How to Submit a Web Site to Web Search Engines and Directories - A Concise
Guide
Search Engines Information Sources
Although there are many popular search engines, the
information sources that they use are relatively few. These are the main
information sources:
dmoz.org - A free directory, built with the spirit of the Open
Source movement. Thousands of volunteers edit the directory. The
information in this directory is eventually used by many prime time directories:
AOL Search, AltaVista, HotBot, Google, Lycos, Netscape Search, Direct Hit, etc. To add your site, search the appropriate
category at http://dmoz.org and click submit a
site.
Google.com - The most popular spider on the web, used by
Yahoo!, Netscape and others. It will find your web site on it's own. It
reindexes web sites at least once a month.
Inktomi - a spider and automated directory database used
by AOL, MSN, iWon, HotBot, LookSmart, NBCi
Alltheweb.com - this spider (Fast's Internet search
technology) is used by Lycos and LookSmart. To submit your web site to be
included by this spider go to http://www.alltheweb.com/add_url.php
Overture (formerly Go.com) - All listings in this web
directory are paid for. To get listed you determine how much you are willing to
pay to be listed on a specific search phrase. The information is used by Yahoo,
Ask Jeeves, AltaVista, Netscape, MSN and others
Teoma (DirectHit) - spider that is used among others by
msn.com and ask.com
List of Major Search Engines and How to Get Listed in them
Yahoo.com - Search on Yahoo! the category that best
fits your web site. At the bottom of the search results page there is
a link 'suggest a site'. To get listed on selected categories you are required
to pay an annual fee of about US$ 299.
LookSmart - A directory used by MSN, Excite@Home, AltaVista and more. Only paid
submissions are accepted.
MSN - Uses information from Inktomi (spider), LookSmart
(directory) and DirectHit.
Netscape - Uses information from Google and dmoz.org. Listing
from dmoz.org (the Open Directory) appear first.
Go.com - No free submissions.
HotBot
WebCrawler
CNN - Uses LookSmart
Dogpile - a meta search engine
Finding the Best Keywords
Overture formerly
Go.com has a nice utility - Search Term
Suggestion Tool, that can give you a sense, which keywords are used in
searches more often. For example, we want to determine which words to include in
a title of a web site, Ultra Wideband, where wideband is written as
one word or Ultra Wide Band where Wide Band is written as two words. Using
Overtue, we see that Ultra Wide Band has been looked for 1259 times (in the
context of UWB) whereas Ultra Wideband has been searched for only 677
times.
Results from Overture's Search Term Suggestion
Tool
Paying to Get Listed
According to your budget, we recommend the following options,
roughly at the order of their importance:
Inktomi - US$ 39.95 per year. This spider and automated
directory is used by many important web sites. The most important of them is
msn.com.
LookSmart network - Also used by msn. This is a human edited
directory. It costs US$ 50 to get listed.
Yahoo! - some categories at Yahoo! requires a fee, about US$
299 per year depending on the category. The disadvantage is that using this
option is very expensive.
Guidelines for Improving Your Web Site Ranking
Have the most important keyword in your domain
name
Have the keywords in titles (HTML H1, H2, etc.
tags)
Have a relevant content at your web site
Have as many important web sites with links to
you
Put the keywords on the Keywords meta tag at your web site.
Note that some search engines ignore this meta tag, including
Google.