Tandil Theme

How do Search Engines find you?

The most common way that search engine robots find and spider a Blog is by following hyperlinks from other sites. In search engine terminology, these sites are known as
“found pages”. Some search engines also have a “submit URL” form, where you can suggest that they add your Blog to their index. Typically, you just give the primary URL for your site (like http://www.tandiltheme.com), and this address is added to their list of links to check and crawl.

There are some services that let you submit your site “automatically”. Currently, there are only four “major” search engines, and you can’t even submit to all of them. 95% of your search engine traffic will come from one of these major search engines. This is not really a good deal, even if it’s free. The same applies to software that submits your site to “thousands” of search engines. As I’ve just stated, only a few search engines actually matter. Using this software is more likely to generate a flood of junk email than anything else, so stay away of it.

If all of this sounds like I’m recommending you let the search engines find you, rather than submitting your site, I am. I haven’t submitted anything to the search engines in years, and it rarely takes more than a week or so for them to find and crawl my new sites. If your site has some unique content, it will be crawled even faster. I recommend using WordPress, since it will ping all major search engines automatically and I recommend using one of my SEO optimized WordPress themes, Patagonia or Tandil Theme.

You must focus on getting links set up – this will not only improve your rankings, it will ensure that the search engines can find you on their own. Some search engines (like Yahoo) offer a “paid inclusion” program. Although you get no special advantage from using it, in terms of your site’s ranking, it does ensure that your site’s indexing is up to date. This isn’t necessarily a great deal, since it usually involves paying by the click for traffic you may have gotten anyway.