Q: How do you submit your site to search engines/directories?

You can either manually submit your site to search engines such as Google or Yahoo, or let the search engine spiders automatically find your website. If your website already has a link back from an existing spidered webpage from another website, it will most likely, get indexed when the webpage linking to you is re-visited by the spider. Following are some of the places where you can submit your site to various search engines yourself.

Google – http://www.google.com/addurl

Yahoo – http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html

Bing – http://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster

DMOZ – http://dmoz.org/add.html

While submitting pages to search engines keep in mind that most engines have a maximum limit as to the number of webpages from any website. It is a good idea to break up the page submission over a few days. If you feel the webpage has not been indexed even after 6-7 weeks, you can re-submit the URL. No search engine penalizes websites for re-submission of webpages unless it is done excessively. Keep in mind that it could take search engines like Google or Yahoo upto 6-7 weeks to index a website that has been submitted for inclusion. You can speed up the initial indexing of the site by one or more of the following techniques:

Get a directory listing in DMOZ (which itself could take weeks).
Get a link back from a quality site that has been indexed. Websites that have news or blogs on them are visited often by spiders. Try to get links from such sites to speed up the indexing process. Get a paid directory listing on Yahoo.
Submit your site to several free online directories. Always remember to be patient while the search engines index your site. Don't resort to any desperate measures such as re-submitting the site over and over again. The search engines will always take their time.

Factors to keep in mind while submitting a site to the search engines ensure that the keywords and description meta tags have been made carefully.
Ensure that the pages are optimized and that the keywords are placed throughout. Add the site to the most relevant category. You can conduct a search of your keyword or check where your competition is listed in the directory.
Ensure that your website is working properly. Some directory editors will check to see if the site is real. Ensure that there are no broken links.