How Websites Get Into the Search Engines

Finding new customers is key to every business. Having prospects magically appear via your website is a marketing dream come true. Unfortunately, it is only a dream for most business owners, who do not get prospects from search engine traffic. If you are interested in making the dream a reality, the first step is getting your site listed in the search engines.

Search Engines vs. Directories

Many people do not realize that there are two main ways that websites get into the lists that appear to web searchers. What is technically a "search engine" has programs, called "spiders," which automatically crawl through the web, link by link, indexing all the text they find. The most popular example of a search engine is Google.

A directory, on the other hand, has human editors that review websites and include them in their listing if they meet their editorial guidelines. The most popular example of a directory is Yahoo. While most people don't need to recognize this distinction, it's important to understand it when you want to get listed.

Submitting Your Site

Both search engines and directories typically have "add this site" or "submit a URL" forms that you can fill out to request that your site be added to their listing. Sometimes you have to look around for it, but it's typically found via a link from the search engine/directory's home or help pages. For example, Google's is Google.com/addurl.html.

While most search engine listings are free, many directories charge for adding your site. Whether or not you should pay for a listing depends on your marketing strategy and budget, but a few considerations are:

1. how much traffic the site receives and whether there is there a good match between their visitor profile and your target market
2. how much control you have over your listing--do you have the ability to make your ad stand out from the rest?

But before you type in your site information into any "add this site" form, be sure to look for any published guidelines for submissions. For example, Google's guidelines can be found at Google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html. Violating the guidelines can get your site's page rankings downgraded, or worse, get your site banned from the listing altogether.

Links From Other Sites

Some people never submit their sites directly to any search engines/directories and get listed anyway. How? Through links from other websites. Because search engine spiders are continuously crawling the web, links to your site will be found by the spiders and used to index your site. As a matter of fact, getting a link from another site can get you in a search engine like Google faster than submitting your site through their "add this site" form.

There is also a lot of crossover between the main search engines and directories. Getting picked up by a search engine can also get you an automatic listing in a directory and vice versa. There's a great map that shows the major search engines/directories and their relationships at BruceClay.com/searchenginechart.pdf. It can help you identify where you might like to submit your site.

Whether your site is added to search engine listings by people or programs, it does get you into the search engine game. Getting hits via the search engines is another matter, however. How to obtain a higher ranking in the engines will be a topic for a future newsletter.