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How to Be Ready to Submit Your Website
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This is it! The big event you’ve been working towards! You’re going to finally submit
your fantastic web site to Yahoo or one of the other search engines or directories. But
have you checked your check list? Take a look at ours and compare before promoting your site.
Is your site done? No broken links, no under construction pages,
misspelled words or missing graphics. Make sure all your i’s are dotted before
submitting your master piece. If an indexer for a directory sees that your site
has problems they will toss it aside and move on to their next submission. All
that hard work will be for not.
Prepare a cheat sheet. When you go to a directory to submit your
site have a few things ready in a word doc so you can cut and paste the information
they request. This list should have your site and or company name, a descriptive title of no more
than 60 characters, the proper URL you are listing, 8-10 keywords that you have carefully researched
as well as 10-20 others and a short description of no more than 150 character that tells exactly what
your site has to offer. This will avoid deadly misspellings and assure that your description is
consistent on every submission.
Know your category. In preparation use a separate browser
window and have your chosen category page on it as you fill out the submission in a
separate window. This can be the most important part because most directories will
lock you into their database in your chosen category and if you make a mistake it
may be very hard to change later. Checking to see where your competition is listed
is usually a good place to start when choosing a category. Also, keeping a detailed
list of which sites you list with and which categories will be vital in the
follow up.
Follow-up! Typically it can take up to three months to get listed
so be patient. After that time has passed look back over your list and revisit
those sites. If you aren’t listed then resubmit once more and check back again
in two or three months. Don’t spam the site, it won’t help your cause. Also keep
an eye on your log files or invest in a web site analysis service so you can see
if you are receiving traffic from your listings.
It’s six months later and by now you’re swimming in traffic.
Ok, maybe wading, but your site is growing in popularity and probably in size.
You decide that some of your original pages need to be removed to make way for
the new ones or because they are no longer relevant to your site. Well stop! If
at all possible use the same URL’s, just change the content or at least put a
redirect on the page so the visitor is instead taken to your home page. Don’t tear
down pages that are categorized with a directory or search engine. If a prospective
visitor clicks on your link and finds the page missing you have missed out and
all your hard work to submit them wasted.
Ok, now you’re ready to submit that sparkling new web site of yours.
You can also review these resources:
Scrub The Web
The biggest mistake submitter's make is submitting a Web page that is not search engine friendly.
Check your Meta tags here before you submit your site.
Addme.com
Add Me! lets you do a web site submission to the top 14 search engines and directories for free.
Yahoo.com Submit
This is the big one. Be sure you have your information ready and done correctly so your first
submission is accepted with flying colors.
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