What is search engine site submission? How can I get my site listed on major search engines? Is search engine site submission essential? If so, then what are its benefits? Search engine optimization experts may find these questions trivial, but for beginners, search engine site submission is a complicated subject that requires a thorough understanding.

In very simple words, search engine site submission is all about getting your site listed on search engines. It is not necessary that your website will get a good ranking, if you submit your site to major search engines. Site submission fundamentally means that the search engines will be aware of the existence of your website on the Internet. To get a good rank, you would have to optimize your website, build links for it, and popularize it through search engine marketing strategies.

Search engine site submission can be broadly divided into two categories viz.

Free site submission, where site submission is absolutely free, but there is no fixed turnaround time to getting to know whether your site has been accepted or not.

Paid site submission, where monthly or annual fees is charged, but once the site has been submitted, it will be listed in the search engine.

Irrespective of the type of site submission method you select, it is advisable to submit your website to the primary search engines manually. There is a plethora of automated site submission services. However, try to stay away from them, not just to save a few bucks, but also to ensure that your site is actually submitted.

The preceding point is very important because many search engines automatically reject submissions made through programs. Site submission is not a difficult job. If you know how to type a word, then you definitely know how to submit a site.

There are countless search engines and submitting your site in all these search engines is definitely an infeasible, expensive and time-consuming process. Moreover, most of them have a very low usage rate and thus, will hardly drive any worthwhile traffic to your website. Instead, you should concentrate on the following six major search engines that account for over 90 percent of the search engine market.

1. Google
2. Yahoo
3. MSN
4. Ask
5. AltaVista

Before you begin the process of search engine site submission, you should prepare a description of not more than 30 words for your entire site. Remember to add one to three keywords in this description. Avoid making use of marketing language because most of the search engine directories are human edited, and editors usually dislike descriptions solely in promotion language.

You can begin your site submission process with search engine directories as Yahoo directory, which offers two site submission options, "Standard", which is free and "Yahoo Express", which involves a submission fee of $299 per year. Open directory is another very good search engine directory, and here the site submission is completely free, but the biggest drawback is the variable turnaround time.

If you want several page of your website to be listed, then you should seriously consider crawler-based search engines for site submission. The most important crawler-based search engines are Google, Yahoo, Teoma and MSN. All these search engines provide add URL option through which you can add your site.

It is not necessary to submit your site in these crawler-based search engines because if your site has good inbound links or a few search engine directories have accepted it, then these crawlers will automatically find and list your site. Nevertheless, there is no harm in submitting the site.

One of the main benefits of search engine site submission is the increased possibility of getting significant traffic. However, site submission cannot guarantee traffic, particularly when your website is not ranked well, that is, it doesn't appear on the first two search engine result pages. In such a scenario, paid listing will be a boon for you.

All major search engine accept paid listings, which is a unique form of website promotion. In simple words, paid listing guarantees quick visibility and loads of traffic because your website will appear in the top results for the terms you are interested in within a day or less.

Overture and Google AdWords are two popular ways to get paid listings. Here you would have to outbid your competitor for a particular keyword, and once you do it successfully your site will appear right at the top. Whenever someone clicks at your site, you would have to pay a certain amount. Due to these peculiar features, the above sites are also called pay-per-click (PPC) or cost-per-click (CPC) search engines.

With this account, we hope that search engine site submission would become a child's play for you. Site submission is definitely an ideal way to get traffic from search engines, but if search engine site submission is coupled with search engine optimization, then in a short period of time you will certainly occupy the number one spot in every search engine result page.