Website Positioning and Search Engine Ranking. Tutorial 1: Website Submission
 by: Victoria Powell

This is the first in a series of tutorials designed to assit you improve your website positioning and search engine ranking in top search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN. In this tutorial we will be looking at website submission which includes the correct way to perform manual website submission, website submission to targeted catagories, reciprocal linking and avoiding website submission mistakes which could harm your website position in search engine ranking.

Website submission is, at its name implies, submission of your website to search engines and directories in order for your website to be easily found by targeted internet users. You can use various techniques to submit your website to search engines which will assist in you achieving high search engine ranking in top search engines. We will concentrate on three positive website submission methods: Manual website submission, Automanted website submission and One way linking to targeted websites and search engines.

Manual Website Submission.

Manual website submission consists of you contacting search engines and directories, directly and including your website URL into the human editors or robots crawl bank. Manual website submission is generally the only form of website submission acceptable to top search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN for you to be included in their search engines. Directories such as DMOZ and Zeal also rely on manual website submission in order for their editors to view and possibly list your website in their pages.

Each search engine and directory has their own specifications for manual website submission. MSN and Yahoo require you only to input your website URL, while Google asks you also to include some keywords relevant to your website (we will look at keywords directly in tutorial 3).

Directory submission is a little different to search engine submission in that a number of concise details are needed in order for successful inclusion into their pages. DMOZ requires a brief description of your website when submitting and Zeal asks for both content and keywords when applying a manual submission. When submitting your website into directories, it is vital that you chose a catagory relevant to your website's content in order to even be considered for inclusion. It is best to research the directory subjects until you find the absolute perfect catagory for your website. For example, if your website offers a specific service in a specific region, let us say a florist in South London, find a catagory which details your service and location such as : "Regional: Europe: United Kingdom: Business and Economy: Agriculture and Forestry: Horticulture: Flowers and Floristry" rather than "Shopping: Flowers: Florist". Once you have found your targeted catagory you now need to submit your website for the human editors to review. When submitting your website description, be very specific of your content and keep in mind the catagory you are submitting to. Using our example site, a good description would be "London florist stocking flowers for all occassions. Floral gift baskets and arrangments for weddings, anniversaries and special holidays." Do not fall into the trap of using the description to list all keywords, just focus on one or two targeted keywords and do not be repetative. Your manual website submission description needs to be in full and flowing sentences rather than a list of terms. DMOZ is harsh and long in its website inclusion process after manual website submission. They offer no feedback and you can expect to wait from months to years to see your website listed in their directory. Also, if your domain has been owned previously and has been black listed by DMOZ prior to you owning your website domain, do not expect to see your website in there after you have manually submitted your website to them.

It is not a good idea to spam search engines with multiple manual website submissions. If you have searched for your website domain name after website submission and have not seen your website listed with a detailed description of your website after a period of three months, you may submit your website again to DMOZ, Google, Yahoo and MSN. If you see that your website has not been included into top search engines or directories such as Google, Yahoo, DMOZ and MSN after three attempted website submissions (3 attempts in 9 months), you might want to email the search engine representative or editor directly and ask if your website is in the robot crawl bank and why it has not been included into their search engine.

Remember, always submit your homepage to the search engines first. Also make sure you have links to your internal web pages on your home page. Robots will then crawl and list your whole site in search catagories relevant to each page. Once your homepage has been listed, then attempt to manually submit your inside pages.

Automated Website Submission.

Automated website submission has gotten a bad name lately, due mainly to spamming websites into inappropraite submission catagories. Automated website submission consists of the website owner using a program to mass submit their websites to a vast number of search engines, listings and directories. Despite the negative press, automated submission is not a bad idea to get your website listed and build search engine listings and website positioning.

If you decide to use an automated website submission program be sure to remember to look through the list of search engines it submits your website to and click off, or mark as submitted, to top search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN as these search engines will look negatively on your website if you attempt to submit your website to them by such means. Try not to submit your website to Free For All links or obvious doorway page links as these are being targeted by top search engines for elimination in organic search results.

Choose targeted search engines relevant to your website content when using automated website submission and remember to resubmit your website on a regular basis (once a month).

One Way Website Linking.

This is a vital component in achieving high website positioning and search engine ranking and is a very easy thing to do. Find websites with similar content or services to yours and ask them to include a link to your website on their site. Make sure you submit your link to sites which are keyword rich and targeted to your website. You should also try and get your link included on a website which has a Google Page Rank of 4/10 or above. Before submitting a link, be sure to look at the source code on the website's page you are submitting to. If the website has their Robots text off, or with a No Crawl instruction, do not waste your time in submitting to them as your website link will not be crawled by search engine robots. You might also want to consider offering reciprocal links on your website which will help you and your linkers build page rank and website positioning in search engine ranking.

To conclude, website submission is vital for your websites success in search engines. You can not rely on your website being listed if you do not submit your website. By implementing the suggestions listed in this tutorial, you should see a good increase in your website positioning in search engine ranking. Remember, it takes time and work to achieve high search engine ranking in some of the top websites, so be patient.

Our next tutorial will focus on Search Engine Optimization.

About The Author

Victoria Powell heads the Search Engine Optimization team at http://www.websitepositioningservices.com and is involved heavily with seo training. She has many years of seo experience, working with some of the largest and most established web development firms. She offers seo training and online support for companies wishing to utilize her skills.

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