How To Get Indexed By Search Engines...Fast

Why Can't I Get Indexed by the Search Engines? Unfortunately,
this is an all too common question. If it makes you feel any
better, you're not the only one frustrated about the length of
time it takes to be indexed, or the many pitfalls involved. It
often takes anywhere from two days to as much as six months to
be listed on a search engine. For example, last month Excite
finally updated its index for the first time since last August!
Luckily, Excite is the most extreme case lately, but waiting
several weeks to a month can also be extremely frustrating. The
WebPosition Submitter report will give you current time
estimates for each engine so you'll know what to expect.
However, an engine at any time could choose to delay their
indexing beyond the "norm" for maintenance or other reasons. On
the flip side, you could get lucky and submit just a couple days
before an engine does a complete refresh of their database.
Therefore, submission times can never be an exact science since
we're all ultimately at the mercy of the engine. If you've
submitted your site and have waited the estimated time to be
indexed and there's still no listing, what do you do now? Here
are 16 tips that should help you solve this problem: 1. First,
be sure you're not already indexed but just don't know it.
Unfortunately, none of the major engines are kind enough to
e-mail or notify you as to if and when you've been indexed. The
method to determine if a page or domain has been indexed varies
from one engine to another, and in many cases, it's difficult to
tell for sure. Never assume that you're not indexed just because
you searched for a bunch of keywords and you never came up in
the first few pages of results. You could be in there but buried
near the bottom. In addition, it's not very practical to check
the status of a number of pages on each major engine each week.
Fortunately, WebPosition has a URL verification feature in the
Reporter that makes this process much easier. Each time you run
a mission, it will report which URLs exist and do not exist in
each engine. 2. Make sure you have uploaded the pages to your
site before submitting them. This one seems obvious, but
submitting a page that does not exist or submitting with a
subtle typo in the URL is a goof we might all make at one time
or another. If you're using WebPosition's Submitter, there's a
checkbox on tab 2 that forces WebPosition to verify that all
your URLs are valid before submitting them. 3. If you have
information inside frames, that can cause problems with
submissions. It's best if you can create non-framed versions of
your pages. You should then submit the non-frames versions of
your pages which can of course point to your framed Web site.
Alternatively, you can enter your relevant text within the
NOFRAMES area of a framed page which most search engine spiders
will read. 4. Search engine spiders cannot index sites that
require any kind of registration or password. A spider cannot
fill out a form of any kind. The same rule applies regarding
indexing of content from a searchable database, because the
spider cannot fill out a form to query that database. The
solution is to create static pages that the engines will be able
to find. 5. Dynamic pages often block spiders. In fact, any URL
containing special symbols like a question mark (?) or an
ampersand (&) will be ignored by many engines. 6. Most engines
cannot index text that is embedded in graphics. Text that
appears in multimedia files (audio and video) cannot be indexed
by most engines. Information that is generated by Java applets
or in XML coding cannot be indexed by most engines. 7. If your
site has a slow connection or the pages are very complex and
take a long time to load, it might time out before the spider
can index all the text. For the benefit of your visitors and the
search engines, limit your page size to less than 60K. In fact,
most Webmasters recommend that your page size plus the size of
all your graphics should not exceed 50K-70K. If it does, many
people on dial up connections will leave before the page fully
loads.

8. If you submit just your home page, don't expect a search
engine to travel more than one or two links away from the home
page or the page that you submitted. Over time they may venture
deeper into your site, but don't count on it. You'll often need
to submit pages individually that appear further down into your
site or have no link from the home page.

9. If your Web site fails to respond when the search engine
spider pays a visit, you will not be indexed. Even worse, if you
are indexed and they pay a visit when your site is down, you'll
often be removed from their database! Therefore, it pays to have
a reliable hosting service that is up 99.5% of the time.
However, at some point a spider is going to hit that other 0.5%
and end up yanking your pages by mistake. Therefore, it pays to
keep a close eye on your listings.

10. If you have ever used any questionable techniques that might
be considered an overt attempt at spamming (i.e., excessive
repetition of keywords, same color text as background, or other
things that the WebPosition Page Critic warns you about), an
engine may ignore or reject your submissions. If you're having
trouble getting indexed in the expected amount of time, make
sure your site is spam-free.

11. If your site contains redirects or meta refresh tags these
things can sometimes cause the engines to have trouble indexing
your site. Generally they will index the page that it is
redirecting TO, but if it thinks you are trying to "trick" the
engine by using "cloaking" or IP redirection technology, there's
a chance that it may not index the site at all.

12. If you're submitting to a directory site like Yahoo, Open
Directory, NBCi, Looksmart, or others, then a human being will
review your site. They must decide the site is of sufficient
"quality" before they will list it. I recommend you read the
submission guide on the directory tab of the WebPosition
Submitter. It contains tips to improve your chances of obtaining
a good listing on these directories.

13. A number of engines no longer index pages residing on many
common free web hosting services. The common complaint from the
engines is that they get too many "junk" or low-quality
submissions from free web site domains. Therefore, they often
choose not to index anyone from those domains or they limit
submissions from them. It's always best to buy your own domain
name (very important) and place it on a respected, paid hosting
service to avoid being discriminated against.

14. Some engines have been known to drop pages that cannot be
traveled to from the home page. HotBot has been rumored to do
this. You may want to consider submitting your home page that
links either directly or indirectly to your doorway pages.

15. Make sure you're submitting within the recommended limits.
Some engines do not like more than a certain number of
submissions per day for the same domain. If you exceed the
limit, you may find that all your submissions are ignored.
Fortunately, WebPosition's submitter will warn you regarding
current limits and recommend you stay within them. Some
submission consultants feel it is dangerous to submit more than
ONE page a day to a engine for a given Web site. For those who
wish to be ultra-conservative in their approach, the WebPosition
Submitter includes a checkbox to limit submissions to one URL
per day per engine.

16. Last but not least, sometimes the engines just lose
submissions at random through technical errors and bugs.
Therefore, some people like to resubmit once or twice a month
for good merit in case they do lose a submission. Certainly if
you've followed all the "rules" and are still not listed,
re-submit! Sometimes a little persistence is all that's needed.

If any of the above scenarios apply to your submission, you
should make the necessary adjustments and re-submit. If that
still does not work, you should consider e-mailing or calling
the search engine and asking them politely why you have not been
indexed yet. Sometimes they will reply back with "Sorry, there
was a problem with our system and I've now made sure you'll be
indexed within the next couple days." Or, sometimes they'll tell
you why you were not indexed. In other cases, they will ignore
your e-mail and you'll have to keep e-mailing or calling them
until they respond. Still, it's definitely worth the effort to
get your site listed with the major engines assuming you also
take the time to optimize your pages so you'll achieve top
rankings. I hope this helps in your future marketing decisions.

About the author:
David Bell is Manager, Online Marketing, at
http://www.wspromotion.com/ , a leading Search Engine
Optimization services firm and Advertising Agency.