Jeremy Hutton

So you have a website.  And your hosting company has automatically registered your website with 348 search engines globally.  Wow!  That’s a lot of search engines.  The only problem is there is virtually no value in registering your website with 348 search engines when 95% of the traffic come from 3 search engines (Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft). 

348 Search Engines!

Unless you are registering for a niche search engine that’s tailored to your audience, then it’s kind of a waste.

For most websites that are trying to get the most out of search engine registration, there is a simple free tool that provides more than just registration – it provides keyword search information – for your website.

Search engines have evolved quite a bit in the last 4 years by introducing various Webmaster Registration Accounts that allow website owners to register and verify their sites with search engines.  You tell them you own the site , they ask you to prove it by uploading a unique verification code, then presto! they provide you with a list of keywords that results in visits to your site and ways to improve your ranking… for free.

Free Merry-Go-Round

Search engines open the door and provide these free optimization tools (and search information) to webmasters in the hopes that the savvy ones will use that information to optimize and tweak their websites.  That means a better user experience for everyone.  The benefit to search engines is that they can better index your website content, and the benefit to you is that more qualified visitors will be able to get to your website.

If you are looking to begin registering your website with the various search engines, I recommend you begin with Google Webmaster Tools.  Google’s tool has been around the longest and thus been developed a bit more thoroughly than Microsoft’s Webmaster Center or Yahoo! Site Explorer.  It’s worthwhile to register for all three, though, as they are continually improving their tools.