Search Engine Submissions: Less is More

Now I know many people will wonder why I would tell them not to submit their blogs and websites to search engines. After all, that goes against everything most of us have learned. You start a website then submit to search engines. That is something we need to do and something that is very important but it's not the most important and not the only thing we need to do.

We do need to submit to the search engines, but you should not pay to submit to hundred's and thousands of search engines. Think about it, there are only a handful of popular search engines. You've never heard of the other thousand engines, so chances are millions of other people have never heard of them either. So why pay $50 or more to a company who claims they will get you top spot in a bunch of search engines that most people won't use.

You can be the only website listed in that engine and it wouldn't matter. If that search engine is not popular and does not have any visitors to its own page, how do you expect people to find you? There are also businesses claiming that they will get you into Google, yahoo, msn, and other popular search engines in 24 hours. Those claims are hard because I don't know the methods or if they are even ethical, but most popular search engines, especially Google, can take weeks and months to get into and it's hard to say whether or not this company is actually telling the truth about letting you in.

There are many ways to get your website out there. After submitting to the top search engines, search for popular directories and submit your website. This can be more time consuming because there are hundreds of directories. Start with Yahoo and DMOZ directories. They are two of the most popular ones. There is also software that will let you submit to directories semi-automatically. Not fully automatic because most directories need you to fill in information that the software usually cannot.

Another tip for getting your website noticed is to get a budget you can live with and advertise with Google Adwords. If you do it right you can be spending less money than if you go with an advertising company. They can cost hundred's and thousands of dollars.