7 Ways To Get Your New Website Listed In Search Engines

Since your new website is your marketing tool for your business it’s going to be crucial to be listed on search engines. In the past when I have setup new websites I have used 8 methods to get them listed on search engines fast and as high as possible. Though, we first need to understand how Search Engines work and how we can maximise our efforts to rank up high.

How Do Search Engines Work?

Search Engines have two elements that make them work.

1. The Index
Simply, the index of a search engine is a giant catalogue containing a copy of every web page and file that the spider finds. If a web page changes, this catalogue is updated with the new information. To give you an idea of the size of these indexes, Google has over 8 billion pages.

It sometimes takes a while for new pages or changes that the spider finds to be added to its index. Thus, a web page may have been “spidered” but not yet “indexed.” Until a page is indexed – added to the index – spidered pages will not be available to those searching with the search engine.

2. The Search Engine Spider
This is also called a web crawler or robot. A search engine spider is an automated program that reads web pages and follows any links to other pages within the site. This is often referred to as a site being “spidered” or “crawled”. There are three very active spiders on the Net. Their names are Googlebot (Google), Slurp (Yahoo!) and MSNBot (MSN Search).

Spiders start their journeys with a list of page URLs that have previously been added to their index (database). As it visits these pages, crawling the code and copy, it adds new pages (links) that it finds on the page to its index.

The spider returns to the sites in its index on a regular basis, scanning for any changes. How often the spider returns is up to the search engines to decide. Webmasters do have some control in how often a spider visits their site by making use of a robot.txt file. Search engines first look for this file before crawling a page further.

The Search Engine

Most people have heard of Google, Yahoo and MSN. As these are the dominate search engine providers on the Internet today most websites look at being listed on their indexes. Therefore it is crucial for a new website to let “The search engine spiders” know they exist. Here are the 8 ways to get your new website listed:

1. Search Engine Optimization
I highly recommend setting this as your first priority to do. The reason is, once you get listed onto a search engine – particularly Google, you will find increasing amounts of traffic to your new website.

Since search engine optimization is a very large area for discussion I have created another post about search engine optimization.

2. Google Sitemaps
Simply by creating a sitemap that tells Google to crawl your website will enhance the chances of listing higher in Google searches. Google has written a very comprehensive manual to show savvy webmasters how to communicate with Google through their Webmaster sitemap submission system

Something interesting I discovered with my own website: if you know how to create Cron Jobs and have it automatically run it on a daily basis to tell a search engine to crawl your site, you will have a greater chance at getting to the top of a search.

3. Manual Submission
Once you have optimized your site using keywords related to your website, the next stage is to submit your site to the various search engines. I don’t believe it’s necessary to submit your website to all the search engines on the Internet, but I do recommend submitting to the top three: Google Add URL, Yahoo and Bing. Each of these search engines provide a submission page to let you submit their websites.

One last tip about manual submission, I wouldn’t recommend anyone pay a company to submit your website. Personally I think they are a waste of money because there are no proven results that they work and get your website ranked higher.

4. Submit Your Site To Directories
Another good place to start is with web directories. The two biggest by far are Yahoo Directory and the Open Directory.

There are plenty of other directories you should consider as well. To find them run a search for ‘web directory’ on your favourite search engine. The directories that come up highest in the search rankings will probably generate the most traffic. You can also check these directories of directories:

• Open Directory’s directory of web directories

• Search engine colossus

• Best Free Directories

• Internet search engine database

• Business Directory

5. Comment In Blogs, Forums, Bulletin Boards And Newsgroups

A great way to get your website listed on the search engine is to provide comments on other sites with your website at the end of your comment. NOTE: The idea is to provide something of value to another site, not just putting your website there as that is considered SPAM.

6. Linking To Other Sites And Ask For A Link In Return.
There are three ways you can find websites that might want to link to you.

• Go to your favourite search engine and type in some words related to what your website is about.
• Sift through the websites in directories such as Yahoo Directory or the Open Directory
• Find out who’s currently linking to both you and your competitors, check who’s linking to them, and who’s linking to them, and so on (To see a list of the inbound links to a website go to Google and type in link:http://www.URL.com) – replace URL with your own website name.

Now that you’ve found these websites, ask them to link to you. A quick phone call or e-mail will help. And remember, always mention that linking to your website will benefit their site users and therefore their website. You could also offer a link exchange, where by you both link to each other. If you’re going to do this, it’s wise to link to their website first, before getting in contact.

7. Press Release Distribution

This is one of the most cost effective way to distribute your website in the marketplace. PRWeb.com is a great place to promote your website.

Tyrone Shum
SEO Tipster