Why 3 Search Engines Are Enough

By Sherif Ramadan

OK, so you're on the internet. You want to find some information about a healthy diet for you cat. Where do you go? Perhaps you remember the URL of a website that might provide this information, but what if it doesn't have exactly what you're looking for? How do you find a website that does?

Surely no one can remember the address to every single website on the internet and your ‘favorites' can only have so many websites before it turns into a massive list of random websites.

That's why almost everybody uses search engines. They provide us with an indexed directory of web pages, images, video, audio, and other various criteria from all over the internet, searchable by keywords or phrases.

So when someone is interested in finding out more about "hybrid automobiles", for example, they would visit one of the many internet search engines on the world-wide-web and enter that particular phrase to find web pages that contain information relevant to the search-term(s) they've used.

If my website contains information about "hybrid automobiles" then a link to my site would be included in that search. This is one way for webmasters to spread the word about their websites. It's estimated that 7 out of 10 people find websites through search engines (the yellow pages of the internet).

This can be a highly beneficial tool for website exposure and generating traffic. The best thing about internet search engines is that they're free! People can both search and submit their websites for free. It's true that some search engines offer paid listings, but even the ones that do still offer free listings.

Some people think they can increase their chances of visibility on search engines by submitting their listings to a large number of search engines. Admittedly, that was one thing I tried myself when failing to generate some serious traffic from my listings.

With great disappointment, though, I didn't succeed. There's one important lesson I learned in search engine submission.

Don't be lured by those web sites that claim to submit your website to thousands of search engines all at once. Today it is far more practical to submit your website to just one or two search engines and generate the same, if not more, traffic as you would with submitting it to one-hundred or two-hundred search engines.

One of the reasons for this is because some search engines have succeeded in bringing more visitors and generating far more traffic to websites than others. Another reason is because a great number of smaller search engines today use the results from other larger search engines. So it is no-longer necessary to have your listings on so many search engines, because there's a good chance that they'll end up there anyway.

So how many are enough? In my opinion submitting your websites to the three major search engines on the internet is more than enough to generate consistent traffic. I have been through a list of the top 500 search engines on the web and I've discovered that most of them are just taking search results from the biggest listings.

I've learned that 70% of the traffic generated by search engines comes from just 3 of the major search players. The number one search engine, of course, being Google. One website I read about was ranking in the lower 100,000 on Alexa and just by submitting their website to Google's search engine they jumped from 100K to the top 10,000 in just a few weeks. The next two, most important, search engines are Yahoo and MSN search. Yahoo still uses some of the results generated by Google, but both have a powerful drive themselves.

If you still want to submit your website to more of the search engines out there it eventually will bring you extra traffic, but don't expect that it will generate any more traffic than the major players. The important thing is to make sure you've properly optimized your website for search engines and follow the guidelines provided by each of them.

Start with the biggest search engines first and then work your way down the list. Update your websites constantly and make sure your SEO campaign is generating the results you want. Remember getting constant and steady traffic from search engines is a long term process and it requires a lot of work, but it is also very effective in keeping traffic flowing to your website in the long run. Search engines are the leading tool used in finding web pages on the internet. Don't pass up the opportunity to benefit from this tool.

Sherif Ramadan is the founder of Business-Geek.com a website dedicated to providing small businesses with affordable services. If you're struggling with your small business startup or looking for professional business services that won't nickel-and-dime your small business budget, visit us today at http://www.Business-Geek.com to learn more about our services.