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Get Website listed with Search Engines
In order to have people find your site, you need to get it listed with at least the top two or three search engines. In other words they need to know that the site is out there and what it is all about. When someone does a query using a Web browser like Microsoft Edge, Chrome or Firefox, the browser uses a search engine to locate websites related to the search topic. The Microsoft Edge browser that comes with Windows 10 uses Bing as the default search engine. Chrome and Firefox uses Google but the defaults can be changed. In any event, when someone does an internet search using a search engine like Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask or WebCrawler, you would like to have your site included in the results and not too far down the list. There are several ways of getting your site listed with search engines. You can go to their website and submit your site to them directly, i.e. enter your URL and other requested data. They may charge for the service, especially if they consider your site to be a business. Another way is to submit your site for inclusion in directories which feed information to the search engines. The Open Directory DMOZ is a good one to consider. They don’t charge but they may be slow in reviewing your site and may not accept it. The people reviewing the sites are volunteers who do it in their spare time. You can go to their website for rules on accepting and rejecting sites for inclusion in their directory. A sitemap (i.e. a document containing XML code, identifying pages, descriptions, etc.) can assist in the automated process by search engines in crawling your site, i.e. going through it looking at the various pages, content, etc. A search engine must do this during the listing process in order to associate your site and site pages with search topics. A free Google Sitemap Generator is available that will create a draft sitemap when you enter your URL but you will have to make corrections. Creating a sitemap, uploading it to the root of your site and providing it to search engine(s), is not that difficult if you know how but doing it the first time can be very confusing. After you create a sitemap and submit it to Google, you may need to change your website content and maybe even add new pages. You should create a new sitemap and replace the old one in your root directory but there is no need to resubmit to Google. Google will find the revised sitemap data the next time it goes to your site. A site map is not essential for getting your site listed but it can’t hurt and may speed up the process, if you can figure out how to do it.
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