How and when should I submit my website to Google?
By Glenn Murray | Advertising
Copywriter & SEO
Copywriter *
As soon as you register your domain name, submit
it to Google!
Even if you haven’t built your site, or written
an copy, or even thought about your content, submit
your domain name to Google. In fact, even if you haven’t
fully articulated your business plan and marketing plan,
submit your domain name to Google.
Don’t 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 ‘Google
Sandbox’. Many SEO experts believe that Google
‘sandboxes’ 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, you’re establishing a site history
even if the site has no content. By the time you’ve
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, you’ll
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
Don’t waste money by paying someone else to submit
your site to Google. It’s 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 ‘Submit’.
That’s all there is to it. You only have to do
it once, and only for your top level page (i.e. Home
page).
Google’s robots will then crawl your website the
next time they’re out and about. Of course, they
don’t guarantee that you’ll 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 – 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.
It’s a lucrative business, after all! But don’t
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, there’s no need
to submit to the rest.
What’s more, at the time of writing, most of the
top 11 don’t actually accept submissions. The only
ones that do are Google (described above), Yahoo, and
MSN. Here’s a list of the available submit pages.
- Yahoo – http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html
(offers free submission)
- MSN – http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx?FORM=WSDD2
(offers free submission)
- Alta Vista – covered by Yahoo submission
- Netscape – covered by Google submission
- Fast / All the Web – covered by Yahoo submission
- Ask Jeeves / Teoma – at date of writing was
not accepting new submissions
- Hotbot – at date of writing was not accepting
new submissions
- Lycos – at date of writing was not accepting
new submissions
- AOL – at date of writing was not accepting
new submissions
- Looksmart – 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,
“copywriter”, 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. It’s argued that once Google
has indexed your site, the other search engines will
follow. Theoretically, you don’t actually need
to submit your site to Google either because it’s
always on the lookout for new content and will eventually
find your site of its own accord. Google actually states,
“Given 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.” (“Google Information
for Webmasters” - http://www.google.com.au/webmasters/1.html#A1)
Personally, I wouldn’t like to take the risk.)
Having said that, it certainly doesn’t hurt to
submit your site to other search engines (especially
if you haven’t developed any content for it yet).
Conclusion
You don’t need to be an SEO expert or an SEO copywriter
to submit your site to Google and the other search engines.
And you don’t 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!
* Glenn Murray is a search engine (SEO) copywriter and advertising copywriter and heads copywriting studio Divine Write. He can be contacted on Sydney +612 4334 6222 or at glenn@divinewrite.com
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