Submitting to the Search Engines
I see this question all the time. "I created a website and uploaded it to my web host. Now how go I get listed in the search engines?"
Submitting a ULR to the major search engines is easy to do, but before submitting the URL to the search engines, make sure your website is ready for prime time. Once a website gets crawled and indexed, it will be displayed as is until the next crawl cycle. So the goal is to make sure that the first impression people get is a positive one.
Have Friends Become Your QA Department
It's easy for a web author to overlook obvious and not so obvious errors on their website. Before trying to get listed in the search engines, send the URL for your website to friends and family, and ask them to go through the website. Ask them to read the content, click all the links, and send you their feedback. Fix anything that is broke and adjust anything that didn't make sense to them, like the navigation structure or certain naming conventions. If the links on your web page don't work the way they are suppose to for people, the search engines are going to have trouble digging deep into your website to find all of your content. This should all be working properly before submitting your URL to the search engines.
Use Webmaster Tools
Google, Yahoo and Microsoft offer various tools and documentation to aid webmasters. Because over 60% of website traffic comes from Google for most websites, it is important to ensure quick and thorough indexing by Google. Google's webmaster tools allow you to put a meta tag on your index page. Through the webmaster tools interface you can verify the placement of the meta tag. This helps Google know about your website faster, and gives you feedback about how many pages on your website have been indexed. If you go to the Search Marketing Corporation home page and view the source code, you will see a meta tag in the header that looks like this.
meta name="verify-v1" content="p5fvWc1ZLbLkMBXNMcw50Kw7E5tVmLasJhTsWI2eFTM="
This is our Google site verification meta tag.
Submitting To The Search Engines
Once you've dotted all your "I's" and crossed all of your "T's", it's time to submit your URL to the major search engines. Submission is as easy as entering your URL into the submission box. It is only necessary to submit the main URL, and not every page. Once the main URL is crawled, the search engine web spiders will follow the links on your pages to index all of your content. Generally, it will take about 30 days to see your website indexed in the search engines.
Use these links to get to the search engine submission pages.
What About All The Other Search Engines?
Google, Yahoo and MSN are the major search engines with their own spidering and indexing technology. Other search engines such as Lycos, Dogpile, and AOL use search technology supplied by the major search engines. So if you're indexed by the big three, you'll be indexed by all the smaller search engines as well.