There are a few different ways you can announce your URL to the different search engines:

1. Use a free submission service. These automated submission services allow you to enter your information once and submit it to 50 - 400 search engines with the click of a button.

2. Go to each search engine individually and manually enter information for your webpage(s).

3. Use search engine submission software that you purchase to submit your URL.

#1 - Free Submission Service:

There are services such as Postmaster and Submit It that will list your site for free. You enter your information once and then with a push of a button, it will automatically submit that info to the search engines you choose.

The problem with using a free submission service is that every search engine has different variables for submissions. For example, Yahoo only allows a very limited amount of characters as a maximum title size where other search engines may allow up to 200.

You want to maximize the number of keywords you can fit in your title, but by using a free submission service it will submit the same information to every search engine. You are therefore not maximizing your exposure and are not getting listed as high on the search results as you should. More importantly, you cannot specify exactly what categories your site should be listed in when using an automated service (whereas if you did the submission manually, you could).

The main problem is that you submitted the same information to all the search engines, but each search engines has different requirements and limitations. So what you submit to one search engine to get a high listing, may hurt you drastically in another search engine.

By using these free submission services you will save a lot of time, but the disadvantage is that you will only get about one fifth of the traffic you would have if you had spent the time to do it properly (explained in the next two sections below).

#2 - Entering Your Site To Each Search Engine Manually (Free):

By far the best way to announce your URL for free is to go to each individual search engine separately and submit the information for each webpage you have. This allows you to maximize your exposure by completing every field in the submission form to its maximum potential for keywords, descriptions, additions, content, contact information, etc. It also allows you to specifically pick one or multiple categories that would best suit your business, therefore increasing your chances of being seen and attracting visitors to your site.

There are two disadvantages to this approach. The first is that it is very time consuming (it can take you a few days to do it properly). And the second is that there are no professionals available to look over your keywords and titles, verifying that you are using all the most current search engine tricks, and to double check your choices for effectiveness.

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