As we've stated before, there are thousands of search engines out there, but most of them are keyed off of the indexing that has been done by the six major engines: Yahoo!, Google, MSN Search, AskJeeves (Teoma), DMOZ (Open Directory), Terra/Lycos, and LookSmart.

To reiterate, make sure that your site is ready for the public eye before you submit to any of the search engines. Also realize that submitting your site merely starts the process of getting listed. It can take weeks or months for the engine to index your site. Why? Several reasons, but just think of the size of the web and how many other people are submitting sites! Fortunately, for the time-conscious, there are for-pay avenues on some of the engines that will expedite your listing.

The best way to get indexed quickly is to seek links on related sites. Competition among the top search engines creates a need for them to output the most up-to-date content they can find. Therefore, their spiders revisit sites often. If you recall in a previous section of this document how spiders work, then you know that they will follow all of the links from a site to seek new content on the Web.

If you are on a tight budget and also need to get indexed quickly, consider running a month's worth of Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising on Google or Overture. The hope is that during the month the search engines spiders will find your link and index your site.

First thing that you should check out is whether you currently have any pages indexed with the search engines. Do this by visiting the engines listed below and typing in "site:www.yourdomainname.com" or your domain name on AskJeeves.

Once ready, hand submit your web site to the following search engines:

• Yahoo! – http://www.yahoo.com
  Locate the proper category and then click "Suggest a Site"
  Yahoo! Express ($): https://ecom.yahoo.com/dir/express/intro
• Google – http://www.google.com/addurl.html
• MSN Search – http://beta.search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx
• Acoona – http://www.accoona.com/public/submit_website.jsp
• DMOZ (Open Directory) – http://dmoz.org/add.html
  Note: If your site is not present in DMOZ after three weeks, then resubmit it.
• Terra/Lycos – http://www.lycos.com
  Locate the proper category and then click "Submit Your Site"
• ExactSeek – http://www.exactseek.com/add.html
  

When the day comes and you are finally indexed in the search engines, you can use the following sites to monitor your position (which is much easier than trying to find your listing amidst the tons of other sites in your category):

• www.rankwhere.com
• Google positions can be watched at:
  www.cleverstat.com/google-monitor-query.htm
  www.googlerankings.com

See also:
Search Engines 101 (Part 1): Building a Search Engine Friendly Site
Search Engines 101 (Part 2): Creating Your Meta Tag Keywords and Description

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