Submitting the sites to search engines is the process of getting the websites listed with the search engine. This process depends on the engines that you are submitting your site to. It can be manual or automated process. The submission process is merely telling that search engine that a site exists and has nothing to do with rankings that in the search results.

The process of submission is a lot different from search engine optimization.

Before you submit the sites make sure that site is ready for submissions:

* Complete all the pages. Leave no "under construction" sign.

* Validate all the links.

* Complete the search engine optimization.

* Test the page compatibility with all search engines.

* Use robots.txt or robots META Tags to prevent pages you want hidden from being indexed.

* If your site is an e-commerce site, test your ordering process or shopping cart for bugs.

* Google "web site usability" should be used to test usability.

Prepare a text file/spreadsheet:

This will help you while submitting the site. It is to keep all required info in one place.

Write the following in the file/spreadsheet:

*Your website's main URL

*The URLs for other pages on your site

*Your site's Title (the name of your site as you want it listed in engines)

* A short description of your page/site content (Around 20 words)

* A long description of your page/site content (Just 40 words)

* A list of target keywords for your page/site

* Name of person doing the submissions.

* Email address of above person.

* Address and contact details of your company (some directories may ask for this)

If you are using a spreadsheet you can also use a date/remarks column to keep track of the key points of submitting the site.

Steps to submit the site:

First check if the pages you wish to submit are already indexed or not? If they are there is no good reason to do so again and again. Different engines follow different ways to submit the site.

Site Submission at Yahoo:

Yahoo is basically a directory of websites. It takes around two to six weeks to get listed in Yahoo. Yahoo has different categories where in some are free while some are paid. The paid ones are priced at $299. If you find your desired category as free bingo!! Just go ahead and do the submissions. Else you may need to buy it.

In case you have made a wrong submission the human editors will modify or edit it.

Submitting to Google:

Google is not only the number one search engine on the net but also the best in crawling through all the websites on the web. Currently it crawls through almost 4 billion websites adding to its already huge database. If you are not sure whether your site is indexed or nor just type in your URL and search. It takes almost 60 days for Google to index or re index the pages and add to its database.

Currently there is no Pay per Inclusion programme present for the site submission.

Submitting to Global Business Listing:

A Pay Per inclusion search engine, Global business Listing, it is rather very economical and may help you place your site amongst the very first results in Google also.

Currently numbered four in the Google listings for Food Growers, Luxury Car Dealers and Pharmaceutical Industry Manufacturers, it is a reliable way t o get better listings.

With a listing it also offers discounted web hosting service as apart of the package.

Also come to links to your website thereby improving the page rank of the site.

Submitting to Alta Vista:

Now the paid submissions are faster then the free ones for this Search Engine.

They require typing some graphical numbers and characters while submission top avoid the automatic submission engines from cluttering the database. It usually takes 2-4 weeks to finally index the site.

The submission process can be free and paid also. The paid one is faster then the free one. To start the paid one, one needs to fix a budget that will be spent on the whole process.

To start with, get the Yahoo listings by paying an annual membership. This will get you a placement in the Yahoo's human-compiled directory.

After submissions, just concentrate on the content of site ands wait for at least 60 days. As they say all the good things to those who wait, you will discover joys of getting good placement in the rankings, after this time only.