The current economic climate has changed many human goals and dreams. Many years ago our greatest dream was to own our own home, the focus now is for long-term financial security. People are disillusioned with working like slaves, struggling to make ends meet while company CEO's and shareholders reap the benefits of their hard work. Many people are turning to the internet as an additional or alternative source of income which they can pursue from the comfort of their own home by providing products and services to a worldwide market. A common question for those who create their own website is, 'How do I get my website posted on a search engine?'
The fact is that the majority of websites listed in search engines have never been manually submitted. Rather, they have been found by search engines.
So how do search engines find new websites. There are two main ways that new websites are found. Firstly, there are many sites that search engines regularly search for new content. Major search engines love sites that are regularly updated with new content like blogger and WordPress. They also love article repositories like EzineArticles, and social media sites like digg, technorati and stumbleupon. These sites are indexed daily, sometimes several times per day. But if your site is privately hosted then you need to do something to point the search engines towards your website, which leads us to the second way that search engines find websites. The second way that search engines find websites is through external links to the site (ie. backlinks). When a search engine is aware of a site it regularly sends data collection robots to the site to check backlinks on related sites - The reason I suggest creating backlinks on related websites is because those links count toward Google pagerank. While having a Google pagerank doesn't improve your position in search results it will improve the reputation of your website which means that visitors will view it in a more favourable light. Many webmasters find they receive a dramatic increase in orders after attaining a Google pagerank. A brilliant tool for finding related websites where you can leave comments and backlinks is found at http://www.webconfs.com/backlink-builder.php Just enter your keywords and the tool will find related sites. Submit the site to online bookmarking services such as technorati, digg, stumbleupon or delicious. There are even tools that you can add to your site that will allow your visitors to do this for you. My personal favorite is found at http://www.addthis.com Of course, the more your visitors categorize and bookmark your site the more quality backlinks you will receive.
However, having your site indexed by search engines is only the first step in receiving traffic. Statistically speaking, only about 10% of searchers go beyond the first two pages of search results so if your listing happens to be on page 3 then very few searchers will ever find it. This is where SEO or search engine optimization becomes a factor. While many people new to internet marketing feel somewhat daunted by this term, there are actually many relatively simple ways that will improve your position in search results to where they will be noticed by searchers.
How Do I Get My Website Posted on a Search Engine? - An Introduction to SEO
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