Search Engine Submission

The general consensus among search engine marketers nowadays is that search engine submission is a thing of the past, and that it really isn't necessary to submit websites to the search engines any more.

Crawling engines have programs called "crawlers" or "spiders" that crawl the web, following links from page to page and from site to site, and find new pages and sites primarily through links. So the best way to be included in the index is to have the site linked to from at least one other page that's already in the index.

It can be understood or assumed that popular sites, particularly ones that are updated frequently, get visited by the crawlers more often, so being linked to from such pages can possibly mean being found sooner, and quicker inclusion in the index than a link from an obscure, neglected site.

It takes having a certain number of quality inbound links to a site to be able to rank well anyway, so it's a good idea to start hunting for good linking possibilities while a site is still in preparation, and to go about acquiring some good links as soon as possible, once the site is at least passably presentable and ready for visitors.

Re-submission

It also isn't necessary to resubmit your site to search engines, since once you've been indexed they come back regularly, according to their own crawling schedule. Some search engines in the past suggested that you resubmit when changes to pages had been made. It's okay do this, but it isn't absolutely necessary.

How to Submit

If you do submit your site to the search engines, it's unncessary to submit any more than the homepage, though some people, if they submit, do also submit the index page of important subdirectories on their site.

It is 100% unnecessary to use a service that submits to hundreds or thousands of search engines. There are only 3 that will send the vast majorty of your traffic, with an odd hit here and there from one or two others. It's also totally unnecessary to use automated software for submission, and in fact is frowned upon, particularly by Google.

If you do submit, then submit by hand and just to be on the safe side for old time's sake, because it was the limit suggested for the major search engine at the time years ago, to avoid being considered a "spammer" back when submitting was a normal practice, limit submission to 5 URLs in a given day from any particular site.

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