The Search Engine Directory

You could have the best website in the world but without visitors, your site is nothing or you can’t sell anything or won't earn any commission if that is the purpose. How are we going to get traffic to our sites? We can get our visitors from all around the world in several ways but first of all you must have a good web page to start with.

It is found by surveys that when surfers want to find a website for information or customers want to buy a product or service, they will find their site in one of the following ways:

• The first option is they find their site through a search engine.
• Secondly they find their site by clicking on a link from another website or page that relates to the topic in which they are interested in.
• Occasionally, they find a site by hearing about it from a friend or reading in an article.

So now, let surfers know your sites' existence by submitting them to established search engine. It is the search engines that could bring your website to the notice of the prospective customers. When a keyword is typed for search, almost instantly, the search engine will sift through the millions of pages it has indexed about and present you with ones that match your keyword. The searched matches are also ranked, so that the most relevant ones come first.

Google

Google is a search engine that maintains its own spider based index. Google also has a directory that is powered by the Open Directory (DMOZ - Open Directory Project ). Dmoz means Directory Mozilla. It is run by a volunteer group across the globe and is one of the most important directories that you should consider when you want your web site to be listed in. Dmoz is the only major directory that is free. There will never be a cost if you will get listed. This is because it was made to be free for anyone who will be agreeable to its license and conditions. However, the sites within the directory are ranked according to Google's link popularity technology. Google spiders the web to maintain its index, with emphasis on content and link popularity. One factor that determines your rank on Google is the number of links that point to your site, the quality (popularity) of the sites that link to your site, the text in and around the links that point to your site, and who you link to. Google's web crawler only views the visible text on your page. The Meta description and keywords have little influence on Google's rankings. Google has become aggressive when it comes to elimination of spam. To be listed in Google's directory, you should submit your site to the Open Directory.Well known search engines as Google, AOL Search, AltaVista, HotBot, Lycos, Netscape Search etc. use data from the Open Directory. Once your site has been accepted into the Open Directory, it may take anywhere from 2 weeks to several months for your site to be listed on partner sites which use the Open Directory data. Open Directory make updates of the data available weekly, but each partner has their own update schedule.

For free submission to Google search engine add your URL here.

Yahoo! 

Submit you sites to Yahoo! Directory. However you have to register to Yahoo! account first. First you have to find an appropriate category for you site. For most non-commercial sites suggested, Yahoo! cannot guarantee a timely consideration for approval of the site. You may also submit your site and your site feed to Yahoo! Search Site Explorer at the same time. Yahoo! crawler will extract links and find pages and remove dead links on an ongoing basis. After submitting, it needs to be authenticated by uploading the given verification file or by adding the given Meta tag with the authentication key to our site for validation within 24hours.

MSN

Generally MSN web crawler, MSNBot, can find most pages on the Internet. However if your site does not appear on Live Search, you may submit the address (URL) here.

Live Search website ranking is completely automated. The Live Search ranking algorithm analyzes factors such as webpage content, the number and quality of websites that link to your webpages, and the relevance of your website’s content to keywords. The algorithm is complex and is never human-mediated. You can't pay to boost your website’s relevance ranking. However, Live Search does offer advertising options for website owners.

Sometimes it will take a few months before your web site will show up in the directory. Just be patient and there is no need to resubmit your website as this may just pose a delay in the overall process.

Good Luck.