Why You Should List Your Site On Ask.com

There are several good reasons why you should list your site on Ask.com.

The main reason being that Ask.com has been slowly making a comeback and is now worth your marketing time and effort.

Although Google is always the primary focus for traffic generation; submitting your website to Ask.com is an excellent way to broaden your horizons and gain more traffic from sources other than Google.

After all, it always pays to diversify and not put all your eggs in one basket; even if that one basket happens to be the biggest of them all!

Regardless of that, it's always a good idea to create traffic pulling strategies from multiple sources and to wisely invest your time where it may benefit you.

What if you should happen to lose Google?

Do you have any other sources to fall back on, or will your website take a huge hit from a loss of traffic?

Since you have the reasons WHY to submit your site to Ask.com, now you will learn HOW to submit it.

Because Ask.com requires an XML sitemap; the first thing you need before you can submit your site, is to have a sitemap.xml.

If you use Blogger, you won't have any problems. Blogger automatically creates an XML sitemap for you.

Blogger's default sitemap URLs are listed by feed below. All you need to do is insert your blog's name in the appropriate spot.
http://www.blogname.blogpost.com/atom.xml http://www.blogname.blogpost.com/rss.xml

If you are using WordPress as your blog platform, Google XML Sitemaps Generator for WordPress will give you all the information you need about your sitemap.xml.

After your sitemap.xml file is completed, you can easily submit your sitemap to Ask.com by "pinging" the following address in your web browser.

http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=http%3A//www.yoursite.com/yourmap.xml

Just substitute your website for "yoursite" and your map for "yourmap" and you're finished with the submission process.

If there were no errors, Ask.com will immediately report a successful submission.

It's not that complicated and by creating a sitemap and directing your browser to the "ping" address above; your sitemap will be automatically submitted into their database.

The SEO benefits of a sitemap should not be underestimated and by listing your site on Ask.com, along with the other lesser used search engines; your web traffic and backlinks are sure to increase.

You can never have enough traffic or backlinks to your website!