There are a few different ways you can announce your URL to the different search engines:

1. Use a free submission service. These automated submission services allow you to enter your information once and submit it to 50 - 400 search engines with the click of a button.

2. Go to each search engine individually and manually enter information for your webpage(s).

3. Use search engine submission software that you purchase to submit your URL.

#1 - Free Submission Service:

There are services such as Postmaster and Submit It that will list your site for free. You enter your information once and then with a push of a button, it will automatically submit that info to the search engines you choose.

The problem with using a free submission service is that every search engine has different variables for submissions. For example, Yahoo only allows a very limited amount of characters as a maximum title size where other search engines may allow up to 200.

You want to maximize the number of keywords you can fit in your title, but by using a free submission service it will submit the same information to every search engine. You are therefore not maximizing your exposure and are not getting listed as high on the search results as you should. More importantly, you cannot specify exactly what categories your site should be listed in when using an automated service (whereas if you did the submission manually, you could).

The main problem is that you submitted the same information to all the search engines, but each search engines has different requirements and limitations. So what you submit to one search engine to get a high listing, may hurt you drastically in another search engine.

By using these free submission services you will save a lot of time, but the disadvantage is that you will only get about one fifth of the traffic you would have if you had spent the time to do it properly (explained in the next two sections below).

#2 - Entering Your Site To Each Search Engine Manually (Free):

By far the best way to announce your URL for free is to go to each individual search engine separately and submit the information for each webpage you have. This allows you to maximize your exposure by completing every field in the submission form to its maximum potential for keywords, descriptions, additions, content, contact information, etc. It also allows you to specifically pick one or multiple categories that would best suit your business, therefore increasing your chances of being seen and attracting visitors to your site.

There are two disadvantages to this approach. The first is that it is very time consuming (it can take you a few days to do it properly). And the second is that there are no professionals available to look over your keywords and titles, verifying that you are using all the most current search engine tricks, and to double check your choices for effectiveness.

When manually submitting to different search engines, you should open a file in your word processor (or Windows Notepad) that will contain your webpage titles, URL, keywords, a short 10 word description, a longer 25 word description and a 50 word description of your business. Also, consider including your company name, address, email address, and phone/fax number as well, as many submission forms will ask for these.

By cutting and pasting these into the different fields in the submission forms, it will not only save you time, but will completely eliminate grammatical and spelling errors that can occur by typing into the submission fields for every search engine.

#3 - Search Engine Submission Software:

I will not get into this too much here as we have devoted much of the next section to search engine submission software. Generally speaking most "submission" software is much like the free submission services I was talking about earlier. As you know, the problem is that with most of this software you are just submitting the same information to all the search engines, but each search engine has different requirements and limitations. So what you submit to one search engine to get a high listing may hurt you drastically in another search engine.

However, things have changed a little. There is now software available that will amaze you in what it does to help you "properly" submit your site to search engines and get you a higher positioning. It is probably the most economical and efficient way to get your site listed higher in the search engines. This option just became available this month. Until now, we did not feel comfortable in recommending any other inexpensive way to get ranked higher in the search engines because they were all ineffective, over-hyped, or just plain poor software or service. There is new software out now that is written by the same people who charge $600 - $900 to submit your site to the search engines. It is my opinion, that this new software is the only search engine submission software you should ever consider using. It is very extensive and has features and capabilities that no other submission software does. It is truly one software package that can get your website rated higher in the search engines because it literally "tutors" you through the process so you know exactly what to submit to get your site ranked higher. The product is called SubmitWolf Pro.

Conclusion: If you can afford it, I recommend that you hire one of these "top notch" submission companies to submit your site to the search engines. They will take care of everything from designing your keywords to providing a written report 90 days later to let you know where your sites are ranked. They are not cheap, but they are very effective.

The second best way is to use a product called SubmitWolf Pro . It costs less than $100 (which is a "steal" if you asked me) and was developed by the same people who charge $600 - $800 to submit your site so you are getting their proprietary software they use to submit your site at a fraction of the cost to hire them. It does an incredible job of assisting you in getting ranked higher in the search engines. We will talk a lot more about this software in the next section.