NO, don't bother! It's a waste of time, and you'll probably just
receive lots of spam.
Instead, submit your site to the major search engines and
directories, monitor results, and resubmit only if your site
isn't listed yet. (You have worked hard on page content, page
title and keyword and description meta tags, haven't you?) Repeat
this process for any new content you create.
You can use an automatic tool, or you can hand-submit to each
site. The latter approach takes more time, but at least you can
be sure your site has been submitted!
Either way, the site-submission process doesn't take long, but
it may well take a few months before your efforts are rewarded
by search engine traffic. But rewarded you will be - search
engines are still the best way of getting site traffic, for
least cost!
> USE THIS SITE SUBMISSION RESOURCE
Use Jim Tools site submission tool. This fantastic tool allows
you to submit your site to all the major search engines and
directories (excluding the human-edited directories like Yahoo!,
Looksmart, and DMOZ - you have to visit these sites directly.
You must now also visit Alta Vista directly, too.)
Jim Tools is a highly popular destination with webmasters and
site promoters the world over; so you can be sure that the
submission tool is kept up to date. (Hence it is best to visit
at a less popular surfing time of the day!)
http://jimtools.com/submit.html
> OR VISIT THESE LINKS
AltaVista
http://add-url.altavista.com/cgi-bin/newurl?
AOL Search
http://search.aol.com/add.adp
DirectHit
http://www.directhit.com/util/addurl.html
Excite
http://www.excite.com/info/addurl/
FAST Search
http://www.alltheweb.com/addurl.php3
Google
http://www.google.com/addurl.html
HotBot
http://hotbot.lycos.com/addurl.asp
Lycos
http://www.lycosuk.co.uk/service/addasite.html
Looksmart/MSN
http://search.msn.com/addurl.asp
NBCi
http://www.nbci.com/LMOID/resource/0,566,-1077,00.html?
Netscape
http://home.netscape.com/escapes/search/addsite.html
Northern Light
http://www.northernlight.com/docs/regurlhelp.html
Open Directory Project (DMOZ)
http://dmoz.org/add.html
Scrub The Web
http://www.scrubtheweb.com/addurl.html
Yahoo!
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/
Note: many of the above sites have regional versions that may
well be more appropriate for your site.
> THEN MONITOR RESULTS!
Only resubmit your website to the search engines if it has not
been added to the specific search engine or directory. So how
do you know if your site has been added? Well, you can visit
each site above and search for your URL (e.g. do a search for
www.yourwebsitename.com).
Or you could use the following position checking tools, and see
how your site ranks for the keyword of 'www.yourwebsitename.com'
- http://www.jimtools.com/position2.html
- http://www.sethi.org ools/eyespy/
- http://www.did-it.com/detective.htm
Any results not in top 50 suggest your site has not yet been
added to the search engine's database yet.
> EVEN DO IT YOURSELF!
For the programmers out there, you might like to create your own
site submission and position checking tools. The best place to
find such resources is http://www.cgi-resources.com
> READ MORE...
You can find out a great deal more about search engine
submission from the following excellent resources. Just do a
search for "search engine submission" and off you go! (You can
also find out more about paid search engine submissions here
too.)
http://www.promotionbase.com
http://www.iboost.com
http://www.dmoz.org
Search engines are a great way of getting traffic to your site.
More and more search engines are now charging to be listed,
though, so it makes it more important than ever that you create
great content and choose keywords, meta tags etc. carefully.
About the Author
Steve Nash edits Promote! Promote! Promote! a twice-monthly
newsletter. Subscribe, and learn more about promoting your
business (or site) online: mailto:pppromote@getresponse.com
This article appears on his latest site called How I Promote My
Website - http://www.HowIPromoteMyWebsite.com/bin/ap.pl?find-out