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Of the Different Ways Of Submitting Your Site,
Which Ones Work Best?
There are a few different ways you can announce your URL to the different search engines:
- Use a free submission service. These automated submission services allow you to enter your information once and submit it to 50 - 400 search engines with the click of a button.
- Go to each search engine individually and manually enter information for your webpage(s).
- Hire a professional submission service to announce your URLs to the appropriate directories and search engines.
- Use search engine submission software that you purchase to submit your URL.
#1 - Free Submission Service:
There are services such as Postmaster and Submit It that will list your site for free. You enter your information once and then with a push of a button, it will automatically submit that info to the search engines you choose.
The problem with using a free submission service is that every search engine has different variables for submissions. For example, Yahoo only allows a very limited amount of characters as a maximum title size where other search engines may allow up to 200.
You want to maximize the number of keywords you can fit in your title, but by using a free submission service it will submit the same information to every search engine. You are therefore not maximizing your exposure and are not getting listed as high on the search results as you should. More importantly, you cannot specify exactly what categories your site should be listed in when using an automated service (whereas if you did the submission manually, you could).
The main problem is that you submitted the same information to all the search engines, but each search engines has different requirements and limitations. So what you submit to one search engine to get a high listing, may hurt you drastically in another search engine.
By using these free submission services you will save a lot of time, but the disadvantage is that you will only get about one fifth of the traffic you would have if you had spent the time to do it properly (explained in the next two sections below).
#2 - Entering Your Site To Each Search Engine Manually (Free):
By far the best way to announce your URL for free is to go to each individual search engine separately and submit the information for each webpage you have. This allows you to maximize your exposure by completing every field in the submission form to its maximum potential for keywords, descriptions, additions, content, contact information, etc. It also allows you to specifically pick one or multiple categories that would best suit your business, therefore increasing your chances of being seen and attracting visitors to your site.
There are two disadvantages to this approach. The first is that it is very time consuming (it can take you a few days to do it properly). And the second is that there are no professionals available to look over your keywords and titles, verifying that you are using all the most current search engine tricks, and to double check your choices for effectiveness.
When manually submitting to different search engines, you should open a file in your word processor (or Windows Notepad) that will contain your webpage titles, URL, keywords, a short 10 word description, a longer 25 word description and a 50 word description of your business. Also, consider including your company name, address, email address, and phone/fax number as well, as many submission forms will ask for these.
By cutting and pasting these into the different fields in the submission forms, it will not only save you time, but will completely eliminate grammatical and spelling errors that can occur by typing into the submission fields for every search engine.
#3 - Paid Submission Services:
There are a few different types of paid submission services:
- Some are very similar to the free services where it is completely automated and they may charge you a low fee (usually under $75 to submit your information to 100 or more search engines). They will do the service for you or sell you "search engines automated submission software" priced at $50 - $250 to allow you to do it on your own. You might as well just use the free service here as it will do the same amount of damage that the paid service will do. Now, I am not condemning these types of services as it is better to have your site submitted than not submitted at all. But if you can afford it, I highly recommend you spend the few extra dollars to hire a service that will manually enter your submission to the top search engines and maximize the potential of getting ranked higher (see below for a service that does this).
- Other paid submission services manually input information to each search engine as you would yourself, but they only input information that you have provided to them. These services range from $125 to $250. We have used AAA Promotions for many years with very good success, and I have arranged for you to get special pricing (10% off) with them. Your discounted price would be $99.00 for submission to the top 50 search engines and $199 to the top 100 (however I recommend you just do the top 50 as they are the ones that really count). Just fill out the order form at the following site: http://www.web-ignite.com/special/ In this price range, they are the most economical company with great service and great results. If you cannot afford the "best" type of submission company that I will mention next, this is by far the best way to go.
- This kind of submission company is more like a "top notch" search engine consultant. They will educate you, work with you, and maximize your exposure to each search engine. These services are generally not cheap but they are very effective.
- I deal with a few companies like this and they all charge approximately $600-$900 for this service. They evaluate the site, help design keywords and content, give tips and pointers, and design a search engine submission campaign. Then when they start submitting your information to the top search engines, they will not only maximize every single field in a search engine submission form, but also submit multiple webpages from your site. They are experts at getting your site listed at the top of the search engines… and let me say that they are extremely effective in doing so. I guarantee that you will get back thousands and thousands of dollars in sales for the mere $600+ you spent using their services.
- Visit http://www.marketingtips.com/searchengine.html where you can fill out a submission form with your name, URL for the website you want to submit, and your phone number (in case there are problems contacting you via email) and we will automatically forward that submission to the company we currently feel is doing the best job (as this can change periodically). Companies like this also provide lots of other promotional services for your website.
- They are very good at what they do. For example, in the very limited target market of buying new cars, their services brought us an instantaneous 5000+ visitors a month after spending $600! The sales they generated for us paid for their services in one month... and we get to enjoy the profits from these continued visits for years and years to come. A good investment I would say.
#4 - Search Engine Submission Software:
I will not get into this too much here as we have devoted much of the next section to search engine submission software. Generally speaking most "submission" software is much like the free submission services I was talking about earlier. As you know, the problem is that with most of this software you are just submitting the same information to all the search engines, but each search engine has different requirements and limitations. So what you submit to one search engine to get a high listing may hurt you drastically in another search engine.
However, things have changed a little. There is now software available that will amaze you in what it does to help you "properly" submit your site to search engines and get you a higher positioning (we will talk a lot more about it in the next section of this newsletter). It is probably the most economical and efficient way to get your site listed higher in the search engines. This option just became available this month. Until now, we did not feel comfortable in recommending any other inexpensive way to get ranked higher in the search engines because they were all ineffective, over-hyped, or just plain poor software or service. There is new software out now that is written by the same people who charge $600 - $900 to submit your site to the search engines (as mentioned in #3 just above). It is my opinion, that this new software is the only search engine submission software you should ever consider using. It is very extensive and has features and capabilities that no other submission software does. It is truly one software package that can get your website rated higher in the search engines because it literally "tutors" you through the process so you know exactly what to submit to get your site ranked higher. The product is called The Site Promoter. We will be discussing it and one more piece of software in the next section.
Conclusion:
If you can afford it, I recommend that you hire one of these "top notch" submission companies to submit your site to the search engines. They will take care of everything from designing your keywords to providing a written report 90 days later to let you know where your sites are ranked. They are not cheap, but they are very effective.
The second best way is to use a product called The Site Promoter. It costs less than $100 (which is a "steal" if you asked me) and was developed by the same people who charge $600 - $800 to submit your site so you are getting their proprietary software they use to submit your site at a fraction of the cost to hire them. It does an incredible job of assisting you in getting ranked higher in the search engines. We will talk a lot more about this software in the next section.
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