Get Your Website Noticed with Search Engine Submission

So you've created your website and posted it online. Surely people are going to flock to it, right? Wrong. As anyone who has worked on product marketing – and, when you make a website, you are making a product – will tell you, it takes a while before your product gets popular and you need to get the word out first. But, just how do you do that?

Posting to Search Engines

There are many choices for achieving this, but for most online-based businesses – or businesses that operate on more than a citywide scale – the most popular method is using search engines. Search engines make it possible for people from all over the world to find your website, assuming your server is not configured to block them. Posting your website on one search engine, however, is not enough. In addition, the more engines you add to your list of targets, the more time-consuming the process becomes.

While some delay between submission to search engines and the actual posting will inevitably occur because most search engines have a review process during which they screen your site's content for illegal content, it is still time consuming to complete the necessary online forms. This is why some webmasters have created tools that permit you to submit to multiple engines simultaneously. Some of these forms are available online. Or, in some cases, they may already be installed in your site's Control Panel.

Targeted Advertising

Now that you understand how to submit a web site to a search engine and why you should do it, it is important to realize that a search engine alone is not enough to guarantee the success of your online business. It offers exposure, but it is still your responsibility to expand the exposure and to update the site as appropriate. But, if you complement it with more targeted advertising, while respecting the rules of each advertising venue and avoiding activities that depict your organization in an unsympathetic light, such as spam, search engine submission can be a very powerful tool in your toolbox of marketing tricks.

Search engines are utilized by most public webservers. The Internet offers a vast amount of content. Unlike traditional methods of publishing information for public consumption, a large percentage of Internet content is not published by professional organizations. Instead, the content is published by private citizens who often do not have the resources necessary to commit to a massive, targeted advertising campaign involving banner ads and newspaper ads.

Many of these individuals put most of their faith in non-targeted advertising methods, such as public website directories and search engines. Fansites, which are websites whose purpose is to show support for a product they enjoy, often a movie, TV series, or book, is an example of this type of website.

Increasing Site Popularity

The order of the links a web surfer gets when typing a topic into a search engine depends on the popularity of the website. This is measured in number of hits, as well as the submission date for the site. Ordering the links according to popularity makes it easier for web surfers to determine which sites are most likely to contain fresh content. This is important because a large percentage of Internet content is no longer supported by its creator and, therefore, is often no longer relevant.

Many fansites are actually ranked higher than the website of the company who owns the product. How can this be so? Surely the companies have more options to advertise their product than a fan? Well, sure. They do have more resources to build advertising – but the fans, while not using the best advertising methods on the planet, do use search engines and directories. More importantly, they provide content that their corporate counterparts do not bother with – because Internet advertising is not prioritized in advertising budgets, unless the website itself is the product.

Another reason for fan sites ranking higher than corporate sites is the fact that there is usually no way for the company to advertise the product on the website without seeming out-of-place. This occurs because, in a corporate atmosphere, the website itself is not usually the product. One possible exception is companies specializing in web-based services such as server hosting or web design. Even then, those companies usually utilize traditional advertising for primary exposure if they can afford to.

Online Advertising

Online advertising, while inefficient for some purposes, offers unparalleled exposure for those who know how to take advantage of the Internet's full potential. With such scripts as chat rooms, message boards, Shoutboxes, and image galleries, anyone with commercial intents can build up a following around his or her product.

Musicians use websites to provide a link between themselves and their target audience – their fans. But, in order for there to be a point to the site, advertising is necessary. Search engines provide a way to do just that. They do nothing more, they do nothing less.