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Yahoo is the number one website in the world. It is the number two search engine, and after Google, it is the next place you need to submit your website.

Although submitting to Yahoo is very similar to submitting to Google, there are also some differences. Yahoo doesn’t seem to spider sites as quickly as Google, so you definitely need to have some patience when submitting here.

Yahoo also offers different ways for you to get your site included, like Search Submit, Directory Listings, Product Submit, and Sponsored Search. These solutions are expensive, but they will get you into Yahoo quickly.

You may also submit other content like audio, video, and images using RSS. This service is free, and it will help you get that content indexed. (Yahoo does say on its website that 99 percent of the content that is included in its search engine is found through crawling the web.)

Like Google, the first thing you need to do is prepare your site by doing a keyword search for the appropriate keywords for your website. Optimize your website for the keywords your readers will be searching for.

Once you have optimized your site, the next step is to create a sitemap. If your site doesn’t automatically create one through the use of some type of script, then you will need to make one yourself and upload it to your website. (You’ll find plenty of free tools on the internet to help you with this.)

Once you have your sitemap in place, then it’s time to submit.

If you don’t already have an account with Yahoo, you need to sign up for one. It’s free. Once you have signed up for your account, go to the Yahoo search engine and search for “submit to Yahoo.” (Without the quotes)

The first result will be Yahoo! Submit Your Site. Click on this link and then you will be taken to a list of choices where you may choose how you want to submit, as well as what you want to submit. If you are only submitting your website, then click Submit Your Site for Free.

You may submit either a website or page, or you may submit your sitemap. Yahoo calls this a feed. (You will need to make sure you are logged into your account first before submitting. Otherwise, Yahoo won’t allow you to submit.)

When submitting your website, you will need to verify your site in the same way you verified your site with Google. You will either need to add a verification tag to the header of your index page or upload a verification file to your site through FTP.

Once you have submitted your site, you will want to check back periodically to make sure that your site is getting indexed. If it’s not, delete it and resubmit. Also use the Site Explorer to explore your site as this will help.

Finally, if you use RSS feeds on your website, you may choose to submit those feeds through your My Yahoo page. This will also help in getting your website indexed.

So you’ve built your website and put it up online for the world to see. You have put your sales information, made an exciting offer, you have nice graphics and are just waiting now for people to find your site and buy your products.

The problem is that they can’t find you. They may be looking for exactly what you have to offer them but how do they know you are even there?

Well, part of the puzzle is a small file you put on your website called a “sitemap”. Now before we go much further, let’s define what a sitemap actually is. First off, there are 2 different kinds of “sitemap”. One is an html page on your website that has links to all the other pages in your site. Visitors to your site might use this page to find various areas of information on your website. You might have links in there to your information page, your questions and answers page, your contact page and so on. Many people are familiar with this and may even have used a sitemap on another website before.

There is also another form of this sitemap that you need to have on your page. Simply put it serves the same function as the html sitemap but is directed specifically to the search engines. The file is in the xml format and lists all the pages on your site along with other information relevant to the search engines such as the relative importance of various pages on your site and how often your pages are updated.

So how do you create one of these files? Well there are a number of different tools you can use and they are easily found online. Simply search for “sitemap generator” or “create sitemap”. Some programs will run over the web and some are easily downloaded to your computer - this allows you to save and edit your sitemaps easily. In either case, the output of these programs should give you a file that has an .xml extension. You would typically name it sitemap.xml and then simply upload it to the root directory of your website.

After that, it is simply a matter of letting the search engines know that the file is there and they can start looking through it. Each of the search engines handles the sitemap submission a bit differently but they will all find the sitemap if you link to it in your robots.txt file.

In any case, be aware that you should have a sitemap.xml file on your website for the search engines. Now, this will not directly affect your rankings in the search engines but it will enable the search engines to index your entire site - without missing any pages. And, it will encourage them to do it sooner than later. That could affect your rankings.