Search engine submission

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Search engine submission is how a webmaster submits a web site directly to a search engine.

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[edit] Introduction

While Search Engine Submission is often seen as a way to promote a web site, it generally is not necessary. Because the major search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN use crawlers, bots, and spiders that eventually would find all by themselves most web sites on the Internet.

There are two basic reasons to submit a web site or web page to a search engine. The first reason would be to add an entirely new web site because the site operators would rather not wait for a search engine to discover them. The second reason is to have a web page or web site updated in the respective search engine.

[edit] How web sites are submitted

There are two basic methods still in use today that would allow a webmaster to submit their site to a search engine. They can either submit just one web page at a time. Or, they can submit their entire site at one time with a sitemap. However, all that a webmaster really needs to do is to submit just the home page of a web site. With just the home page, most search engines are able to crawl a site, provided that it is well designed.

Web sites desire to be listed in popular search engines because that is how most people access web sites. People like to search for information on the web at what is known as a search engine. Sites that appear on the first page of a search are said to be in the top 10. Clicking on a hyperlink causes the found web page to appear in the searchers web browser.

Thus, webmasters often highly desire that their sites appear in the top 10 in a search engine search. This is because searchers are not very likely to look over more than one page of search results, known as a SERPs.

In order to obtain good placement on search results in the various engines, webmasters must optimize their web pages. The process is called search engine optimization. Many variables come into play, such as the placement and density of desirable keywords, the hierarchy structure of web pages employed in a web site (i.e., How many clicks from the home page are required to access a particular web page?) , and the number of web pages that link to a given web page. The Google search engine also uses a concept called page rank.

[edit] Search engine submission companies

Earlier in the history of the web the submission process could be automated. Now a days, however, most search engines have implemented steps to prevent this.

Nevertheless, many commercial businesses still exist that offer to automatically place any web site with several hundred search engines for a fee. These business services are generally considered to be scam operations because they do not work. Nor, are they even necessary. There are little more than a dozen or two search engines to begin with. And, there are really only 3 major search engines. It shouldn't take longer than 15 minutes to submit a site to all three of these search engines. Google, for example, has dozen and dozen of foreign editions. But, they really are just the same search engine. And, many of the lesser search engines are powered from the Google engine index.

Most search engines currently require the input of randomly generated characters displayed on your browser screen when submitting a site. This feature makes automatic submission of a web site by a commercial submission service to many different search engines no longer physically possible.

[edit] Maximizing SERP placement with backwards links

To maximize website visibility for search engines, webmasters often attempt to build what is known as backward links on another web page. Many ways to build backlinks are available.

  • Create a unique context so that links will appear in various online forums and discussions. Other websites will link your website without charge if they find it useful and interesting.
  • Submit your website to various online directories.
  • Post your links in various online forums.
  • Use link exchange -- some services can help with this.
  • Write articles -- thousands of websites can help with this.
  • Buy links on other websites.