So you’ve created a brand new website with outstanding content, stunning visuals, and engaging information. Your website has enormous potential, especially if you use HostArmada’s fast, secure and stable hosting. Still, if you want to monetize your efforts, you’d want people to visit your website. With 93% of all website traffic coming from search engines and 98% of users searching at least once a month, it’s a no-brainer where you can get the desired audience.

It’s good to remember that about 99% of all search engine users rely on one of the top 5 search engines on the market – Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, and DuckDuckGo. So naturally, you’d want to have your website listed on all five of them. Sure, you can go right ahead and dedicate your entire time and resources to Google, which has 92.37% of the market, but as there are over 5 billion internet users, you’d miss out on around 400 million people. That’s definitely not a group any business can afford to ignore, so let’s dive in!

Before you get started

Before submitting your website, you must ensure you already have a website sitemap. This is an easy enough task that shouldn’t take more than an hour of your time. There are two types of sitemaps – XML and HTML. The XML is practically a map of your website for search engines, while HTML is directed towards your audience.

Check if you already have a sitemap.

Firstly, you need to check if you already have a sitemap. Just write in the browser search bar “www.domainname.com/sitemap.xml” or (where, naturally, instead of “domainname,” you place your website’s domain), and you will see whether you have a sitemap or not.

Creating a sitemap

If you have a CMS-based website, be it Wix, WordPress, or another, the best way to create a sitemap is by using an in-house tool or plug-in that will do it for you. However, if you have a custom website, you can go to XML-Sitemaps.com and create your sitemap from there.

All you need to do is paste your website’s address in the bar and click start. That’s it. Your website sitemap is done. From then on, you need to download your sitemap and put it into your website’s main directory. That’s all you need to do before you start sharing your sitemap with search engines.

The Top 5 Search Engines

Here are our 5 Search Engine picks you should consider based on the number of users.

Google

Google is definitely the first search engine you should submit your website to, as more than 9 out of 10 people prefer the Alphabet Inc. search engine. Naturally, the listing is free and brings outstanding value to your efforts.

Benefits

• Mind-blowing Click-through rate – The average CTR for the top-positioned Google Search result (SERP) is 19.3%. Of course, this depends on the niche your website is in, keywords, and some other factors, but in general, if you reach the top of the SERP, you’ll get outstanding benefits. In comparison, Facebook’s average CTR is around 1%.
• Everyone’s using it – Not many programs and products can brag about becoming verbs. “Google it” has become synonymous with “search it online.”
• Increases your credibility – Google’s algorithm is rigorous when choosing the top spot for each keyword. It strives to bring the most valuable content to every single user, depending on their search. So if you are on the top spot, your website becomes a credible source of information instantly.
• Makes you easily findable – Google makes wonders for your brand awareness. Whether your potential audience has heard about you from a friend, the radio, or anywhere else, they can easily find you through Google with just a description of what you do and partially remember your name.

Downsides

There are no downsides to listing your website in Google, except for the impossibly high barrier to getting in the first spot for one-word and short-tail keywords. Still, the top 10 (first Google page) is absolutely reachable, with little SEO knowledge and effort.

How to list my website

You can choose between two ways to add your website to Google. But before you do that, you must ensure you haven’t discouraged crawlers from indexing your website. If you are using WordPress CMS (like 44% of all website owners), you need to go to the Admin panel -> Settings -> Reading. You will see the Search engine visibility section towards the bottom, where the box should be unchecked.

After you make sure that your website is not blocking any search engines, you need to go to your Google Search Console. You must be logged in to your Google account, and once there, you can add a new property. If you haven’t been registered to Google Search Console yet, it’s pretty easy. Just go to the tool’s homepage and click on the “Start now” button.

Add your domain in the “domain section” and click “Continue.”

Follow Google’s instructions, and you are ready to go. All domain registration providers have different ways to add the needed TXT to the DNS configuration. Please note that the configuration change may take some time. Usually, it’s between 2 and 48 hours, so if it doesn’t happen immediately, try again later.

After verifying your website, go to GSC -> Sitemaps -> Add a new sitemap. There you add the sitemap URL after the domain. For example, “https://domain.com/sitemap.xml,” and that’s it.

Bing

The leading Microsoft search engine is definitely not as popular as Google. Still, with 3.4% of the global market and over 1 billion users each month, it’s the top choice for those who prefer to keep Google and its intrusive cookies away from their computers. Moreover, being owned by the biggest software developer in the world has its benefits. Unsurprisingly Bing is the default search engine for most Windows and Android products, as well as some browsers like Mozilla and Edge. This makes Bing not only a nice compliment to your Google listing but is mandatory if you want to get to a fresh and not so widely targeted audience.

Benefits

Far less competition – Most small businesses usually either forget or restrain themselves from listing their website on Bing. They determined that because there are far fewer visitors, it’s not worth their time and effort. You are lucky, as getting listed on Bing is extremely easy and worth every second. Moreover, you will have a much easier time rating on the first page and even in the top spot.

Fresh and untouched audience – OK, that’s a bit of an overstretch, but still, you will have the chance to get to a fresh audience, which is far less bombarded by content similar to yours. This makes them far more likely to click precisely on your website.

Microsoft-owned – This is huge, as a product using Microsoft OS will have Bing as a default search engine. True, many would still use Chrome to browse, but a vast chunk will keep the default, especially on their phones.

You will get access to all Microsoft websites – having your website listed on Bing will automatically transfer the information all across all Microsoft platforms on the net.

Downsides

Fewer users – It’s not a secret that Google is dominant in the search engine market, and no other search engine comes even close. Thus, listing your website on Bing will bring you far fewer leads than you will get through Google.

Bing’s algorithm is anything but perfect – Although Microsoft can’t be blamed for a lack of brilliant minds, Bill Gates’ company has a lot to learn until their precision in searching for the correct answer for a query comes close to Google’s. Still, although there are some problems with the algorithm, it’s not so detrimental that you wouldn’t want to list your business there.

How to list my website

Listing on Bing is even easier than on Google. First, however, you need to have a Bing Webmaster Tool account. That’s truly effortless if you already have a Google Search Console account, as Bing will simply pull all the information and verification from Google. This way, you won’t have to go ahead and add additional DNS configurations. Note that if you look at older instructions, you might see that Bing offers a way to submit your pages without registration. This, however, has been unavailable since 2018.

After you’ve logged in, you need to select the desired website (if you have more than one) and choose “Sitemaps” from the menu on the left. From there, click on “Submit Sitemaps” and simply paste your sitemap URL. Finally, you click “submit”, and you are all done.

Yahoo

You’d be forgiven if you haven’t considered listing your website on Yahoo. After all, the biggest search engine before Google is way past its former glory. Today, it accounts for just under 1.5% of the global market. While that doesn’t sound too impressive, the search engine is still the go-to place for older users, especially from the US. The former search engine powerhouse has about 225 million visits each month and is still the most popular email among US users.

Benefits

Get discovered by an aging US population – The most significant benefit of getting your website indexed by Yahoo is its dedicated users, who don’t stray too much away. Most of them are already aging and are from the generation that first witnessed the arrival of the Internet. As a result, they trust Yahoo and no one else.

The users are economically active – While in other search engines, the volume you will reach is undoubtedly higher, the lead quality is questionable. In Yahoo, however, almost all users are economically active and can afford to pay for your services or products. This makes the audience much more valuable than those on Google or Bing.

Downsides

Very small audience – Yahoo has become a boutique search engine, and we can’t simply ignore the fact that Google has more visitors hourly than Yahoo monthly.

Not Microsoft’s primary search engine – Yahoo is also owned by Microsoft, who don’t regard Yahoo as a search engine but rather a mailing service. So they refrain from investing in new algorithms and technology in this respect, forcing Yahoo to stay behind its competitors.

How to list my website

Now that’s the best part. You don’t. You had already listed your website when you asked Bing to index it. Now that’s a pleasant surprise, isn’t it? When you are listing your website to Bing, you are actually listing it to all Microsoft entities, so you are covered for more than just Bing and Yahoo.

Yandex

Despite being used predominantly in Russia, Central Asia, and Eastern Europe, Yandex is still the 4th most used search engine worldwide. As a result, Yandex is especially helpful if you are trying to enter these markets, as people there would put much higher trust in Yandex than they would in Google, Bing, or Yahoo. Still, Yandex has a little more than 50 million users monthly, so if you are not targeting these markets, you should consider indexing your website there only if you have nothing else to do.

Benefits

Go for the anti-establishment audience – A tiny minority of users, who are generally distrustful and don’t want their searches tracked by Google or Microsoft, will trust Yandex as their service provider.

The go-to search engine for targeting Russian speakers – Yandex is often regarded as the Russian Google, and for a good reason. This search engine is the obvious choice for Russian (or similar) speaking countries such as Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and others.

Downsides

A really small niche market – With only 50 million users, most of them from a particular region of the world, it’s really not a huge deal if your primary business is in the US and you forget to list your website in Yandex.

It’s Russian based – While having your website on a Russian search engine is not a big deal, this might be used to tarnish your reputation by competitors.

How to list my website

First, you will need to create a Yandex account, which is not that complicated. Next, visit the Yandex Webmaster tool. There you can either click on the plus button on the top or simply push the “Add site” yellow button. Next, add your web address in the site address field and click on add.

Next is the hardest part of the whole process – verifying your website. You have three ways to do so: an HTML file, a Meta tag, or a DNS record.

The first one is probably the easiest. Just download the HTML file and Upload it to the website’s main directory.

To do that, go to your CPanel and enter the file manager. From there, you can upload the already downloaded HTML file.

After you are done, go back to the Yandex tab and click the “Check” button at the bottom right corner. This may take a minute or so, so be patient. Then, promptly skip the next step, which asks for your feedback.

After verifying your website, go to the “Sitemap files” menu on the left. Next, simply add a sitemap URL in the box and click “Add.” That’s it.

DuckDuckGo

It was a tough decision whether to put Baidu or DuckDuckGo. Still, since the former is quite tightly connected with the Chinese market, and it’s highly complicated to get your website listed, as everything is in Chinese, we decided to go with DuckDuckGo. DuckDuckGo claims only about 0.66% of the global market and is still a relatively small search engine. Still, it’s becoming increasingly popular in the US, claiming 2.33% of the local market. The engine takes care of nearly 100 million search queries each day.

Benefits

New and fresh search engine – DuckDuckGo has the potential to be the next big thing (despite the name), so it’s better to hop on the wagon at the very start.

There is direct contact with the developer’s team – It’s pretty handy if there is a problem. However, that’s not a huge plus compared to other search engines, as they rarely have any significant issues, especially for indexing your website.

Downsides

Pocket-sized – The search engine may have a bright future, but it’s still way too small to make your indexing there count.

No personal information is collected – While that’s great for the users, it’s not optimal for your marketing strategy, which should aim to retarget users that visit your website but leave without submitting a contact.

How to list my website

You don’t. Your website is probably already there, especially if you’ve been listed on Bing, Google, and Yahoo. DuckDuckGo automatically indexes over 400 sources, so you don’t have to do anything. You’re already in the search results.

What to take away from this

You certainly need to remember one thing from this post – listing your website to Google and Bing is a must. Google is the world’s largest and most well-known search engine. Without it, you are simply lost. On the other side, Bing is the alternative that allows people who prefer to keep their searches away from Google’s eyes. Both alone make up around 96% of the global market. Still, with your Bing listing, you automatically get indexed by Google and DuckDuckGo, which makes up about 98% of all 5 billion internet users. So investing about 30 minutes in submitting your website to both search engines should be a no-brainer.