If you have an online business or if a significant portion of your business is done through your website, then the best advertising and marketing is done by submitting your website to a search engine. No amount of press release, newspaper or radio ad, banner ad, spam email or a newsletter will achieve the same results.

Beware of companies that promise automatic submission of your website to hundreds of search engines, which are false promises. Indeed, the best way to submit your website for search engine ranking and inclusion is to do it yourself or to hire an expert to do it manually, by contacting the search engine companies and directories.

Before you begin to submit your website to search engines, ensure that your websites are thoroughly and professionally designed. This includes using the right keywords, high-quality graphics, and relevant content. Don’t submit websites that are incomplete. While submitting your website to a search engine, make sure to provide information about your website, keywords, and any other information that may be pertinent, including your business name and contact information.

Mere submission to search engine companies does not guarantee that your site will be immediately listed with high rankings. Indeed, this is because there are thousands of new websites being submitted every day, and it may take quite some time before your site is reviewed by human editors. One important factor to remember when submitting a site is to include a sitemap of your website, which displays a website’s most relevant pages. Indeed, sitemaps help web robots crawl a site more easily. Search engines like Google hardly consider submissions without sitemaps.

There are numerous online companies that accept search engine submission services. You can choose to do it yourself or hire experts to submit your site to major search engines and more.

Here is a list of the most popular search engines, which vary depending on location:

  • Google
  • Bing
  • Baidu
  • Yahoo!
  • Yandex

Directories

As for directories, these websites have evolved to do more than list links, but also provide detailed reviews of a website. Yahoo, Yelp, Foursquare, Yellow Pages, and Better Business Bureau are popular examples of directory companies that are still relevant today. Indeed, directory companies help establish trust and increase site traffic for websites, which then help grow a business.

Apart from the above, there are thousands of search engines and directory companies, where you can submit your website to as many companies as possible. Regardless of how you submit your website to search engines, it is essential to wait to do this step until your site is finished being built, designed, and optimized with search engine optimization.