How about using submission services? Do you submit and promote my site to search engines?

We do not offer any submission services. In fact, we strongly suggest that you do not primarily rely upon any of the free or commercial submission services that promise to submit your site to hundreds of search engines.

One excellent source of information for Search Engine submission and promotion is NetVisitors.com.

In reality, there are only about 10 search engines and directories that really count. Some of those are: Yahoo!, Exite, Altavista, Lycos, Infoseek, Hotbot, AOL Netfind, WebCrawler. Each of these directories and search engines have their own unique way to index web sites. Check it out for yourself: do a search on the same keyword on a few of the aforementioned search services. Notice how different the results are? Some, like Yahoo! use real live humans to index sites, while others rely upon "spiders". Some "spiders" will follow all links on your site and index all pages, while others only check for meta tags.

To add to the confusion, search engines continuously modify and refine their indexing methods. The indexing method one search engine uses this week may be radically different from the one employed last week. For a good review on the status of current indexing methods used by the major search engines, be sure to visit searchenginewatch.com.

Needless to say that the "one size fits all" approach used by submission services yields disappointing results. Even worse, the most that these services often submit is a generic description of your site, similar to hundreds they have submitted before. The end result is that your site will be listed at the bottom of the list, or worse, in the wrong category.

The best way to promote your site with the search engines and directories is to submit your site yourself to each directory or engine separately. Before you submit, however, try to learn as much about the search engine you are considering. Check where your competitors are listed. What keywords they are listed under and in what position their appear? How does the search engine index? Be sure to add the right keywords in meta tags on your pages! Admittedly, this is a very laborious process, but since search engines generate so much traffic, you cannot afford not to spend some time on this.

Once you have indexed your sites with the "majors", then you can use those submission services to submit your listing to the minor search engines and directories.