Where to Submit Your Site to Search Engines

by Scott Allen

A lot of people ask, “Where do I submit my site to search engines?” Well, I’m here to answer that.

You see all these advertisements that for $20 they will submit your site to 15 bazillion search engines. Well, the truth is, that’s a scam. There aren’t 15 bazillion search engines, at least not 15 bazillion that will end up delivering any traffic to your site. At the time I’m writing this, the only ones you need to worry about are the BIG 3 - that is Google, MSN, and Yahoo. They reach about 98% of the web, so everything else is a waste of time. Besides, a little-known fact is that many of the smaller search engines get their results from the BIG 3, or they spider the BIG 3 to look for sites to include. So, if you get listed in the BIG 3, you’ll basically cover the whole web. There are a few exceptions, but for now this is all you need to worry about.

Well, it turns out the best strategy is to not submit your sites at all. I’ll tell you why.

Things have changed. It used to be that submitting was good. Now it can actually cause your rankings to suffer in some cases. At best, it’s pointless. Yahoo actually penalizes sites that are submitted - temporarily until their spider (Slurp) finds the site naturally, at which point the penalty is removed. Having other sites link to yours has become the most important element of Search Engine Optimization these days. So, if you can get some links to your site from quality sites that are already doing well in the search engines, and are relevant to yours, then the search engines will find you naturally. If you don’t have links to your site, you won’t rank anyway so it really is pointless to submit to search engines. (Directories are a different story, and it can be good to submit to relevant directories in your industry, but don’t submit to every directory out there as it won’t help you.) To get quality links, you have to think strategically. I’ve put together a list of link building resources to help you in your quest.

But I Still Want to Submit My Site!

XML sitemaps have replaced the old submission process. It still exists, but if you’re going to “submit” to search engines, you want to be smart about it. Sitemaps.org explains the protocol. Honestly you don’t need to worry about protocol. Download phpSitemapNG and install it on your server, and run the program. Then go to Google Sitemaps and Yahoo! SiteExplorer and submit the XML sitemap it produced.

I Still Want to Submit My Site The OLD Way!

Ok, fine…if you absolutely HAVE to submit, here are the URL’s to submit your site to the BIG 3:
Google: http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl
MSN: http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx
Yahoo: http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request

Well, there you go. More on this later, but that should get you started. 8-)