A Quick Guide to Search Engine Submissions
By Charles Moffat - April 2012.
There are literally thousands of search engines out there. 99% of them are rarely used.
Of the search engines that are used its really only the top 3 you need to worry about. Or arguably the top 1 (Google) because all the other search engines essentially copy whatever the #1 is doing.
Case in point... if you create a new website and submit it to Google it will later show up in Google searches... and after a margin of time it will show up in Yahoo, Bing, Live, etc too. So you really only need to submit to Google and the other search engines will automatically add you after a given amount of time.
You can speed up the process by submitting to them anyway, but it is really unnecessary since the search bots will do it for you.
Technically you don't even need to submit to Google either, if your website's SEO is well done. Its a bit like ordering a steak. If your order your website blood rare (meaning it has no links going into it boosting its SEO) then nobody is going to find it. Medium Rare is you did the bare minimum and your site will eventually show up eventually in search engines but will take longer. Well done is you did a good job and the search bots will find your website easily. Slightly charred or charred suggests you overdid it and might have even used some Black Hat SEO which could spoil your website's reputation.
The end result is that if your SEO is at least medium rare or well done then you won't have a problem appearing in major search engines, even if you don't submit your site.
However I do recommend that if you have the time you take a minute to submit new websites to Google just to speed up the process a little.
It also doesn't matter what you do first: Submit your URL or SEO. There are arguments for doing the SEO first and then submitting your site, but the pros and cons of both methods are negligible. You might as well submit the site as soon as its up and has finished content on it and then start linking to the page from outside sources. The delay time of having your site added to the search database will be decreased so I would argue it is slightly better to submit your site first, but if you forget to do it right away its not that big of a deal.
Other things you should do immediately include:
Stumbling your site via StumbleUpon.
Twitter your site URL (not a bit.ly redirect, the actual URL).
Mention the site URL on your company Facebook page.
Mention the site URL on your company blog in a new blog post.
Mention the new blog post on Twitter, Facebook and Stumble it too.
Social Media Marketing (also called Social Media Optimization) is the first thing you should do for promoting your website after submitting your site to Google. SMM/SMO is a wild card. Sometimes it can cause your website to go viral as other people post links to your page. It is not a guarantee, but it helps and every so often you can see what happens when a site goes viral.
Here is my suggested order of events:
#1. Design a website which is Search Engine Friendly.
#2. Submit it to Google.
#3. Promote it via Social Media.
#4. Traditional SEO via link placements, blog posts, etc.
#5. Search Engine Marketing (optional and only if you have extra money to burn).
Getting your website listed in search engines is just one step, but it is an integral part of Search Engine Optimization. You can't compete in a horse race if you don't have a horse.
