For most websites, the majority of traffic comes from a search engine. When you are building a website, it is important to get your site in the search engine database so that it can index it into the possible results list for certain keywords and phrases. For a business to be successful online, it needs traffic from search engines it doesn't have to pay for. Submitting your site to a search engine helps the site indexing process.

Submitting Your Site to Google

Google has an Add URL feature. All you have to do is add your URL (including the http:// prefix) and your comments. Enter the captcha, and submit. Do not submit all the pages of your site individually, because the bots will crawl the site and index all of the pages on its own. It is important to note that submitting your site does not guarantee its inclusion, and if it is included, there is no guarantee of placement. Sitemaps can be submitted through Google Webmaster Tools.

Submitting Your Site to Yahoo

Once you visit Yahoo.com, scroll down to the bottom of the page, and look for "Yahoo for Small Business." There should be a link to submit your site for inclusion. From there, you will see several options, including: "Submit Your Site for Free," "Submit Your Mobile Site for Free," "Submit Your Media Content for Free," Sponsored Search" and "Product Submit." There is a separate Yahoo Directory submission. Enter the URL with the http:// prefix and click submit. Alternatively, you can submit an RSS feed.

Submitting to Other Directories

Visit the other directories or find a directory submission site to help you. Each one the directories will have a "submit" link or button on them. Clicking this button will provide a form for information about your site, including the URL, and a description. Fill out the information accordingly and submit.

While you don't have to submit your site to the major search engines, such as Google and Yahoo, because they will crawl the web and add your site on their own, eventually, it is a good idea to go ahead and submit your new site to speed up the process because it may take weeks, or even months to get your site indexed and showing in results. Submitting your site to search engines is not hard, but it will take time. Even with automated submission software to make the process easier, rather than manual submissions, there are hundreds of search engines and smaller search directories to possibly submit your site to.

It is not necessary to submit more than once, as the search engines will crawl the web and update their databases periodically anyway. If for any reason you want to remove content from the search engines, this is also a possibility, because Google and Yahoo have 'remove content' buttons to allow you to specify which site pages you want to remove.