Submit Your Site to Search Engines

www.webnots.com
Submit Your Site to
Search Engines
Learn how to submit your website to search
engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo!, Baidu, Yandex
and famous free web directories.
CONTENTS
How do I Submit My Site to Search Engines? .........................................................................3
What to Submit with Search Engines? ....................................................................................3
How to Submit Your Site to Google? ...........................................................................5
Add and Verify your Site ..........................................................................................................5
Adding Your Site .......................................................................................................................5
Verify Your Site .........................................................................................................................6
How to Verify your Site is indexed? ........................................................................................7
How to monitor indexing and crawling statuses of my Site? ................................................7
Deleting Your Site .....................................................................................................................8
How to Submit Site to Bing / Yahoo!? ........................................................................9
Option1: Submit Your Site to Bing as anonymous .................................................................9
Option2: Submit using Bing Webmaster Tools.................................................................... 10
Add and Verify Site in Bing Webmaster Tools ..................................................................... 10
Adding Your Site .................................................................................................................... 11
Verifying Your Site ................................................................................................................. 12
Deleting Your Site .................................................................................................................. 14
Submit Your Site to Baidu Search Engine ............................................................... 15
What is Baidu? ....................................................................................................................... 15
Why do i need to submit my site to Baidu?......................................................................... 15
How do i submit my site to Baidu without Baidu Webmaster Tools account?................. 16
Content Guidelines for Baidu Site Submission .................................................................... 17
How to Add and Verify Site in Baidu Webmaster Tools? ................................................... 18
Adding Your Website ............................................................................................................. 19
Verify Your Site ...................................................................................................................... 20
Where to Paste the HTML Site Verification Code? ............................................................. 21
Site Manager Options............................................................................................................ 22
How to Submit Your Site to Yandex? ....................................................................... 24
Guidelines for Site Submission to Yandex ........................................................................... 25
Add and Verify Site in Yandex Webmaster Tools ................................................................ 25
Features Without Registration ............................................................................................. 26
Adding Your Site .................................................................................................................... 27
Verifying Your Site ................................................................................................................. 28
Deleting a Site and Revoking Access .................................................................................... 29
Submit Your Site to Best Free Web Directories .................................................... 31
What are Directories? ........................................................................................................... 31
Classification of Web Directories?........................................................................................ 31
HOW DO I SUBMIT MY SITE TO SEARCH ENGINES?
Google Webmaster Tools, Bing Webmaster Tools, Baidu Webmaster Tools and Yandex
Webmaster Tools are the way to submit your site to the respective search engines.
Along with site submission they offer variety of other site optimization tools.
While Bing, Yandex and Baidu offers anonymous site submission, Google Webmaster
Tools is the only way for webmasters to submit their site to the search engine giant
Google. Consider also submitting your site to non-English search engines like Baidu and
Yandex which has lot of potential to attract huge number of visitors to your site.
Search Engine
Anonymous Submission
Webmaster Tools
Google
No
Yes
Bing
Yes
Yes
Baidu
Yes
Yes
Yandex
Yes
Yes
Ideally search engines automatically crawls the web and index every newly created sites.
The purpose of manual submission is to inform the search engines that the site is owned
by you and in return to get the optimization suggestions exclusively applicable for your
site. For example if your site is down for some reasons without your knowledge,
Webmaster Tools indicates the access error so that you can recheck your site and
ensure it is up and running fine.
You can also submit your site to the free web directories which will also increase your
search engine results ranking.
WHAT TO SUBMIT WITH SEARCH ENGINES?
Whenever you submit your site URL normally all the pages of your site will be
considered for submission. But the final indexing depends on each search engine
algorithm and the quality of your content. This is the reason you may notice the
following differences between search engines:



Pages are indexed in Google but not in Bing or Yahoo!
Number of indexed pages is high in Google but very few pages are indexed in
Bing.
Long time for indexing, especially on Baidu and Yandex since they give
preference to Chinese and Russian content respectively.
Other than submitting your home page URL you also need to submit your blog RSS feed,
forum feed and XML Sitemap to inform the search engines about the structure and the
importance of the pages in your site.
Google in general index all your pages within few days of submitting your Sitemap
in Webmaster Tools account.
Below is the market share of search engines among English speaking users.
Search Engine Market Share
HOW TO SUBMIT YOUR SITE TO GOOGLE?
You should have a Webmaster Tools account in order to submit your site to Google.
Google does not allow anonymous site submission like other Search Engines. Since
Google holds more than 60% of the search engine market in English speaking countries,
it is the great and simple way for an organic traffic to your site.
Click the below button to open your webmaster tools account. You can use your
existing Gmail id for logging in or create a new account.
Create Google WMT Account
ADD AND VERIFY YOUR SITE
Your Blogger and Google Sites will appear automatically once you logged inside
Webmaster Tools account. You may need to set your sites visible to the search engines
in Blogger or Google Sites account.
For all other sites you need to add it to Webmaster Tools and verify it that you are the
owner of that site. Note most of the free site builders like Weebly even though offers
free site submission, Webmaster Tools provides various free features in addition to site
submission for optimizing your site. For example Search Term analysis is a Pro feature in
Weebly which is totally free in Webmaster Tools.
ADDING YOUR SITE
After Sign in Webmaster Tools select the link "Add Site", enter your site URL and click on
"Continue".
Add a Site
VERIFY YOUR SITE
Once you enter your site URL and select Continue button, Webmaster Tools offers
various methods to verify your site ownership. Google recommends downloading and
uploading HTML file to your site and this method needs you to have an access to root
directory of your site.
We recommend the easy way of using HTML tag in your site's header section which is
available under Alternate methods tab. You don't need to have an access to root
directory of your site in this method.
Various Methods for Verification
The verification code is displayed once you select the HTML tag radio button.
HTML Verification Code
Copy the verification code and paste it into the header section of your site. In order to
monitor all the pages in your site you need to paste this HTML code in all individual
pages.
Once you pasted the verification code and publish your site, Webmaster Tools
automatically detects the code and displays the message for successful verification of
your site ownership.
Verification Confirmed Successfully
If you do not see any data appearing for your site, then try adding both www and nonwww versions of your site. They are considered as two different sites from Webmaster
Tools perspective.
Your site is now submitted to Google. Google will index your site and display in the
search results pages when someone searches query related to your content.
HOW TO VERIFY YOUR SITE IS INDEXED?
Generally it will take a week time to crawl your site and index in the search engine’s
database. You can check it in the Google search box by entering
“site:yoursitename.com” to ensure whether any pages of your site is indexed or not.
If the pages are indexed but not showing top in the search results pages, then the
quality of the content is to be improved to show top in the search results.
HOW TO MONITOR INDEXING AND CRAWLING STATUSES OF MY
SITE?
Google Webmaster Tools allows you to check the crawling errors and number of pages
indexed from your site. In addition, it offers many free services like Sitemap submission,
Traffic Analysis and link counts, which are to be used for analyzing and optimizing your
site for Google Search Engine.
Learn More about Google Webmaster Tools here.
DELETING YOUR SITE
You can delete your site from the Webmaster Tools account anytime if you want. The
option for deletion is available under "Manage Site > Delete Site".
Adding or deleting your site in Webmaster Tools account will not affect your site's
ranking in Google search results, it is only a tool to monitor and improve your site's
performance in Google search engine.
Delete a Site
HOW TO SUBMIT SITE TO BING / YAHOO!?
You have two options for submitting your site to Bing Search Engine.
1. Anonymous Site submission - You will just submit your site and will not know
any further information.
2. Using Bing Webmaster Tools – You will know the crawling errors and have many
other options to optimize your site for Bing Search Engine.
Both Yahoo and Bing Search use a common Bing search engine; hence you can pull
traffic from Yahoo and Bing by submitting your site to Bing Search Engine.
Bing and Yahoo! together hold over 30% of the search engine market share in English
speaking countries. Bing also has partnered with Baidu, the famous search engine in
China, for displaying English search results.
OPTION1: SUBMIT YOUR SITE TO BING AS ANONYMOUS
You can also submit your site to Bing as anonymous without registering for Webmaster
Tools account. The only difference is you may not be able to avail other free services
from Bing if you choose this option.
Click here to submit your site to Bing.
Once submitted you will be shown a message for successful submission and offered to
sign in for Bing WMT account.
Submit Site to Bing
OPTION2: SUBMIT USING BING WEBMASTER TOOLS
You need to sign up for Bing Webmaster Tools or you can use your Windows Live ID if
you already have one Signup here.
After logged inside Webmaster Tools, you can use "Add a Site" link to submit your site
to Bing. Once you add your site then you need to verify the ownership of your site. Bing
offers three methods to verify your site.
a. Place an XML file on your web server
b. Copy and Paste a <meta> tag in your default webpage
c. Add CNAME record to DNS
As an easy method, you can choose the second one, copy and paste the code in meta
tag of your home page. It may take a few days for Bing to crawl and index your site in
the database.
Bing also offers various other features like SEO Reports, SEO Analyzer, Markup Validator,
Site Activities and Sitemap submission.
Learn More about Bing Webmaster Tools here.
ADD AND VERIFY SITE IN BING WEBMASTER TOOLS
Bing is the search engine used by both Bing and Yahoo! having over 30% of search
engine market share. You can submit your site to Bing anonymously as well as through
Bing Webmaster Tools account. This article explains how to add your site in Bing
Webmaster Tools and various verification methods available.
Bing Webmaster Tools Login
It is highly recommended to have registered account in order to make use of all the
features available in Bing Webmaster Tools. Click here to register for a free account.
You can also login to your account using Microsoft's account like Hotmail or Windows
Live.
ADDING YOUR SITE
Once you logged in to your account, you can see an "Add a Site" box. Enter your site URL
and click on the "ADD" button. Remember to enter the correct URL with WWW or
without WWW, since they are considered as two different sites from Bing's perspective.
Add a Site
In the "About my website" screen, you have the following options:
1. Check and correct the previously entered URL - Mandatory
2. Enter your Sitemap URL - Optional
3. Set a time for Bingbot crawling your site - Optional
Add Site in Bing Webmaster Tools
Click on the "ADD" button once you entered the required details.
VERIFYING YOUR SITE
Bing Webmaster Tools will provide you three options to verify your site.
Verification Methods in Yandex Webmaster Tools
Option 1 - XML File Upload


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
Download the BingSiteAuth.xml file under the option 1.
Upload the file in your site's root directory. You need to have an access to your
site's root directory in order to upload a file.
Check
your
file
upload
by
opening
the
URL
"http://example.com/BingSiteAuth.xml" in the browser. (Replace example.com
with your site name).
Click on the "Verify" button.
Option 2 - HTML meta tag Verification




This is the simple and recommended method which does not require access to
your site's root directory.
Copy and paste the HTML meta code in your site's header section. You need to
paste the verification code in each individual pages of your site in order to help
Bing to crawl and provide more accurate information about your site.
Once pasted the code publish your site and then click on the "Verify button".
Example of using meta tag is shown below:
Option 3 - Adding CNAME Record in DNS




In this method again you need to have an access to your site's DNS settings.
Add a CNAME record as given in your verification screen and point it to
"verify.bing.com".
If you are not sure how to do this, then select the DNS provider from the list and
then Bing search will help you with the related search results.
DNS changes may take up to 48 hours to propagate; hence you may need to wait
sometime if your verification is failed.
Once your site is successfully verified, you can see a message in the same screen next to
"Verify" button. You can also "Cancel" the verification and do it later any point of time.
Yandex Site Verification
If you want to change the method of verification for already verified site then you can
go to "Verify Ownership" option available under "Configure My Site" section.
Verify Site Ownership
DELETING YOUR SITE
Site Dashboards will show all the sites added in your account. You have an option to
click on the unverified site to verify it as explained in the above section. You can select
any site or all the sites and delete from your Bing Webmaster Tools account. Note
deleting or adding your site in Webmaster Tools account will not affect your site's
ranking in search results.
My Sites Dashboard
SUBMIT YOUR SITE TO BAIDU SEARCH ENGINE
WHAT IS BAIDU?
Baidu is a search engine used in China having more
than 75% of the market share. It is also widely used
search engine among the Chinese or Mandarin
speaking community in most part of the world
including Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong.
Baidu Search Engine in China
WHY DO I NEED TO SUBMIT MY SITE TO BAIDU?
Chinese are one of the highest internet users in the world and approximately one
million English searches are carried out in China per day.
Baidu has more than 75% of the search engine market share in China while Google has
over 15%. Moreover Microsoft is having a tie up with Baidu for the English search results,
that means the English search results in Baidu will use Bing search engine and then the
results will be displayed in Baidu’s Search result pages.
Search Engine Market Share in China
Even your site is not in Chinese language, we highly recommend submitting your site to
Baidu. Your traffic will increase multifold if you can index your site in Baidu search
engine.
HOW DO I SUBMIT MY SITE TO BAIDU WITHOUT BAIDU
WEBMASTER TOOLS ACCOUNT?
Visit Here and follow the below instructions, Baidu offers site submission only in Chinese
both for anonymous submission as well as through Baidu WMT.
The website needs to be submitted only once with the home page URL, Baidu search
engine automatically includes all other pages of your site.
1. Enter your website URL
2. Enter the verification code
3. Press the Submit button
Baidu Site Submission
4. You will receive a success message as below. Make sure the URL in the address
bar ends with "success.html".
Baidu Site Submit - Confirmation Message
CONTENT GUIDELINES FOR BAIDU SITE SUBMISSION
• No sexual and offensive content
Make sure you do not have any pornography and politically controversial content in
your site. China has a great internet censorship and if your site has any illegal content
there is no possibility of indexed by Baidu.
• At least have a single page of your site in Chinese
It is recommended to have a complete Chinese site for Baidu, if not possible make
sure at least one page in your site is in Chinese. Add the below meta tag in your Chinese
page to inform the crawler that your page is in Chinese.
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Language" CONTENT="ZH">
If you are planning to translate your site then ensure all the keywords are translated
into your new site. Unlike Google, Baidu will not index the new English sites faster;
hence submitting your new English site may not bring immediate traffic and you may
need to wait for a considerable time for Baidu to index your site’s pages.
• Create your site with a Chinese domain and host it from China
Baidu prefers to index the sites hosted in China. You can easily find a Chinese
hosting service having servers in China. Your domain name will end with .cn or .com.cn.
You can also submit your site to Baidu through Baidu Webmaster
Tools account which offers various site optimization tools along with the URL and Feed
submission to Baidu search engine.
Learn more about Baidu Webmaster Tools.
HOW TO ADD AND VERIFY SITE IN BAIDU WEBMASTER TOOLS?
Baidu is the famous search engine and number one traffic ranked site in China. Baidu
predominantly offer searches in Chinese and also offer English searches in partnership
with Bing.
Baidu also offers Webmaster Tools to enable webmasters to monitor various site
parameters and performance in Baidu search engine. The problem is currently Baidu
Webmaster Tools is only available in Chinese which makes webmasters a bit hard to add
and verify their site.
Here we eliminate the hassle of translation for webmasters and explain how to add and
verify a website in Baidu Webmaster Tools account using English notations. Learn more
about Baidu Webmaster Tools features here.
Click here to login to your Baidu webmaster tools account. You may need to register for
a new account in case if you do not have an existing account.
Login to Baidu Webmaster Tools
ADDING YOUR WEBSITE
Once you login to your webmaster tools account, go to the first option (Site
Management) as shown in the below picture. Here you can see the "Add New Site"
button.
Add Your Site in Baidu Webmaster Tools Account
Clicking on the "Add New Site" button, you will be taken to the next screen asking your
site URL. Enter your site URL and click OK button.
Enter Site URL
Remember to enter correct URL of your website, for example "www.webnots.com"
and "webnots.com" are two different sites from webmaster tools perspective. You can
check it by opening your XML Sitemap in a browser with and without 'www' and use
the correct site for which Sitemap exist.
VERIFY YOUR SITE
After adding your site you will get a popup providing you the options for verifying your
site. Site verification is mandatory in order to access site specific features in webmaster
tools account.
You have three options to verify your website with Baidu webmaster tools.
Option1 - File Upload
Download the verification file and upload it into your website's root directory.
Option2 - HTML Tag Verification
A common method, copy and paste the HTML code into the header section of your
website.
Option3 - CNAME Settings
Copy the CNAME record and set it in your site's DNS settings pointing to zz.baidu.com.
Site Verification Options
Once you completed any of the verification method then click the "Verify Now" button.
You can also cancel the verification and verify it any point of time later.
Even though Baidu recommends waiting 6 hours for the verification, it will normally take
only a few minutes after you published your website. In case of verification is failed you
will see a message after clicking on the verify button, this means you may need to wait
for some more time before you click on verify again.
WHERE TO PASTE THE HTML SITE VERIFICATION CODE?
It is important to paste the HTML code correctly in your site to verify your site in Baidu
Webmaster Tools. Below is the suggested example showing how to paste the code
between <head> </head> tags.
<html>
<head>
<meta name="baidu-site-verification" content="7V6m4wr5FrLko2q2" />
<title>My title</title>
</head>
<body>
Your Webpage Content
</body>
</html>
You need to paste this verification code in-between the header section of every pages
of your site in order to monitor the performance of every pages of your website.
File Upload and CNAME settings need administrator access to your site's root directory
which means you should own the top level domain of your site whereas HTML tag
verification method does not need access to root directory.
SITE MANAGER OPTIONS
Once your site is verified it will be automatically added to your Site Manager. Site
Manager shows the complete list of sites under your webmaster tools account along
with other details.
Baidu Webmaster Tools Site Manager
You also have an option to delete your site any time from Baidu webmaster tools
account.
Learn here how to get Baidu Search Box Code for your website.
Baidu webmaster tools generates unique verification code for each site added
unlike Google and Bing Webmaster Tools where one single verification code can be
used for all the sites under one account.
HOW TO SUBMIT YOUR SITE TO YANDEX?
Yandex is a leading search engine in Russia having more than 60% of market share.
Yandex also offers searches in English which means you have a potential to extract
traffic from Russia. You also have an option to submit your site anonymously without
registering for Yandex webmaster Tool.
Click here to submit your URL to Yandex.
Enter your Site URL, verification code and submit your site.
Yandex Anonymous Site Submission
Before adding the URL you have an option to check whether your site is already indexed
in Yandex database or not by using Check URL option.
Check URL option in Yandex
GUIDELINES FOR SITE SUBMISSION TO YANDEX
Yandex prefers the site with Russian content and hosted in Russia. Hence, if you are
planning to submit your site to Yandex make sure at least a single page in your site is in
Russian.
You can include the following meta tag in your Russian page so that Yandex crawler will
understand that the page is in Russian.
<META http-equiv="Content-Language" content="RU">
You can submit your site to Yandex through Yandex Webmaster Tools.
Learn More about Yandex Webmaster Tools here.
ADD AND VERIFY SITE IN YANDEX WEBMASTER TOOLS
Yandex is a famous search engine having more than 60% of search engine market share
in Russia. Even though Yandex offers searches primarily in Russian language it also
offers Webmaster Tools account in English with limited features to help site owners
submitting their sites to Yandex search engine.
This article explains how to add your site in Yandex Webmaster Tools, various
verification methods and features available without registration.
FEATURES WITHOUT REGISTRATION
You can submit your site to Yandex without having a Webmaster Tools account also. In
addition to site submission you can also avail the following features without registration:

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
Check your site is indexed by Yandex
Analyze your site's Robots.txt
Report spam search result and remove your URL from search
Validate your Sitemap, XML feed and microformats
Features without Registration
It is highly recommended to have registered account in order to make use of all the
utilities available in Yandex Webmaster Tools.
Yandex Login
Click here to register for a free account.
Once you registered and activated your account, Click here to login to your account.
You can also login to your account using Facebook, Twitter or Google account.
ADDING YOUR SITE
Once you logged in to your account, click on the "Add Site" link.
Add a Site
Enter your site URL in the box and click on "Add site" button. Remember to enter a
correct URL with or without WWW since they are two different sites from Yandex
perspective. Any sites already added in your account will be shown under "Already
added" section.
VERIFYING YOUR SITE
The next step is to verify the ownership of your site and Yandex offers four methods to
verify your site ownership.
Verification Methods in Yandex Webmaster Tools
HTML File Upload:
In this method you need to download a HTML file and then upload it in your site's root
directory.
Meta Tag:
This is a simple and recommended method which does not require access to your site's
root directory. Copy the HTML code and paste it in your site's header section. You need
to paste this code in all the pages of your site in order to monitor all the pages.
Txt File:
Create an empty text file with the specified name provided by Yandex and upload it in
your site's root directory.
By DNS:
Create a CNAME record as provided by Yandex in your site's DNS setting.
Once you have completed any of the verification method don't forget to publish your
site and then click on the "Check" button to see whether Yandex search engine can
reach your site. It may take few minutes for Yandex to check the relevant verification
file or code is inserted in your site.
Yandex Site Verification
DELETING A SITE AND REVOKING ACCESS
All the verified sites will appear in "My Sites" section of your account and you can delete
your site any time later if you want. Note deleting or adding your site in Webmaster
Tools account will not affect your site's ranking in search results. Verifying a site will
inform search engines that the site is created by a human and there exist a site owner to
monitor the performance of the site in the search engine. In addition site owners can
use the free features like Sitemap submission, Preferred Domain setting and Geographic
setting.
My Sites Dashboard
You also have an option to revoke the verification rights anytime later for a particular
site added in your account and the option is available under the "Verification" tab as
shown in the below picture. Once the access is revoked the status will be changed to
"Unconfirmed" and you need to verify your site again in order to access all the features
in your account.
Revoke Access
SUBMIT YOUR SITE TO BEST FREE WEB DIRECTORIES
Click here to submit your site to the following free Web Directories to improve your web
traffic and search engine ranking. Recommendation is based on the Google PageRank of
the directories which is mentioned next to the site URL. For the ease of submission
clicking the link will directly take you to the submit URL page of the directory.
WHAT ARE DIRECTORIES?
Directory is the place where you can find list of websites based on category and
subcategory. Web directories just collate the links of all websites and display under
classified categories and they list the whole site rather than each page of a website. RSS
directories are same as web directories but contain RSS feeds instead of site links.
Submitting your site to directories is equivalently important as submitting your site to
search engines. Most of the search engines will automatically fetch data from the
directories and started indexing pages.
Some of directories do not allow search engine crawlers to fetch their links and only
used by human. Here we discuss best directories available for your site submission
especially for the effectiveness of SEO purpose.
When you submit your site make sure you select appropriate category and subcategory.
It may take up to few months for the directories to link your site and some of the
directories offer only paid submission.
CLASSIFICATION OF WEB DIRECTORIES?
Web directories can be classified under three categories:
1. General Directories:
These are general directories linking all type of sites under relevant categories and
subcategories after reviewing.
2. Special Directories:
If you are interested in submitting your site only to the relevant audience then special
directories are highly recommended.
3. Reciprocal Directories:
It is a kind of link exchange where they will list your site only if you are backlinking them
in your site.
Following are the directories you can submit your site for quality traffic and search
engine ranking.
General Directories
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AboutUs.org
Ansearch
Best of the Web Directory
JoeAnt
Open Directory Project or DMOZ
Starting Point Directory
World Wide Web Virtual Library
Yahoo! Directory
Some Special Directories


Biographicon – A Special directory for biographical entries
Business.com – Business directory that charges a fee for review and operates as
a Pay per click search engine.
Requires reciprocal link
You can find plenty of reciprocal link directories in the web which we do not
recommend from SEO perspective.