at Best of the Web
Blog Registration
Should You Register your Blog Anywhere?
Is blog registration in a bunch of directories still necessary in 2024?
The short answer is: No. Not really.
Years ago, it was very helpful to register your blog in as many online directories and search engines as you could. This was before the online directories like Yahoo and DMOZ crumbled to dust, and before Google came to dominate all online search. Back then, Google would crawl through those directories and boost the rankings of any website or blog listed in them; one presumes this was because human-edited directories gave Google a good idea of what a website or blog was actually about. After all, usually, a human being had to approve putting the blog into a particular category of a directory. It helped then. It doesn't help now to be registered anywhere except Google (and Bing).
For many years we maintained a list of directories and minor search engines (right here on the page you are reading) where you could go to register your blog. That was back in the days when blogs were new! In 2024 it's not necessary. Truly.
That said, it doesn't hurt to register your blog in Best of the Web, although it will cost you about $150. You can try it for free for a couple months and see if it helps. We get visitors to our website from BOTW regularly, so we think it is worthwhile.
Register in the Usual Places
Register your blog where you would register a regular website:
- Submit it to Google through their Google Search Console (in other words, make it a "Property" of yours within Google Search Console.)
- Submit your blog's sitemap to Google through the Google Search Console so they crawl all your pages.
- If it's a business blog, register it in Google My Business.
- Submit to Bing Webmaster Tools
That's all you need to do to register any site, whether it's a personal blog or a commercial website.
While you are at Google, you should also set up Google Analytics on your blog so Google can track your traffic for you and give you some nifty reports. This is easy to do on a WordPress blog through the Yoast SEO plugin or any of the other SEO plugins.
None of this will help your blog (or any WordPress site) to rank for anything at Google, but doing what we recommend above will ensure that Google does find your website and and will crawl through it. (And Bing, for whatever that's worth.)
Here's some excellent advice from Bruce Clay about how to submit a website to search engines. Essentially, it confirms the advice I give above.
