How to get your site listed in search engines.

You have built it.. but will they come? The answer is likely –no, not without a little work anyway.

Now that you have that shiny new website surely people will flock to it in droves seeking you out. Sadly, in reality it typically doesn’t work like that. You will need to market and promote it. You need to get search engines to ‘see’ it and start ranking it. Like in many sectors there are a few big companies that take a huge chunk of the search engine market, namely Google, Bing and Yahoo.

So, How do Search Engines work?
This is where things get a little tricky. (and be wary of anyone that proclaims to know everything about search engine ranking). The truth is that no-one knows exactly how each search engine indexes websites and ranks them except the search engine companies themselves. Most companies use algorithms (mathematical equations) to score and rank websites in search engines. And as soon as you think you understand their rubikian cube methods BAM, they change their algorithm.

But don’t worry all is not lost. There are some basic tips you can use that will help ensure your site gets seen by the mysterious search engine gods.

Submit to Search Engines
Head on over to Google and Bing and set up a webmaster tools account. When you are in the webmaster tools areas of these sites you can enter your url to their search engines and they will crawl (index) your website. *Note – you don’t need a Yahoo account as Yahoo has partnered with Bing. So if you submit your website to Bing you’ve submitted it to Yahoo automatically.

Links
The more links you have pointing to your website the better. Don’t forget to spread the love and use outbound links too.

Meta Tags
They typically consist of a title, description and keywords and appear in the head of your webpage. Some search engines now put less emphasis on certain tags when ranking pages, but they are still useful in describing your websites content.

Google Authorship
Google authorship allows you to claim your content and associate your name (via Google+)

Social Media
Once again the more your business name appears on the internet the better. I am not sure about you but there are only so many hours in a day so you might want to stick to the big 3 or 4 and don’t spread yourself too thin.

Content
As they say, CONTENT IS KING. If your website has good content and is updated regularly with fresh material, people and search engines will come and naturally link to your website.

So there you have it. Just a few tips to get you on the path to getting your website listed and seen in search engines. Anyone have any other great tips please contribute below.