This tutorial will not promise you a top search engine
position. It will also not reveal how to get your site
into thousands of search engines.
Instead, you will discover the exact locations where you can
submit your website for free and the few "paid submissions"
that are actually worth the price.
Yes, there ARE still places where you can submit your website
for free. There are actually seven extremely busy search engines
that have not (not yet anyway) migrated to requiring payment for
listings.
Here's a listing of these engines along with the URLs where you
can add your site(s) for free:
1. Lycos Add URL
2. Google Add URL
3. HotBot Add URL
4. Northern Light Add URL
5. DMOZ - The Open Directory Project Add URL
6. Direct Hit - An Ask Jeeves Service Add URL
7. Fast - (Formerly "All the Web")
Those seven search engines above have been responsible for
sending literally thousands of visitors to my website over
the past year. And they will send thousands more. And perhaps
the best part is that I didn't have to pay them a dime.
But that's not to say that paying for a listing in a search
engine is a bad thing. Sure, lots of "purists" have been bashing
the search engines' move to charging for listings. But let's
face it, they are in business to make money too. And advertising
revenue is not what it used to be for many of these companies.
Their CPM (cost per 1000 banner impressions) rate has dropped
significantly and they need other revenue sources. So why not
charge businesses for a listing?
Now as a small business owner you cannot go around and start
paying every search engine that wants a hundred bucks or more
just for the privilege of listing your site (or just considering
it!) So you have to concentrate your budget on just the search
engines that can deliver serious website traffic. Those are the
engines, or networks of engines with the most traffic
themselves.
After researching the field, I've narrowed this down to just
three that are undoubtedly worth the price. They are...
8. Yahoo! Business Express
Currently $199 for non-adult sites, Yahoo! still has the busiest
directory by far and you'll get lots of traffic from a decent
listing.
9. The Looksmart Network's Express Submit
Also $199, this network powers over 1/2 million websites
including AltaVista, CNN, Excite, iWon, Microsoft Network,
Netscape Netcenter, NetZero and WebCrawler.
10.
Inktomi's Search/Submit service
At just $30 a year for the first URL and $15 for each additional,
this is a cheaper solution to the Looksmart Network submission.
Inktomi powers searches through AOL, iWon, MSN and the Looksmart
directory itself. The best part is that the network updates
every 48 hours so you get your listing in quickly.
OK, there you have it. A quick, cut to the chase, search engine
submission guide. Just be sure that before you submit your site
to ANY search engine or network that your site is ready to be
listed favorably. This means adding targeted keywords to your
content, META tags and title as well as spell checking and
browser checking your site. Once you are sure everything is
set to go, visit those 10 URLs and submit your site!
