Search Engine Submission

Hi Pam,

Sorry if I am slow in responding, I'm on the digest.

>Do any of you submit to a search engine?  Have you found it benefitial?
What are the pitfalls I should consider in my decision as to taking the
time to submit to all the various search engines?

There are many search engines requiring a special code or password 
before submission now to prevent submissions by automated programs so 
it's better to do it manually.

First of all I would optimize your site to be accepted by Google. 
Look at their guidelines--they will be suitable enough for most any 
engine/directory. If you can get into Google you will get into many 
other engines/directories because it feeds so many of them. By paying 
attention to their guidelines most of my clients do quite well for 
their main keywords without paying for a fee.

My major pitfall:
I used to get quite good responses for my web clients within a month 
or two (300-400 hits per week) until DMOZ/ODP went bad--I haven't 
gotten a site listed with them for about 6 months now and for a long 
time the submission form didn't work.

If you don't get into DMOZ/ODP then you won't get into Google's 
directory and a multitude of other directories fed by DMOZ/ODP. So, 
besides designing  sites to be accepted by Google, that is the main 
focus for me. Then I post my sites in other major engines that don't 
charge a fee and directories in the special category of the website 
in question (these can be easily found in Google's directory).

DMOZ./ODP have reportedly upgraded their servers recently and I was 
albe to submit several of my clients to them (in the wee hours of the 
morning--Pacific time when bandwidth is low) but it will still take 
several weeks before they are accepted and found in their directory 
and then more weeks/months before a site is found in other 
directories that DMOZ/ODP feeds. It's a slow process but it's free.

If the site is non-commercial try submitting to Zeal (you have to 
become a member and take a test but worth it). One of my non-profit 
clients got 800 hits per month from MSN soon as they were accepted by 
Zeal.

For Commercial sites, you may have to pay for listing to get enough hits.

take care
Lori Eldridge
www.loriswebs.com

HTML: hwg-basics mailing list archives, maintained by Webmasters @ IWA