Getting your site into the search engines

You must get your blog or web site, into the various internet search engines, to really increase traffic to your site.



The most important search engines include Google, Yahoo and AOL Search which use Google's results, Inktomi, AltaVista, Alltheweb, MSN, Lycos, and ExactSeek. There are many others as well.



Internet surfers enter their desired search terms, called keywords, into the engine's search box. A series of search engine result placements appear on the screen. You want your site or blog listed among them.



The question then, is how do you get your site indexed by the search engines?



One method is to submit the site to the various engines. Each one has a Submit URL (your site's name and identification) page. Most allow for free submissions. The weakness of submitting your site is the time it takes to index it. That may take from several weeks to months. Some search engines charge a fee for "faster indexing". For the record, I do not support the use of the pay for inclusion option. I prefer to use the free methods for everything.



Be sure to add your URL to the search engines one by one. Manually. I don't recommend the use of the various submitting services. While some services are free, many charge a fee. While they say they are sending your site to "hundreds" and even "thousands" of search engines, only the most important engines will yield traffic. The smaller ones will crawl your site, and add it later. In any case, they won't send many visitors your way, as they are not heavily used by internet surfers. Don't worry about them.



A better method than submitting your site, is to have the search engines discover you, on their own. To do that, you need incoming links from other already indexed web sites. Find other non-competing sites that have something in common with yours, and exchange links. You may find your site crawled by the search engine spider, and indexed within a week or two of the link swap.



Another method is getting into the various internet directories. In a previous column, I wrote how to get into the important Open Directory Project, commonly called DMOZ.



The other important directories include Zeal, Joe Ant, Gimpsy, GoGuides, and Yahoo's free version. There are literally hundreds of specialized directories, often set up by industry or geography, (plus many directories exclusively for blogs). You want to get into as many of the free ones as possible. They get crawled regularly by the search engine spiders. Your site will certainly be found in one of them!



Posting in various internet discussion forums will get your site indexed as well. Find some discussion boards relating to your area of interest, and sign up to post. The technique there, is to create a signature file for your posts, that links back to your site. The spiders will follow that trail back to your site for indexing as well. Of course, to get listed, you need to post!



There are various ways to get your site included in the search engine results.



Be sure to use them all to ensure your blog or web site gets included!