This is one of my favourites to discuss. I am well aware that some people are out to make a living solely from search engine submission, and I am not really trying to infringe on that right, however; search engine submission is useless without complete optimisation of the page being submitted. That is a fact.
I am often approached by people asking me to submit their website to the search engines, as they have just had their first website built for them by a company. Don’t get me wrong, the websites are great and with quality content, they often simply do not have the content that will rank well within a search engine, not one. This is not the fault of web designers, nor do I criticise them for the work. Their job is done, if the website is designed well and has quality content, as optimisation is not their primary role or interest. Simply put, the submission of a website to any search engine before the website is ready to perform, is nothing short of a waste of time and money. To me, this is like paying for a new car without the engine to run it. The car won’t start, nor will it go anywhere. This is exactly what will happen to your website.
You will find many different types of search engine submission services available across the internet. Services such as free automated, paid automated, paid manual, paid rapid inclusion and Pay Per Click. Have you found yourself that bargain yet? Get listed with 1000 search engines, directories and link pages all for $10 or get a reduced rate if you subscribe annually. I am about to dash all your hopes and dreams if you continue reading. Your website is not going to achieve much more than about 10% actual submission and coverage with these types of purchases, give or take a little.
Every SEO has some type of professional submission software that they utilise at some point, however; it is the way in which they utilise it which makes the large difference and distinguishes professionalism. Automated submission will not achieve a great deal of coverage for your website, and again, you may as well burn your money. Monthly submission will do nothing for your website either, except annoy some engines and directories. Are you shocked at that statement? Let me clarify this, once submitted to a directory that is generally it, once included, always included, generally. Once submitted to a search engine your chances of actually being dropped, ever, are very minimal. If anything, your chances of being dropped will be accidental when it does occur. The only reason you should ever have to be resubmitted to a search engine or directory is if they drop your listing from their database, that’s it. At the very minimum, nothing more than quarterly submission should be adopted, and only to the actual engine that drops your website.
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To submit a website to the search engines there is one assured method, manual submission. A long and boring process this may be, but you are guaranteed the results at the end of it. This will cost you decent money. To manually submit one website to all the essential engines and directories takes about a normal work day, eight (8) hours - well it does for me. Now, include the cost of any express inclusion or corporate listings required and the cost increases further. Be aware though, you should not have to pay any large service fee, if any at all, for an SEO to submit your website to a search engine for rapid paid inclusion. The search engines themselves generally pay SEO’s to give them the business. They pay me to find them business for paying customers, and that is a fact. This saves my clients a lot of money in service costs, however; this is not the same as manual free submission, as a service cost will always be incurred for that labour.
You may be thinking, how hard can it be to simply type in a URL and press enter or a submit button. Guess what? It is not generally that easy, I wish it was. Google, is that simple, at the Google submission page, however; your website will never see daylight if your website is not constructed correctly to suit such engines as Google. Unfortunately, other search engines such as Yahoo, Looksmart or Directory DMOZ are not so simple and are the important players for directory listing. A good relevant listing, in one of these directories will see only good results for your website. No automated submission program is going to get you into these important directories. It takes a requisite amount of skill to choose the most appropriate category, keywords, description and title to submit so you DO NOT lose your money or get rejected.
Now back onto automated submission software. I never did say that the software was useless. What submission software is good for however, is to cover all those little engines and directories that you just wouldn’t waste valuable time submitting to manually. Now it should all be coming together for you. A proper manual submission program, backed up with automated submission for those non-essential areas makes for a good total submission package for a website. This is what you should be looking for from a professional SEO. Not a quick fix.
In summary, have your website optimised firs. Then a proper submission campaign tailored for your website to drive the regional or global traffic to your site or business, and remember, this is not going to be cheap. The tell tale signs of a less than desirable SEO is rock bottom prices. Cheap is not better in advertisement and marketing.
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