be listed, usually under 'Robots/Spiders'. If your host doesn't offer this service, ask for it - or change to one that does!

This will tell you that you've been seen on the radar. To see if you're in the index, just do a simple search for pages under your domain. In Google, type "site:yourpageslocationhere" into the search box (w/o the quotes, of course). Other search engines usually offer a similar way to search for pages located on a specific domain.

What if the spider has visited, but you're not included? Don't panic. It will take a while for the search engine to index the content it has found, so be patient. Just keep on adding new content and incoming links from other sites. Instead of worrying, read "Website optimization" on how to ensure that your site is designed in a search engine friendly way.

OK, my pages are indexed. Now I can probably just rest...

Nope. Unfortunately, you've only reached the starting point. The next step is to check how you rank under the keywords of your choice and how much traffic is coming in. Next, you'll need to determine whether you've chosen the right keywords and if so, tweak your pages and get new links so that your ranking will improve.

Of course, you will get some traffic just by having your site indexed by a search engine. However, it's nothing compared to what you can achieve, if your pages are optimized well and target the right keywords.

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