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How to Submit your Christian website to search engines - updated May 2004
This is a constantly changing topic (thus the date). You are encouraged to try this on your own. If you run out of time or get frustrated - contact us.
Quick Overview: - who's who
There are many search engines - secular and Christian. Only a handful will bring the vast majority of your traffic. Concentrate on them. Presently, they are: www.google.com - free www.yahoo.com local.yahoo.com www.altavista.comwww.lycos.com www.hotbot.com www.northernlights.com www.alltheweb.com www.teoma.com www.msn.com www.looksmart.com www.aol.com
At present the largest Christian search engines arewww.crosswalk.com aka goshen.net andwww.gospelcom.net andwww.crosssearch.com (unfortunately they direct little traffic to you because Christians don't know to use them)There are sites that feed data to many of the search engines above. They are:www.dmoz.org - free
There are many sites that sell keywords based on a click & pay basis:
www.overture.com (largest) www.google.com www.looksmart.com www.msn.com www.lycos.com / www.hotbot.comThere are sites that charge you to be listed on an annual basis:
www.yahoo.com www.looksmart.com www.lycos.com
The Process:
You find the "submit your url" or "add site" page on a search engine. You submit your site details such as Page Title, URL, Website Description, Keywords, Contact info.
The days of automated search submissions to 1000's of search engines are over. Don't try it. Will waste your time and bring you spam.
How and Where:
Follow this basic process and be done quickly and have an effective presence.
I.Make sure your site is search engine friendly.
A. Meta tags are html code not viewed on the webpage but read by search engine indexing spiders. They are placed after the page code opening tags of <html> and before the <body> tags, in between the <head> </head> tags. An example of what they might look like is:
<TITLE>Christian Business Resources</TITLE>
<META NAME="Description" CONTENT="Christian Internet gateway. Business & ministry resources, reference tools, directories, associations, organizations, support services, news.">
<META NAME="Keywords" CONTENT="Christian, business, ministry, reference, resources, financial, associations, organizations, directory, study tools, support services, entrepreneur, education, research, missions, search, men, women, senior, news, sports, commentary, affiliates, pastor, minister, clergy, priest, church, parish, health, fitness, wellness, community, principles, networking, referral, outreach, faith">
B. The Title tag is the most important as well as the first 50 words of text on your page. The Description and Keywords are secondary.
Have unique and specific page titles for each html page on your site. Have 10-25 words of descriptive text stuffed with your keywords at the beginning of each page - prior to all your other site info. Make sure your site contains the info that your title and description speak of.
C. DON'T list 'welcome to my ministry' or 'home page'
D.DO - list 6-8 keywords for that page topic such as "Calvary Baptist Churches, Bishop, CA. - Eastern Sierras, Inyo County" or "High Tech Ministry - free website design for churches, ministries." or "Christian website designers & marketing firm for web sites"SUGGESTION - Before starting; create a notepad file and type in the information the search engines will ask for. Eg. the page title, the url, the 24 word description, your name, your email address. Save the file. Record the search engines you submitted your site to. Record the date.
II. Roll up your sleeves and get online - allow 1 hour time. ( new windows will open and this page will stay available)
1. Submit to www.google.com/addurl.html
2. Submit to www.DMOZ.org - find the category you want to be in, then click Suggest Site link (feeds aol and google)
AOL Search is a hierarchical Web directory, organized by subject. All our user-submitted Web content is maintained by the Open Directory Project (http://www.dmoz.org). The Open Directory Project is run by a staff of volunteer editors who choose to evaluate and classify Web sites in one or more categories. The editor exercises the option of choosing to add a site, moving sites between categories and creating new sites.To get your site listed:
1. Find the most appropriate category or subcategory within the AOL Directory.
2. From that category page, submit your site information from the Submit a Site link in the green Open Directory Project box at the bottom of the page.3. Submit to http://local.yahoo.com - find your locale and submit there - FREE! ( USA churches / ministries only )
African churches: find your country withinwww.yahoo.com and then the Religion and Spirituality section, click suggest site.Submit Your Site for Free:
- Suggest your site for inclusion in Yahoo! Search (requires yahoo registration - and will result in your email address being used. this is a new program and it's not clear how this will affect you.)4. Submit to www.altavista.com (requires yahoo registration - and will result in your email address being used. this is a new program and it's not clear how this will affect you.) (it appears yahoo is sharing the information with them, so if you did yahoo above, you likely don't have to do this )
5. Submit to www.alltheweb.com (requires yahoo registration - and will result in your email address being used. this is a new program and it's not clear how this will affect you.) (it appears yahoo is sharing the information with them, so if you did yahoo above, you likely don't have to do this )
For Christian sites: submit also to
7. www.crossguide.com/join/default.aspx which serves www.goshen.net andwww.gospelcom.net and www.crosswalk.com
III. Now cut out 2 hours of your time to surf and request cross links
It is important in the long run to have many sites linked to yours. Surf and ask other sites to put a link to your site. Just email them with a short and polite request. Suggestion: make it easy for them! Have a Link to Us page with a banner, a button, and a 10 word text link that they can use to set the link to your site. Possibly even include this info in your email - or at least type the Link to Us page name into the email.
IV. Now Break Out Your Checkbook
1. Submit for annual spidering subscription at - $30/yr.http://www.positiontech.com/directsubmit.html
2. Buy keywords at www.overture.com - 1 - 5 cents per click - $5 account setup
3. Buy keywords at www.google.com - purchase minimum bid price - $5 account setup. Click on the Advertise and then Ad Words links.
4. Buy listing at www.yahoo.com if you have a commercial business - $300/yr.
Site Match™ and Site Match Xchange: - similar to Overture ie. $50 sign up then monthly fees based on click through.
- Ensure that your web pages are included in the Yahoo! Search index.
- Guaranteed quality review by editors for relevance.
- Not intended for placement or ranking in search results.Pay-For-Performance™: aka Overture
- List your business in sponsored search results across the Web.
- Control your position by the amount you bid on keywords.
- Set your own price-per-click and pay only when a customer clicks through to your site.Yahoo! Directory Submission
Yahoo! Express: $299/yr
- Submit your site for review and inclusion in the Yahoo! Directory.
- Editorial review of your pages.
- Intuitive categorization of your site in the Yahoo! Directory.----------for next level of cost and higher visibility, and in no particular order-------------
5. Lycos/hotbot Start your account today: http://insite.lycos.com/searchservices/Adbuyer/overview.asp
6. $30 per site per year. www.teoma.com - which is part of the Ask Jeeves network of searches eg. hotbot, ask, excite.
7. MSN has partnered with Overture to provide businesses a quick and easy option for including their link in the "Sponsored Sites" sections of the search results page. Please visit theOverture with MSN section for more information.
8. www.looksmart.com http://listings.looksmart.com/home/index.jhtml?sid=lsl100867
There. The above will save you hundreds of dollars, and hours of time.