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Once the design and optimisation of your website has been completed and uploaded to your web space, the next step is to get listed in the free major search engines, of which there are only four you really need to concern yourself with - all the rest will bring you very few, if any, visitors. These days there is no need to actually submit your website for inclusion, as the search engines send out software (called spiders) to automatically gather the information which they want to add to their databases.

The quickest way to be found in this way - or get 'indexed' - is to obtain a link from another website, preferably with content matter that is related to yours, but definitely not through using one of the many companies who charge a fee to submit your site to the thousands of search engines. You'll be wasting your money and in any case, the process they are most likely to use to submit your site will be ignored by most search engine software. Once your site has been indexed you'll never need to submit it again.

Providing your website has been designed in a search engine friendly manner (the basics of which can be learnt from information on other pages of this website), optimisation has been carried out, and you have started getting links from other related sites pointing to yours, you could start to see your website appearing in the search engine listings for a few of your less competitive keyword phrases. No matter how well your website has been designed and optimised, you will not gain or maintain rankings without obtaining links from other subject related websites. This is an ongoing process which either you do yourself or get your optimisation company to do for you, which is ideally the preferred method unless you have experience in this matter.

Initially, if you have little experience and intend doing the linking work yourself, you should consider paid inclusion into a few directories to get your campaign underway. Yahoo have a business directory but it is debatable whether being included in it is worth the added expense. You can also submit to Dmoz.org for free, but you could wait months before you see yourself listed, if ever. In this case, if after 4 months you have not been listed by Dmoz it is worth submitting to them again, but certainly no sooner than that. Below are listed the four free major search engines, starting with the one you are most likely to get the majority of your visitors from providing your website has been designed and optimised and you have your link campaign well underway.

GOOGLE. If you have utilised the design and optimisation information found throughout this website, you should get more traffic through Google than any other search engine. At this time new sites are taking anything from 5 months to 12 months or more to get rankings, so be prepared to expect the same depending on how competitive your product or service is on the web. However, your site could be indexed by Google within a day or two if you have a link from a good subject-related resource.

YAHOO. Again, if you have made use of all the information we offer, you should get considerable traffic through Yahoo. Rankings should come within a few months provided you have implemented a link building strategy. If your website has been optimised correctly it is possible to rank well on all four major search engines.

MSN. You can expect a good flow of traffic through MSN. Your website should be indexed by them very quickly and if optimised correctly you may find your site ranking well within a week of going live. To maintain rankings you will need to work on obtaining good quality links, and adding fresh content on a regular basis will help keep your search engine rankings high.

ASK. You can expect some traffic through Ask and even though high rankings for a particular search phrase won't bring you as many visitors as you'll get from the other engines, it is still worth having your site indexed by Ask.

There are also a number of paid inclusion directories and search engines that you can be listed in for a small one-off or annual fee. Some of these will bring a good volume of visitors to your website, others will bring you very few. However, if you submit to paid inclusion search engine friendly directories related to your content, you should at least get a good quality link which will help your boost your link popularity.