Getting your site in the search engines should be easy, right? You just have to go to the submit pages of the various engines, submit your URL, sit back, and wait for the engine to index it, right? Wrong! Submitting your does not even guarantee that the search engines will have a look at your URL!

There's much more to submitting your site than just manually submitting your site. In this article, we will have a look at why you need to do more, and what you need to do to get search engines to index your site.

How search engines work

To understand why search engines sometimes doesn't index your site, you need to know how they work. This will not only teach you what you need to do to make sure that they DO index your site, but it will also teach you what you need to do to get higher rankings.

Search bots
Search engines use special software called search bots to build their indexes. These programs look for links in the body of pages that they view, and then follow those links. They do the same with the next page, and the next one, and the next one, indexing all of them as they go along.

This creates a huge "spider web" across the Internet, where every link to another page is followed, extending the spider web. This is why search engines are sometimes called spiders, because they "spider" the web in search for links.

Now, where do search engines start their "spidering"? To start off the spider, they have to start at some page, right? True. Generally, they start with a list of the most popular sites on the Internet. The sites on these lists will link to other sites, which in turn link to others, creating the huge web of links. By just following one link on one of these pages, search engines can reach thousands, even millions of other web sites.

Why submitting doesn't work

If a search engine only has to start with this list of the most popular websites in order to index most of the web, they don't really need the URL's of smaller sites, do they? I mean, what would be the use of starting at such a small site if they can do without it? There's not even a guarantee that the small site will contain links to other sites.

That is why this submitting business is so weird. True, the search engines might at some time have a look at your site, but it's not guaranteed. They don't need your URL to perform their tasks, so why would they bother even looking at it?

Submitting your site might work sometimes, but if it does, it takes what is called a very long time. Don't expect search engines to index your site immediately after you've submitted your URL. In fact, some paid-inclusion services (these services charge a fee to guarantee that the search engine will indeed index your site) take as long as 48 yours minimum to get to your site. How much longer wouldn't it take for free submission?

So, you can hold fast on this submitting process, or you could take the quicker road...

The solution

In one short sentence: the best way to get your site indexed is to get other sites to link to you. That's all there is to it! Here's why it works.

As a search engine spiders the Internet, it follows every link possible. Therefore, if your link is on a page that is already indexed by a search engine, chances are that when the search engines come to re-index the site, they will notice your link and follow it. And voila, they've acidentially stumbled across your site! The chances of them indexing it THEN is much greater than when you submit your URL.

So, all you need to do to get your site indexed is to find a site (that you know is already indexed) to link back to you. You'll have to contact or email the webmaster of that site, and hope that he will fulfill your request. And trust me, most of them do!

Chances are even better if you tell them that you will provide a link back to their site from yours. And put the link in place even before you ask them, so that it's there if they want to check. After all, a few links on your site really can't hurt.

The more the better
When you find sites to link back to you, don't only ask one of them. Get as much of them as you can. Search engines determine the popularity of a site by counting how many other sites are linking to it. As an example, Yahoo!, according to Alexa, has more than 14,000 sites linking to it! That is why it is so popular.

Where to look

Following is a list of places where you may want to ask for a link:

• Sites in the same industry as you
• Friends' and family's sites
• Directories, such as the Open Directory Project
• Affiliates and partners
• Award sites
• Product manufacturer's site
• Competitors (try to help each other by linking to one another)

As you can see, there are many different places you can look at. Try to come up with ways of your own, but just get your site linked to from as many other sites as possible. Once you accomplish that, you'll soon see the fruits of your labour.