Submitting Web Pages
to Search Engines

If you've made it this far into our search engine education, give yourself a pat on the back. We're almost done for now! Finally you reach one of the fruits of your labor: actually submitting your web pages to search engines.

By now you should know the general principles concerning how to prepare web pages for search engines, as well as the specific principles of design for preparing web pages for deep search engines vs. directories.

When you click the submit links for deep search engines (see below), you will see why the submission process for deep search engines has no effect on how you will rank: submitting to deep search engines consists mostly of submitting the URL of your web page(s)! It's really quite simple. After you submit your URL, a spider will visit your web page, "crawl" it, and create an entry in its database. That's why you need to prepare your web pages before you submit; once the spider visits and you are listed in the database, your ranks are determined. Don't worry, though; you can always make changes and re-submit.

Unlike deep search engines, directories have a more detailed and time consuming process to submit your site. Directories require that you take the time to find an appropriate category for your site. Usually you are also asked to submit a description and/or keywords for your web site. Here the submission process for directories differs dramatically from that of search engines: the information you provide in directory submissions WILL affect and determine your rankings.

Below are links to submission forms for the top search engines and directories. If the search engine has readily available tips for the submission process and for improving your ranks, a "Tips" link is also listed.

Top Search Engines
Google	Submit	Tips
HotBot	Submit	Tips
Alta Vista	Submit	Tips
FAST Search	Submit	Tips
Northern Light	Submit	Tips
Excite	Submit	Tips
Lycos	Submit	Tips
WebCrawler	Submit	Tips
Directories
Open Directory	Submit
MicroSoft Network (MSN)	Submit	Tips
Yahoo!	Submit	Tips
LookSmart	Submit	Tips
NBCi	Submit
AOL Search	Submit
Netscape Search	Submit

The amount of time between the day you submit and the day your entry appears online varies from one search site to another, usually anywhere from a few days for Alta Vista (although their Add URL has been less dependable since they re-did their site in November 1999) to 60 days for Hotbot. Yahoo can similarly take one or two months, if you get reviewed or accepted at all. Many of the submission and tips links above will tell you how long it takes for your listings to appear.

Yahoo has the most stringent acceptance criteria of any search site. If you don't have a substantial site (10 pages or more), valuable information, and a logical, attractive site, don't expect to get into Yahoo.

Monitoring and maintaining your listings on search engines is crucial to winning top ranks. To simply submit your web pages is not enough! Once your listing appears on a search engine, do the following:

1. Search on your target key phrase;
2. Record your ranking;
3. Edit your page to increase keyword density and emphasized text;
4. Re-submit;
5. When your new listing appears, repeat!