Summary:
As soon as you register your domain name, submit it to Google! Even if you havenít built your site, or written an copy, or even thought about your content, submit your domain name to Google. In fact, even if you havenít fully articulated your business plan and marketing plan, submit your domain name to Google.

As soon as you register your domain name, submit it to Google!

Even if you havenít built your site, or written an copy, or even thought about your content, submit your domain name to Google. In fact, even if you havenít fully articulated your business plan and marketing plan, submit your domain name to Google.

Donít 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 ëGoogle Sandboxí. Many SEO experts believe that Google ësandboxesí 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, youíre establishing a site history even if the site has no content. By the time youíve 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, youíll 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

Donít waste money by paying someone else to submit your site to Google. Itís 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 ëSubmití. Thatís all there is to it. You only have to do it once, and only for your top level page (i.e. Home page).

Googleís robots will then crawl your website the next time theyíre out and about. Of course, they donít guarantee that youíll 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 ñ 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. Itís a lucrative business, after all! But donít 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, thereís no need to submit to the rest.

Whatís more, at the time of writing, most of the top 11 donít actually accept submissions. The only ones that do are Google (described above), Yahoo, and MSN. Hereís a list of the available submit pages.

ï Yahoo ñ http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html (offers free submission)
ï MSN ñ http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx?FORM=WSDD2 (offers free submission)
ï Alta Vista ñ covered by Yahoo submission
ï Netscape ñ covered by Google submission
ï Fast / All the Web ñ covered by Yahoo submission
ï Ask Jeeves / Teoma ñ at date of writing was not accepting new submissions
ï Hotbot ñ at date of writing was not accepting new submissions
ï Lycos ñ at date of writing was not accepting new submissions
ï AOL ñ at date of writing was not accepting new submissions
ï Looksmart ñ 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, ìcopywriterî, 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. Itís argued that once Google has indexed your site, the other search engines will follow. Theoretically, you donít actually need to submit your site to Google either because itís always on the lookout for new content and will eventually find your site of its own accord. Google actually states, ìGiven 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.î (ìGoogle Information for Webmastersî – http://www.google.com.au/webmasters/1.html#A1) Personally, I wouldnít like to take the risk.)

Having said that, it certainly doesnít hurt to submit your site to other search engines (especially if you havenít developed any content for it yet).

Conclusion

You donít need to be an SEO expert or an SEO copywriter to submit your site to Google and the other search engines. And you donít 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!