You've probably heard about submitting your website to the search engines. There is an entire industry set up to automatically submit your URLS to hundreds, even thousands, of search engines every month. Some even tout hand submission of your websites to each search engine. My advice is don't fall for it. It's a waste of money. To understand why you have to know a little bit about how search engines work.

First of all, let's introduce the top search engines as of Tue, Jan 06, 2009. The top search engines are determined by the amount of potential TRAFFIC each search engine has to give to your website. Spend 100% of your efforts boosting your rankings on the search engines below:

• www.google.com - Google is the reigning king of search.
• www.yahoo.com - Yahoo is a worthy competitor. Yahoo now owns Overture.
• www.msn.com - MSN is one to watch closely. Well funded and the Netscape wars are a thing of the past.
• www.ask.com - Ask, Ask Jeeves, and Teoma is TBD.
• Complete Search Engines List

Pretty obvious so far. Now, how do you get into the "Search Engine Ranking Pages", aka the "SERPS"?

First things first, you need to develop a website that will do well in the search engines. If your new to this make sure you contact a professional SEO (Search Engine Optimizer) to steer you in the right direction. There's a lot to learn about search and it's best to spend your time focusing on your strengths. You may contact us or consult our Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Directory below to find an expert.

For those who prefer to do-it-yourself, when writing your website copy, think in terms of your customer. Don't get caught up in your own internal marketing lingo.

Research how customers are searching for your products or services on the Internet with our Choosing Search Keywords Resources.

Assuming you have a great website that is optimized on the proper search keywords, how do you get your website crawled by the best search engines? The answer is by placing your links on sites that are currently indexed by the search engines. Not by manually submitting your site to the individual search engines. Some say that search engines will penalize your website for manually submitting your site. Probably not, but if you want to be indexed as quickly as possible you'll need to place links to your website on POPULAR websites.

The best type of site to have your link on, in my opinion, is a site that is in constant flux, like a classified ads site, a press release site, or a current news site. Why? Because search engines need to remain current to be of value to the user. Search engines crawl web pages more frequently if the content on the web page constantly changes. This ensures that the search engines have an accurate snapshot of the entire web at any point in time.

One of my favorite sites you can use to get crawled quickly is Craigslist. Craigslist is a free classified ads site. Pretty much every major metropolitan area has it's own Craigslist classified portal. For instance, if you're a Real Estate Agent in San Diego, place your ad for free under San Diego Real Estate Services and you'll get your site crawled fairly quickly.

Of course, you can manually submit your URLS to the search engines. In fact, links are provided below for each Search Engine's URL Submission Page for your reference.

• Add your URL to Google
• Yahoo! Submit Your Site
• MSN Search URL Submission
• Ask Jeeves / Teoma No Longer Accepts URL Submissions. Read More Here.

Now that you've placed your links ("spider bait") on a popular website, you'll need to determine if your site has been crawled by the search engine bots. You'll need your web server log files handy for this.

To determine if you've been crawled by a search engine, view your log files for the website in question and search for the User Agents listed in the table below. If you have web tracking software, such as Urchin or WebTrends, search for the following User Agents.

SEARCH ENGINE BOTS INFORMATION: Jan 06, 2009

SEARCH ENGINE	USER AGENTS - Look for these hits on your web server log files	SEARCH ENGINE BOTS INFO
Google	Mozilla/5.0+(compatible;+Googlebot/2.1;++http://www.google.com/bot.html)	GoogleBot
Yahoo! Search	Mozilla/5.0+(compatible;+Yahoo!+Slurp;+http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/slurp)	Yahoo Bot
MSN Search	msnbot/1.0+(+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)	MSN Bot
Ask Jeeves / Teoma	Mozilla/2.0+(compatible;+Ask+Jeeves/Teoma;++http://sp.ask.com/docs/about/tech_crawling.html)	Ask Jeeves / Teoma Bot

Finally, here are some guidelines for improving your search engine rankings on the best search engines.

• Google Search Guidelines for Webmasters - Improve your Google Search Rankings!
• Yahoo Search Guidelines for Webmasters - Improve your Yahoo Search Rankings!
• MSN Search Guidelines for Webmasters - Improve your MSN Search Rankings!

I hope this basic Search Engine Optimization information helps. If you're serious about developing or promoting your website, contact us today.

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DESCRIPTION: How to submit your website to the search engines.
<a href="http://www.leadinternet.com/articles/search-engine-submission.html" ><b>Search Engine Submission</b></a> - How to submit your website to the search engines.