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As soon as you register your domain name, submit it to Google!
Even if you haven’t built your site, or written any copy, or even thought
about your content, submit your domain name to Google. In fact, even if you
haven’t fully articulated your business plan and marketing plan, submit
your domain name to Google.
Don’t wait!
There are two reasons for this. Firstly, getting on the search engines has
always taken a long time for a new site. Even assuming you do everything right,
it takes months before your site is even indexed, and more months before it
starts to rank well. As a rule of thumb, never expect to rank highly within
6 months of submitting your site to Google.
The second reason is a recent phenomenon called ‘Google Sandbox’.
Many SEO experts believe that Google ‘sandboxes’ new websites. Whenever
it detects a new website, it withholds its rightful ranking for a period while
it determines whether your site is a genuine, credible, long term site. It does
this to discourage the creation of SPAM websites (sites which serve no useful
purpose other than to boost the ranking of some other site).
By submitting your domain name to Google as soon as you register it, you’re
establishing a site history even if the site has no content. By the time you’ve
built your site, written your copy, and developed the rest of your content (and
written your business and marketing plans), Google will probably see no need
to sandbox you.
If you wait until launch day to submit your site, you’ll spend a month
or two (maybe more) sitting in the sandbox watching potential customers spend
their money elsewhere.
How to submit your site to Google
Don’t waste money by paying someone else to submit your site to Google.
It’s easy!
Simply go to http://www.google.com.au/addurl.html, enter your URL (domain name)
and a few comments or keywords to describe your site. Then click ‘Submit’.
That’s all there is to it. You only have to do it once, and only for your
top level page (i.e. Home page).
Google’s robots will then crawl your website the next time they’re
out and about. Of course, they don’t guarantee that you’ll be included
in their results.
IMPORTANT: As mentioned above, it takes quite a while for your site to appear
in the search engines. This is partly because the search engines are big and
slow – especially when it comes to new sites. It will take a minimum of
6-8 weeks before your site is indexed.
How to submit your site to other search engines
There are hundreds of search engines on the Internet. It’s a lucrative
business, after all! But don’t panic; studies suggest that the top 11 search
engines account for about 90% of web traffic. In other words, if you have the
top 11 covered, there’s no need to submit to the rest.
What’s more, at the time of writing, most of the top 11 don’t actually
accept submissions. The only ones that do are Google (described above), Yahoo,
and MSN. Here’s a list of the available submit pages.
Yahoo – http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html (offers free submission)
MSN – http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx?FORM=WSDD2 (offers free submission)
Alta Vista – covered by Yahoo submission
Netscape – covered by Google submission
Fast / All the Web – covered by Yahoo submission
Ask Jeeves / Teoma – at date of writing was not accepting new submissions
Hotbot – at date of writing was not accepting new submissions
Lycos – at date of writing was not accepting new submissions
AOL – at date of writing was not accepting new submissions
Looksmart – at date of writing was not accepting new submissions
TIP: My SEO copywriting and advertising copywriting website http://www.divinewrite.com
reached page 1 of Google.com for my primary keyword, "copywriter",
without a dollar being spent on search engine submission. I only ever submitted
my site to the engines that offer free submission.
Do I need to submit my site to other search engines?
As a rule, no.
With an estimated 8.8 billion pages indexed (approximately 76% of the Internet),
Google is number 1 when it comes to search engines. It’s argued that once
Google has indexed your site, the other search engines will follow. Theoretically,
you don’t actually need to submit your site to Google either because it’s
always on the lookout for new content and will eventually find your site of
its own accord. Google actually states, "Given the large number of sites
submitting URLs, it's likely your pages will be found in an automatic crawl
before they make it into our index through the URL submission form." ("Google
Information for Webmasters" - http://www.google.com.au/webmasters/1.html#A1)
Personally, I wouldn’t like to take the risk.)
Having said that, it certainly doesn’t hurt to submit your site to other
search engines (especially if you haven’t developed any content for it
yet).
Conclusion
You don’t need to be an SEO expert or an SEO copywriter to submit your
site to Google and the other search engines. And you don’t need to pay
anything to do it. You just need to do it. And if your domain name is new, you
need to do it NOW!
Happy submitting!
About the Author:
Glenn Murray is an advertising copywriter and search engine (SEO) copywriter
and heads copywriting studio Divine Write. He can be contacted on Sydney +612
4334 6222 or at mailto:glenn@divinewrite.com. Visit http://www.divinewrite.com
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