Bill Stocking

Search Submission Questions:

Q - "How do I submit my pages to search engines?"

A - Yes, you can do this yourself, and you may get your page indexed in the search engines. However, just submitting your pages is no guarantee that you will be any higher than page 999 on any given search phrase, or even that your page will be indexed at all.

Having proper html titles  on your pages in addition to well written text optimized for search engines should be a the top priority. Otherwise, you're just wasting your time submitting your site.  A high percentage (75% to 80%) of the small business sites we analyze have inadequate html titles, duplicate titles and no meta tags or improperly written meta tags.  Now, Meta-tags are not as important today as they were three of four years ago, but they still can help with some search engines.

You may not have to submit your site at all! 

If you have business associates with similar website content or acquaintances with links to your site the chances are very good that the search engines will find you through those links.  You might get indexed faster this way. (When we develop sites for clients, we usually give them a link from one of our highly indexed sites.)  More about incoming links below.

When you use the free site submission processes, the site is indexed by the search engines anywhere from 3 or 4 weeks to 6 months - yes, there can be a long a waiting line - If one uses the paid inclusion services that most search engines offer, things happen much faster, and it isn't that expensive.

Just submitting the site, even if one does their homework well, doesn't guarantee a position on the top three or four pages on any given keyword phrase. Getting good positioning in search engines usually involves a fine tuning process over a period of months, sometimes years. And, there are other factors:

1. The length of time the site has been active - this affects propagation and popularity.
2. "Link popularity" how many sites are linked to your site. It's almost impossible to get decent positioning without a dozen or two other sites being linked to you. Those links must must be relevant to your subject matter.
3. A "critical mass" of 6,000 to 10,000 words spread over 15 to 30 pages helps.
   The "critical mass" required for a given site will depend very much on the competition and the particular niche occupied by the site.
4. How often the site is updated determines how often the search engines scheduling re-indexing, so updating and adding content is critical.
5. Recently, it appears that the length of time the domain name has and been registered for also plays a part in search engine ranking.  "Newbees" may have to wait four to six months before search engines take them seriously because there are many "scam sites" which exist today and gone tomorrow.

If your website hasn't got the right stuff under the hood, you don't stand a chance of winning the race!