The Right Way to Submit Your Site

The following article covers a topic that has recently moved to center stage--at least it seems that way. If you've been thinking you need to know more about it, here's your opportunity.

Are you going to submit your site to the search engines the right way or the wrong way? To do it right, you need to know what you’re doing, and your site needs to be optimized before you take it anywhere near a search engine.

How can you know if your site is ready? You consider these things before you submit. Have you included your keywords in your title tag, description, and content? Make sure you’re tightly focused on only one or two keywords.  You should also check for broken links, as these can cause big problems with search engines’ spiders.

Once you’ve submitted your site, you need to be prepared to wait. The chances that you won't be added to any engine's database for at least a month.

The Rules of Submission.

1. There’s no need to submit more than once. Despite the hype, you should never resubmit your site unless it gets dropped entirely. This doesn’t apply to new pages, however. If you have created a few hundred pages in the last month or so and you don’t think that they will be indexed quickly enough via links to them it is a good idea to submit them manually rather than waiting for your site to be indexed again. If you are using a Google Site map, simply adding them to this document will get them indexed pretty quickly.

2. Do it right the first time: be thorough when submitting, especially to directories. Take the time to research and find the most appropriate category for your site. If your site would fit into multiple categories find out what the policy is on multiple submissions. Some directories want you to submit to every relevant category, others want no more than one submission or they reject all submissions. Some want every page, others (most) want your index page and nothing more.

3. Be brief when you describe your site: get right to the point in two short sentences. Most directories will actually restrict the number of characters that you can use. If they don’t it is still a good idea to try to wrap it up within twenty-five to thirty words. This is one of the largest differences between directory listings and search engine listings. In the directory you only get a short line to attract visitors; this is static for every visitor.

4. Be as accurate as you can. Don’t try to trick people into visiting your site, as it’ll only backfire. Most directories are actually monitored by a team of editors. These editors will visit your link and red flag you if you are trying to deceive visitors or if you are trying to cheat in any other way. When it comes to directory listings, there are even less avenues for cheaters than there are in search engine listings as directories are checked out by hand.

5) Make sure that all your information is relevant, and try to make it appealing to humans as well as dense with keywords. Directories don’t care about your key words very much. If your site isn’t attractive to human beings it will be listed poorly. When human beings edit, human beings rank, and human beings get what they want.

You can see that there's practical value in learning more about SEO. Can you think of ways to apply what's been covered so far?

6) Be patient: good things come to those who wait. Let the search engines take their time.

7) Don’t submit any more than your homepage. The crawlers are quite capable of following your links and indexing your whole site from just your homepage’s URL.

If you’re submitting you site to the DMOZ directory, follow these steps. If one doesn’t work, wait a while and then do the next.

1. Submit your site.

2. Write a follow-up email to the category’s editor, explaining that you’ve been waiting and would like to know your site’s status.

3. Email the next category editor up, in case there’s a problem with your category’s editor.

4. Seek assistance at the Open Directory Project’s public forum.

5. Email DMOZ senior staff seeking help. This is pretty much the last resort.

Submissions can be time consuming at first, but you’ll quickly get it down to a science. If you work hard on your SEO before you submit your site then you can get to the top more quickly than you’d think.

Sometimes it's tough to sort out all the details related to this subject, but I'm positive you'll have no trouble making sense of the information presented above.

James Mahony is the founder of Search Engine Optimization Tips - A site dedicated to Search Engine Optimization

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