One thing I always hear from people is "How do I get my site on the search engines?". My first response is always "Did you submit your site to them?". Many people seem to believe their site will be found automatically by the search engines. In some cases this is true especially with the big three. I always tell my clients to take a proactive approach in making sure search engines are listing their sites.

So how do you know if your site is being indexed by a search engine? ...

The easiest way is to simply visit each search engine and search for your exact url. Just enter in your domain name followed by your domain extension and click Search. In my case I would enter: phillipchafin.com . If your site is listed in the results you are indexed in that engine. If your site doesn't show you are either not indexed or have been removed from their index.

In cases where your site is not listed I would look for a link or page to submit your site to that engine. Before you submit your site to a search engine be sure that your site fits with their guidelines or your listing could be denied. Not all search engines are the same so you want to be sure to know what the SE expects for your listing.

There are many services that will automatically submit your site to X thousand search engines. While this may appear to be a good idea you do not want to submit your site to obscure search engines that aren't relevant to your business. For example since I do web development I wouldn't really be interested in submitting my site to a directory specific to the tanning industry. *unless I specialized in tanning websites*

There are some services that will manually submit your site to various search engines on their list or per your specifications. This is much better than just letting someone autosubmit your site to thousands of engines. You want to be sure to take a proactive approach to your search engine submissions. Doing it wrong can be costly and be hard to reverse.

Many of the search engines are now owned by parent companies so there are times when you are registering your site on one search engine that they offer you the chance to submit to other affiliated directories. If these directories are relevant to your business and/or of great benefit to your end user then I would submit with them as well.

Here is a good site to use to submit your site for Free to about 20 search engines: http://www.ineedhits.com

You can also search the major engines for lists of search engines that you may be interested in exchanging links with.

On a side note:

Be sure your site is optimized *before* the search engines visit. That way you can be sure they are seeing the information you want them to see in order to properly list your site in their results.

Hopefully this information helps get you started with Search Engine Submissions. If you have any specific questions about the search engines feel free to let me know. While I do not work for the SE's I have a good feel for what they like and dislike.