It’s a question that has been piercing the consciousness of web property owners since the beginning of Internet time.

"How do I get My Site into the Major Search Engines?"

To answer this question, I’ll have to go into a series of posts explaining what is largely misunderstood about this process, as well as many of the solutions.

But before I do that, let’s talk about the questions behind the questions, namely:

1. How do you know that your site isn’t in the search engines? Maybe your web site is indexed, but not for the terms for which you seek more exposure.
2. Are search engines the best, or the only, place for you to get traffic? After all, isn’t what you’re after, at the end of the day, prospective buyers, despite their various sources?

So first things first. Many of my clients are surprised to find out that their sites, are, in fact, appearing in Google, Yahoo, MSN and other search engines. The question then becomes, "how can I get good rankings for terms that I’d like?"

And we’ll start answering that question before the end of this post.

For starters, let’s see if your site appears anywhere in Google or Yahoo.

To begin, open up your web browser to Google’s home page (new window).

Now, type in the URL of your site.

For our example, we’ll use Blogsite - so if your site is new, or hasn’t been indexed yet, and you get the message "Sorry, no information is available for the URL" , you can still follow along.

The page you’re looking at is Google’s Site Information Page. It will tell you

• When the site in question was last spidered (see the date stamp on the cached page)
• How many sites Google found that are linked back to the page (check under both "Find web pages that link to" and "Find web pages that contain the term")
• An overview of the pages in the site in question that are in Google’s database

Many people are surprised to find that their sites are listed in Google. If your site is in Google but you’re not showing up in results, there is still hope for you to get traffic from Google and from other search engines.

And all hope is not lost if your site isn’t showing up, so long as you’re not doing anything that Google and other search engines frown upon.

In fact, Google will even give you tips on how to get listed, though these aren’t the fastest, or only ways (which we’ll talk about in an upcoming article here).

So now you are equipped with the information to find out whether or not your site is listed. You can do similar searches on many other search engines to find out information on your site, though not all search engines will give you as much detail about your site’s page.

Let’s now deal with the second issue.

Search Engines aren’t the only ways that you can get traffic to your site.

Many of the other promotion techniques will also help your site get more exposure in search engines as well. If you’re having trouble getting your site to show up in search engines, you may want to look at other site promotion methods while you figure out how to get better rankings.

One of the more important actions you can take in the meantime is getting more links leading back to you.

Why so important?

Proper anchor text linking is a significant factor in helping your site continue to get the kind of visits from search engine spiders that count. It’s not the only factor - not by a long shot.

When sites pointing back to you are linked to you with text that describes your site, when search engine spiders come across those links, and they spider your site, it counts in your favor, moreso if they are from similiarly themed sites.

Another benefit is that the links that appear on other sites are often clicked by visitors who are looking for information online.

So how can you get more links, of either kind, pointing to you?

Here are just a few tips. We’ll get more in-depth in coming days.

1. Article Marketing

   When submitting text articles, your opportunities for anchor text links are limited. However, even regular links on frequently spidered sites can help with your search engine visibility.

   And when you submit to web directories through forms that accept HTML, you can make limited use of your resource box to include an anchored text link. (Just don’t get carried away, and be sure to vary the text from time to time.)

2. Blog and RSS Promotion

   By keeping keyword issues in mind when naming your blog, rss feed and their descriptions, when you submit to the various blog/rss search engines and directories, you can create a situation where you’re getting links back to your site that include your desired text.

3. Directory Submissions

   There are many reputable directories where you can get listed. Many of these are favored by search engines, which frequently visit them searching for links, not to mention the traffic you can get directly from them.

These, of course aren’t the only ways to get more visitors, but they’re a good start. In future days, we’ll continue this discussion with more specific tips and detailed information