Getting listed on search engines is not automatic when your site is live. There are 3 ways your site can get listed on search engines and directories:
- You submit your site to each individual search engine and/or directory. To do this, go to each search engine and/or directory and look for a link to submit your site.
- You hire a company to submit your site to search engines and/or directories. Companies that provide this service often have several ways of getting your site listed higher up. They also often have the option of signing you up to just a few search engine or hundreds or thousands of search engines and/or directories.
- Your site is randomly found by a spider or bot and indexed. Many major search engines and/or directories regularly send out a spider or bot to rove the internet and index sites not yet in their listing. There is no guarantee that your site will get listed this way.
Remember 85% of all website traffic comes from search engine results.
Improving Your Search Engine Ranking
There are many things you can do to improve the ranking of your site when people are doing searches on a search engine or directory. Two excellent sources of information are Top Rank SEO and Internet Marketing and SEO Book
Here is a summary of some things you can do to help your ranking:
Use important keywords in your text on your homepage. Use them near the beginning of your page and in the Titles.
Use important keywords frequently on your homepage. Note: Do not just repeat them one after another or the search engine will know you are trying to trick it. Use your keywords such that they flow with your page.
Try to get other sites to link to you. When many sites link to you, it tells the search engine you are a popular site. Note: You linking to other sites does not make a difference as anyone can just create links to any sites. Try joining web rings or clubs with similar sites to your own. Try to swap links with other sites in your market.
Add meta keywords and a meta description to your site.
If you have code like javascript or are using formatting like tables which require extra coding, do not put them on your homepage or make sure they are below wherever your important keywords in your content shows. This will keep your more important words near the top.
Use text to describe your content. Images are just seen as an image file. A search engine does not read any text that is within an image.
Do not spam search engines or try to trick them. This can result in your site being removed from their listing.
