How to Submit Your Website to Google, Bing, Yahoo!, and Other Search Engines

Search engine optimization (SEO) is more important than ever for getting your website noticed. You can take the chance that a crawler will stumble on your site, but why not improve your odds by submitting your site directly to search engines? Manually submitting your site to the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, and Bing offers a few advantages: it ensures that the search engines will crawl your site, and can help your site get into an index faster. Think of it as moving your site to the front of the search line. Here’s how you do it.

Submitting Your Site to Google

To submit your site to the Google index, all you have to do is go to google.com/addurl. Enter the URL for your home page into the appropriate box (including the http://), add any comments you might have about your site, and then click the Add URL button. That’s it! Google will now add your site to the Googlebot crawl list, and your site will appear in appropriate search results.

Submitting your site to the Google index.

Note that you have to add only the top-level URL for your site; you don’t have to add URLs for any subsidiary pages. For example, if your home page ishttp://www.homepage.com/index.html, enter only http://www.homepage.com. Googlebot will crawl the rest of your site once it finds the main URL.

Submitting Your Site to Yahoo!

Submitting your website to Yahoo! is an equally simple process. Point your web browser to http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit/. Here you have the option of submitting the URL for a website or for a blog or website feed. You’ll probably use the former, although if your site has an RSS feed, you can achieve better ongoing results by submitting the URL of the feed instead.

Submitting your site to Yahoo!.

Taking the simple approach, all you have to do is enter your website’s URL into the Submit a Website or Webpage box; make sure you include the http:// prefix. After entering your URL, click the Submit URL button, and you’re done.

Submitting Your Site to Windows Live Search

Google and Yahoo! are just two of the big three search engines; you should also submit your site to Windows Live Search. Go to http://search.msn.com.sg/docs/submit.aspx and enter your entire site URL into the box (including the http://) and then click the Submit URL button. As with the Google and Yahoo! submission services, Live Search’s MSNBot crawler will be instructed to crawl your site and index all the internal pages linked from your home page.

Submitting your site to Windows Live Search.

Submitting to Other Search Engines and Directories

Why stop at the big three? The web has a lot of other search engines and directories; even though none has the reach of Google, Yahoo!, or Live Search, they can still generate traffic to your site. The following table details how to submit to them.

Search Engine/Directory	Main URL	How to Submit
AlltheWeb	www.alltheweb.com	Submit atwww.alltheweb.com/help/webmaster/submit_site.
AltaVista	www.altavista.com	Submit at www.altavista.com/addurl/.
AOL Search	search.aol.com	Submit via Google (www.google.com/addurl/).
Ask.com	www.ask.com	Does not accept site submissions.
Best of the Web	www.botw.org	Paid submittal atwww.botw.org/helpcenter/submitcommercial.aspx.
Bing	www.bing.com	Submit atwww.bing.com/webmaster/SubmitSitePage.aspx
Gigablast	www.gigablast.com	Submit at www.gigablast.com/indexphp?subPage=addUrl&page=about&.
JoeAnt	www.joeant.com	Submit at www.joeant.com/suggest.html.
Open Directory	www.dmoz.org	Go to appropriate category page and click Suggest URL.
Starting Point	www.stpt.com	Paid submittal at www.stpt.com/directory/addsite.htm.
Wikia Search	search.wikia.com	Click the Add button on any relevant search results page.

Using Website Submittal Services

As easy as this site submittal process is, some webmasters prefer to offload the task to a site submittal service. These services let you enter your URL once and then submit your site to multiple search engines and directories; they handle all the details required by each search engine. Given that many of these services are free, it’s not a bad way to go.

Some of the more popular site submittal services include these:

• 1 2 3 Submit Pro (websitesubmit.hypermart.net)
• AddMe! (www.addme.com)
• AddPro.com (www.addpro.com)
• SubmitExpress (www.submitexpress.com)

Beware those services that charge a high fee for search engine submission—they don’t do anything that you can’t do yourself, for free.

Increasing your search optimization is key to driving traffic to you blog or website, and the process couldn’t be easier. Good luck, and happy searching!