It is (or it should be) every webmaster’s goal to have their site visible among search engines. Instead of waiting for crawlers to come across their site and index it, they can do what is known as search engine submission. It refers to the action of letting search engines know that your website exists. Usually, crawlers are able to find them organically but, if you have a newly created site, you could use this tactic to let them know manually.

By doing so, you’ll be promoting your website and helping it increase their rankings. Also, if you recently updated one of your pages, submitting it to search engines will make them recognize the update more quickly.

There are two main methods you can use when it comes to submission: one page at a time or the entire site. Either one of them will depend on your current needs and stage of your website. Typically, people submit only the home page of their site since crawlers are smart enough to scan an entire site after they’ve been directed to the homepage.

For the main search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and Bing, the process is relatively simple. For Google, you have two options. You can go to its web page for URL submitting and type your site’s address, or you can send it via the Search Console.

If you submit your URL to Bing, it will automatically sync with Yahoo! To do so, you need to log in with your Bing account and through their Webmaster Tools’ page add your URL.

Every search engine can have its own URL adding policy. Some of them only ask for your site’s main URL, while for others, you need to submit different pages.

There’s a common misconception when it comes to Search Engine Submission and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The two are in no way related, and their meanings are different. By simply submitting your site, you have no control over your site’s ranking. You are only requesting a specific search engine to include your website in their index. SEO, on the other hand, are those tactics that you implement to enhance your pages to be visible among the SERPs.