May's Question of the Month

Some of the most frequent questions we get sound like these...

Do I need to submit my entire web site or just the main page? What if I change my web page, should I resubmit it? How often do the search engines revisit my web site?

The answers to all of them are interrelated so therefore I will address them as one article.

Question: Do I need to submit my entire web site or just the main page?

Theoretically, if you submit your main page to most search engines they are supposed to "spider" your site and find the rest of the pages. However, this is frequently not the case -- or, it can take up to 8 weeks for their spiders to eventually crawl your site... that is, if they ever do. Then, even if they do find your other pages there can be an additional lag time before they actually get into the index. In other words, there is a difference between being in their "database" and actually being available for others to view in the search engine's "index".

Therefore, unless you don't mind waiting for them to find your other pages AND waiting again to be indexed, we recommend that you individually submit every page in your site. By doing so, you substantially hasten the process of being indexed as well as improve your site's chances of being found in a keyword search because the more pages you have indexed the better your odds of getting some of them a top ten ranking.

Question: What if I change my web page, should I resubmit it?

That depends on which "search engine" and how well the page is ranked. In general, if your page scor...