URL submission
URL submission or search engine registration is necessary to get your site
indexed by the search engines so that they are aware that your site exists. URL
submission has no effect on page ranking other than if a page is unknown it
can't possibly be ranked.
Search engine optimization deals with page rankings or how to get the search
engines to recognize your page for relevance. To learn more about Google page
ranking click here.
For some search engines submission is free others charge and some like Yahoo
have both a free and fee paying options. Processing time for free submissions is
likely to be considerably longer than fee paying options. Either way submission
does not guarantee acceptance.
Search engines can be crawler based or human-powered or a combination. The
difference lies in how they gather their information. One uses robots
(technology), the other humans and the third a combination of both methods.
Crawler-based search engines
e.g. Google, Yahoo, Teoma, MSN Search, AltaVista, Inktomi
A crawler based search engine builds its index automatically with a robot
which "crawls" or "spiders" the internet for web pages and following links to
other pages. Each spidered page is copied for storage in the search engine
index.
When you search information on the web by querying a search engine it's the
page copies in the search engine index that are searched not the original web
pages which is why only pages included in the index can be accessed. Thus
if there is a time gap between page spidering and indexing, during the gap
the page will not be visible on the web.
Because of the method of operation of crawler based search engines you can
have multiple pages of a site indexed. Crawlers also return to pages on a
regular basis so changes to pages will be found and the index updated.
Crawler based search engines use algorithms or formulas to establish ranking
order. Each search engine has its own algorithm which is never made public so
search engine optimisation is based on assumptions. It is generally understood
that the important page elements include page titles, body text, keyword density
and links.
Meta tags are the bits of HTML code that you find near the top of any web
page source code. They don't affect the display of the page in any way but they
do provide valuable information to the crawlers about the page contents and
relevancy. The Title and Description are particularly important.
Crawlers read the site information and follow the links that the site
connects to, so good links particularly from your site are likely to improve
rankings. The location and frequency of keywords also plays a part.
Human-powered search engines
e.g. Open Directory, Yahoo directory
Human-powered search engines are known as directories. They wait for you
(humans) to inform them of your sites existence and only then do they
investigate and decide whether the site warrants inclusion in their index.
You submit a short description of your site to the directory or
editors write one for sites they review. Human editors have total
control over your submission and can rewrite it or edit it as they see
fit. They draw up an index for the directory from these descriptions and
organize it by subject and category. A search looks for matches in the
indexed descriptions.
Each directory has its own rules and regulations for submission which
you must follow. Unlike crawler-based search engines, directory entries
are not revisited so changing your web pages will has no effect on your
listing. Quality content is of paramount importance for acceptance into
directories.
The Open Directory is probably the best
known human-powered search engine. Submission is free but as it is
maintained by volunteers processing can be slow. However being listed
exposes your site to a wide audience and increases the likelihood of being
found, via links, by crawler-based search engines so its well worth the
effort.
Yahoo has both a crawler search engine and an independent human-powered
directory. The Yahoo directory is a subject-based directory listing web sites in
a wide range of topics. To see the difference look at an ordinary
Yahoo search (crawler) and
Yahoo directory. A query on the directory will return a list from the related directory
categories whereas the same query on yahoo crawler will return Search
results from the web.
Meta Search Engines
e.g. Dogpile
Meta search engines allow you to query multiple search engines
simultaneously for the search results. Metacrawlers do not
maintain their own listings but query other search engines for results.
Do a query with Dogpile
and on the same page you will see results from Google, Yahoo, MSM,
LookSmart, Ask Jeeves, About as well as sponsored by results
(paid ads). You can also get the results per search engine separately.
How to submit to Search Engines
Submitting sites to search engines is not difficult but does take a bit of
time. There are hundreds are search engines available and how many you submit to
is up to you.
Either do a search on search engines and manually submit to each one
individually or use a service like Ineedhits which for a small fee will take care of it all for you.
There is a good piece of software WebPosition 4
available as a free trial which is well worth looking into for both URL
submission and SEO.