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The only one worth using is on MSN. Google and
Yahoo take for every to get around to manual submissions, and there are far
easier ways of getting into them. To find the MSN submission page, just search
for "submit MSN." Google
Google has really gone to great lengths to help
you get indexed. If you are updating your site frequently, you should use the
Google Sitemaps tool. The tool is free and gives Google a direct path for
visiting your site on a regular basis. If you don’t update that frequently,
there is an even easier method for getting indexed.
For Google, the simplest method is to go to
blogger.com and start a blog for your site. This blog platform is free. Just
start writing about anything you wish. Within your ramblings, create links to
pages on your sites. Since Google owns blogger.com, it will check the site every
few days and follow the links to your site. Once on your site, Google is pretty
good about indexing as many pages as possible.
Yahoo
The company tries to make money by charging you
to be listed in the Yahoo directory, a companion section to its search engine.
Depending on the type of site, this can run a couple hundred dollars a year with
no guarantee of even being ranked! Many sites bypass this process by trading
links with sites already in the Yahoo directory. Yahoo then follows said links
to your site and indexes it. The beauty of this approach, of course, is no money
comes out of your pocket.
Showing no shame, Yahoo has recently moved to
turn its search engine into one giant pay-per-click engine. This new program is
called "SiteMatch" and has met with a ton of controversy. Essentially, Yahoo
wants you to pay to submit each url of your site, with prices ranging from $49
for the first one to $29 and $15 for subsequent sub-domains depending on the
number of listings. As if that weren’t bad enough, Yahoo also is demanding that
you pay for each hit these pages get from organic listings! The cost per click
is either 30 or 15 cents depending on the type of site. In my humble opinion,
this is a disgraceful move by Yahoo, and I refuse to be held up. You can make
your own choice.
An alternative way to get listed in Yahoo is to
turn your blog into a news feed. You’ll need a free email account with Yahoo.
Take the blog you created for Google and go to a free feed converter site like
Feed Burner. Convert your blog into a news feed using the free service. This may
sound complex, but it is exceedingly simple once you are on the site.
When the site kicks out your feed domain, add
it to the My Yahoo page associated with your free Yahoo email account. Just go
to the My Yahoo page and click the "add content" button in the top left. Enter
your feed domain where indicated on the page that appears.
Next, go to a site like PingOMatic and ping the
various blog listing sites out there. My Yahoo is one such site. Eventually,
Yahoo will read the My Yahoo listings and follow the links in the blog to your
site. This doesn’t work as well as it used to, but it beats paying the SiteMatch
fees.
MSN
MSN is very good about hunting down sites. If
it hasn’t found yours, just go to the submit site page mentioned in the
"Submitting?" paragraph at the beginning of this article. Enter a url and MSN
will crawl it within a week or two.
Getting indexed in Google and MSN is fairly
easy if you follow these steps. As to Yahoo, you’ll have to evaluate whether you
want to be part of the shenanigans.
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