Submitting your website manually to Google, Yahoo, MSN and a host of other search engines can be tedious work but someone has to do it. If your webmaster does not help you with it, he should be fired. Submitting sites to search engines should be a task which your webmaster should be able to help or at least point you to someone who may.
But a word of caution: submitting your website to search engines is only relevant IF (and this is a BIG iF) you have good content for the search engines bots to index. Otherwise, forget it.
What makes good content? Content that’s updated, content that’s tailored to help your website visitors, content that is not old or out-dated. But what if you cannot write your own content? If you don’t mind, you can always ‘borrow’ content by featuring other writers. Free content is found in abundance online but always remember to include the author or writer’s sig file or resource box. Nothing peeves an author when he is not acknowledged and yet his article is found on someone else’s website!
Also, ensure you have your metatags and page titles in order. (Don’t have a clue what this is? Why not sign up for my free monthly ezine? I usually give out more tips and tricks on the nitty-gritty on websites in my free ezine. Enter your name and email address on the sign-up box on the right of this webpage to get more info.)
Let’s say you have rock solid content and great metatags but your webmaster never bothered to submit your website to major search engines. You can roll up your sleeves and do it yourself. It’s not some hush-hush secret. It’s just tedious…. 
Start with the big three first. Don’t know which big three I am talking about? Yes, Google, Yahoo and MSN. Once you get the hang of it, you can find the ’smaller’ guns and submit to them later. I’m more concerned about the big boys. Once the big boys find you, it’s much easier for the smaller ones to do it too.
You just need to key in your URL when prompted. Include everything. For instance, mine would be http://www.redboxstudio.com
The big three need you to verify that you are a human and not some robot doing automatic submission (that’s frowned upon in world wide web land). Just key in what you see (usually numbers and letters) and then you get to submit your URL.
How soon can you see your website indexed? It depends. It could be sooner than you think if you constantly update your website with fresh content. You can always check by typing “site:www.yoursite.com” in the search box (minus the quote marks of course) of any search engine to find out if you’re indexed or not.
Here’s the page to manually submit your website to Google http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl
Here’s the page for Yahoo
http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request
Here’s the page for MSN
http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx?FORM=WSDD2
Or if that’s just too much work, Redbox Studio offers a package for submission to search engines including research on specific keywords and metatags. Contact us if you want us to help you with this.
Note: All premium clients of Redbox Studio (those who engage our services for customised web design service) receive this service free as it is included in the design package.