Once your site is listed in an engine you’re in for good (unless you get kicked out for trying to fool them, as covered below under Black Hat SEO). There’s never any reason to resubmit your site once it’s already in. Resubmission is a waste of time. The overwhelming majority of search traffic comes from the top five or so search engines. Some companies will offer to submit your site to “thousands” of search engines. This is a waste of money. If your site is linked to from anywhere, you’ll get in all the search engines that matter, automatically, for free.

Here are some typical things that can cause an engine to fail to find your pages.

1. Links are done in Javascript. Many engines don’t follow links done in Javascript, such as those found in drop-down menus. If you have Javascript links, make certain you also have text links somewhere on the page as well. It doesn’t hurt to have Javascript links as long as you also have plain links on the page.

2. Links are done in Flash. Many engines can’t follow links in Flash. If you have Flash links, make certain you also have text links somewhere on the page as well.

3. Orphaned pages. If you forget to link to a certain page from at least one other page, that page page is said to be orphaned. An engine can’t find it because it can’t follow a link to it. Make sure every page on your site is linked to from at least one other page.

4. Dynamic pages. Search engines can generally follow dynamic URLs (those with a question mark) as long as the have only one or two parameters. Three parameters — hard to say. Four or more parameters is probably pushing it. But even if the engines can follow dynamic URLs, that doesn’t necessarily mean that those pages will rank well. Two noted experts stated flatly in 2003 that pages with dynamic urls rank worse than those without. It’s unclear whether that’s true today, but many webmasters aren’t taking chances: They’re using the Mod Rewrite feature of the Apache web server software to turn dynamic urls into static ones. There are many threads on WebmasterWorld about how to do this. If you prefer not to turn your dynamic urls into static ones, you should at least put the most important parameters in your urls first. There’s some feeling that the engines may try the first two or three parameters and ignore the rest. For example, if your url was:

http://domain.com?language=Eng&user=4873&style=15&article=238

Then instead try:

http://domain.com?article=238&language=Eng&user=4873&style=15

5. Site is down. An engine can’t index a site if it’s down. Make certain you use a reliable webhost. (You can also use monitoring software or subscribe to an automated monitoring service to email, phone, or page you if your site goes down.) It’s unlikely that you’ll be removed from an engine just because your site was down once when they tried to visit, but if your site is down for several days that could spell bad news. An engine doesn’t want to list your site in the SERPs if visitors can’t actually get to it.

6. Images and Frames. Search engine spiders can follow image links and links in framesets just fine — depsite what you sometimes read on the net.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Related posts:

1. Search Engines use automated Spiders
2. Submit Your Site To Hundreds of Search Engines And Directories

There are eight (!) submission options with Yahoo; I’m going to briefly go over them one by one:

• free site submission
• free mobile site submission
• free media content submission
• Yahoo search index submission
• sponsored search
• product submission
• travel submission
• Yahoo directory submit
• Yahoo standard submission

Yahoo Free Site Submission

The Yahoo Site Submit option is easy and free. All you have to do is enter the URL of the site you’d like to submit to be included in the Yahoo Search index. Must have a free Yahoo ID in order to do this (registration required).

Yahoo Mobile Site Submission

You can submit your xHTML, WML or cHTML mobile site for inclusion in Yahoo’s mobile search index. Again, just submit your site’s URL.

Yahoo Media Content Submission

If you have audio, video, or visual content, you can submit your content to Yahoo Search via your media RSS feed. Not as complicated as it might sound.

Yahoo Search Submit

Yahoo’s Search Submit Express option is not free, but you do get guaranteed inclusion within the Yahoo search index. Pricing of this option varies. Make sure to read the Yahoo Site Submit guidelines thoroughly before choosing this option; you want to make sure it’s the best option for your site since it does cost.

Yahoo’s sponsored search option allows your site be listed in sponsored search results across the Web. You are in charge of your position by the amount you bid on keywords, and when you choose this option, you get people who are looking for what you’re selling.

Yahoo Product Submission

You can submit your products for inclusion in the Yahoo shopping index. This option has variable pricing; again, make sure to read all the information before making your decision.

Yahoo Travel Submission

The Yahoo Travel Submission option allows you to “promote your offers in Yahoo! Travel’s Deals section where users search for timely deals and offers.” You have two pricing options here; pay for performance (you only pay when someone clicks an ad that takes them directly to your site), or category-based pricing (prices based on specific categories).

Yahoo Directory Submit

The Yahoo Directory Submit option has a couple of pricing tiers depending on the nature of your site. Read all the Yahoo directory submission guidelines before choosing this option. This option is for commercial sites.

General Yahoo Site Submission Guidelines

Always, always, always read the fine print first before submitting your site or product to Yahoo. You don’t want to pay for something that turns out to be the wrong option for you. In addition, follow the guidelines that Yahoo asks you to follow precisely. This will make the whole process much easier. Last but not least, expect a reasonable amount of time to be included in the Yahoo search index, and do NOT keep submitting your site or product over and over again. Once is enough.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Related posts:

1. Submit Your Site To Hundreds of Search Engines And Directories
2. Content is key in Web Site Optimization
3. What Is Site Promotion?

Submitting your site to hundreds of search engines

There are only four true search engines: Google, Yahoo, ASK and BING (formerly MSN/Live). Every other search site takes their results from the four mentioned above. So, if your site appears in one of the four, it will appear in the search engine results pages, known as SERPs, on any other search engine site.

Submitting your site to hundreds of directories

The only directories that are going to do you any good are those related to your niche. If you’re selling hand crafted toys, a gardening directory isn’t going to help you. However, a directory of hand crafted toys would be perfect. And a directory of natural, non-toxic toys may be a good match.

Having your site listed in totally unrelated directories doesn’t help. If you have two or three high-quality sites linking to you and all the other links are from spammy, unrelated directories, those links will reflect poorly on your site. It’s better to focus on high-quality links from sites that rank well in the search engines.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Related posts:

1. Submit Your Site to Yahoo
2. Submission in Search Engines
3. Maximizing your SEO results with using the big three search engines