Site Submission Refresher Checklist

By Joelene Wickens Orlando
Posted Saturday, June 26, 2004

Let’s talk about why search engine placement is important and to help you
evaluate how well your website is actually doing based on your previous submissions.
First of all, site submission is the process of implementing your site to a search
engine or a number of search engines. Generally there is a form that you complete
telling the search engine’s spider to visit and index the site you are submitting.
Submitting your site to various search engines greatly improves the likelihood
that it will appear in the search results when people are surfing looking for
specific information such as yours. The question is, how do you know when it’s
time to re-submit to those same search engines and why you should consider doing
so.

Even if your site has been submitted and it’s been out there for a while,
there are instances where you may need to resubmit again. Especially if you’ve
made changes to your actual web site, any pages within that website, content
changes and if you’re looking for an improved ranking for your site would
qualify for resubmitting. To get the best possible results for your website
in terms of submitting and getting the attention that it deserves, follow through
this refresher checklist to see if you’re on target.

Are you optimized?

Before you even consider submitting your site to various search engines, your
website should be fully optimized. What that means is that every search engine
has their own criteria and formula in how websites get ranked. In order to
optimize and propel the success of your site when it’s submitted, you
need to look at your site’s HTML code or modify your site’s HTML
before you submit. What’s even more important is to get all the information
from each search engine you plan to submit to and fully understand as well
as comply to every demand they require before you resubmit your website is
the way to guarantee a successful submission. No short cuts or half-baked
efforts are acceptable.

Still not sure exactly what optimization is all about? Click here to get more
solid facts about optimization.

How and where do I submit?

Top search engines have their own standards. Like I previously stated, you
need to be familiar with each and every one of the search engines you plan
to submit to. Each and every search engine will be different, so be prepared
to submit each website differently. To get started, you probably can find
that particular search engine’s home page to get the information you
need to submit your site. Look for labels such as, “Suggest a URL”
or “Add my site”. Keep record of the date, time and outcome of
each of your submissions so you can keep track of where and when you did the
submissions. Keep this information on standby at all times since you may need
to have this data to send follow-up emails to a search engine’s staff.
The next question is; where should I submit my website? If you want to get
noticed and successfully generate traffic to your site, you should plan on
implementing your website to a minimum of 15 major top search engines. Since
those top search engines are responsible for about 90% of the traffic, so
go with those specific search engines.

How long before I see my website in the search
engines?

That all depends on which search engines you submit to. To give you a very
general idea on how long it takes to get submitted, here are some time frames from the top search engines

MSN -- 2 Months
Google -- Up to 4 Weeks
Alta Vista -- Up to 1 Week
Fast -- Up to 2 Weeks
Excite -- Up to 6 Weeks
AOL -- Up to 2 Months
HotBot -- Up to 2 Months
iWon -- Up to 2 Months

The basics of site submission have been addressed and the major research needs
to be done by you depending on which search engines you decide to go with. Don’t
miss any steps and if you have any questions, take advantage of using customer
service to get those right answers before you submit your website to those search
engines. If you don’t do it right the first time around, it won’t
get submitted. Use that time preciously to make sure you have all your bases
covered. Hopefully your rankings will show improvement this time around.

About the Author
Get free emarketing resources and online promotion tools at (www.emarketinganswers.com)

Joelene Orlando is a Web enthusiast and a staff writer/consultant for eMarketingAnswers.com with a broad knowledge of topics covering Internet marketing and communication strategies for small business owners. You are free to reprint this article in your web site, newsletter, e-zine or ebook. However, please keep the author’s section at the bottom of the article as is.