Submitting Your Site to Search Engines

This is really passe, for the most part. Still, many people think the way to get good search engine rankings is by submitting their site to the search engines. That's such a small part of getting your site ranked highly by Google et al, that I rarely even bother with it any more. Especially the ones that charge — in particular for smaller socially responsible businesses on a budget.

Having said that, it still doesn't hurt to submit to Google and Yahoo's free directories. Reason being that people can find your site by looking through the directory listings (as opposed to doing a regular automated search) and they provide links to your site.

Google's directory is hooked up to DMOZ's Open Directory Project. To get listed there, you need to suggest your site to the Open Directory. Sites are filtered out by actual humans, which is good in that the "riff raff" gets picked out. The bad news is that is can take quite a while (sometimes months) until your site gets listed. But, what do you expect for free? ;)

Yahoo's free directory works similarly. You need to suggest your site. Then wait. Unless you want to be in the paid Express submission.

In both cases, you suggest the specific category that your site should be considered for.

Again, don't put too much energy into these submissions. But, if you're a new, small socially responsible business, just starting out, with a new website, their a decent, free starting point. But, there are many other ways to get good rankings that you mustn't forget — see previous posts.