Search Engine Optimization: For Dummies®, 3rd Edition

Chapter 11. Getting Your Pages into the Search Engines

In This Chapter

• Submitting your pages to the search engines

• Creating, submitting, and pinging sitemaps

• Using paid-inclusion and trusted-feed services

• Submitting to secondary search engines

• Using registration services and software

You built your Web pages. Now, how do you get them into the search systems? That's what this chapter and Chapter 12 explain. In this chapter, I talk about how to get your pages into search engines, and in Chapter 12 I explain how to list your site with search directories.

Many site owners are confused about how to get their Web sites into search engines. They assume that in order to submit or register their sites, they go to a search engine's Web site, provide the URL to one (or all) of their pages, and wait for the search engine to come along and index the pages. The truth is that the process is more complicated.

Determining Why Your Pages Aren't Being Indexed

It's frustrating when you can't seem to get search engines to index your site. The top three search engines — Google, Yahoo!, and MSN/Live Search — provide a way for you to submit information about your site, but doing so often doesn't seem to make any difference. Your site may not be picked up. As Google says, "We do not add all submitted URLs to our index, and we cannot make any predictions or guarantees about when or if they will appear." MSN/Live Search is a little more positive, perhaps, but still offers no guarantee: "Submitting your site does not ...