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Should You Use A Search Engine Submission Service?
Copyright by Ying Hong 2008
There are many ads out there promoting search
engine submission service. The purported benefit includes drastic
increase in website traffic as a result of being registered with the
search engines. Testimonies for the service will also give
the impression that the service is pivotally responsible for the
success of the customer’s site in question. So does search
engine submission hold the golden key to effective web site traffic
promotion? Let’s answer the following questions and find out.
1. How do search engines list a website
There are two common ways that search engines index a site.
One is through reviewing the sites that are requesting to be listed.
Site owners would submit their sites to respective search engines
through a web based form and wait for approval to be indexed. The
approval process could take weeks. This is also the type of service
advertised by the typical SEO companies.
The other method is through links to other already indexed pages and
sites. For instance, if you submit an article to Ezinearticles.com and
get it approved, Ezinearticles, who is already reputed for its original
content and has the search engines index its articles routinely and
quickly, search engines will index your article on
Ezinearticles’ site as well as your web page if you place a
link in your author’s resource box back to your site. This
process can happen in a matter of hours.
A blog post that has a link pointing back to your home page will have
the same effect in terms of search engine indexing as an article
submitted to a high authority site. Search engines love blogs
as blogs tend to be more original in content by nature. Frequently
updated blogs can be picked by search engines in a matter of
minutes. Any links placed in the new blog posts will also be
indexed by the search engines at the same time.
One can see from above that it is actually quicker to get listed with
major search engines by way of creating content at high authority sites
or simply with a blog. Both methods are completely free where
as submission service will take time and resource.
2. How many search engines are out there?
Search engine submission sales pages would cite tens of thousands of
search engines that they will submit your site to on your
behalf. That list of tens of thousands of search engines is
supposed to be their trade secret and never revealed to the
public. The truth is no one knows for sure how many search
engines are out there. What is public knowledge is that 95%
of the search traffic comes from the top three search engines (Google,
Yahoo, and MSN). Additionally, many smaller search engines
use the result of the prominent search engines anyway. This
makes submission to smaller search engines less important.
3. Is listing with a search engine all you need to bring in traffic?
One may still think that it is still worth it to get listed with as
many search engines, even the smaller ones, as possible at a cost, as
long as it brings traffic. Is listing with a search engine
guaranteed to bring traffic? Not likely so.
At the center of driving quality traffic is the continuous process of
creating unique content, whether through article marketing, blogging,
or adding new content to your own web site. This tireless content
creation process will build quality backlinks, which raise
one’s page rank as well as bringing in increasing organic
traffic.
Content drives the traffic, not the search engine listing
itself. It is hard to imagine that a web site will enjoy tons
of traffic without any backlinks or unique content created in its
network.
4. If search engine submission is not necessary, why are there so many
services promoting it?
It is not fair to say that there is no merit in search engine
submission at all. For those sites that have already built
many quality backlinks and are generating good traffic in the prominent
search engines, getting listed with more search engines means more
exposure to web surfers, particularly, if those smaller search engines
use the results of the top search engines anyway. However,
for newbies, search engine submission is really not top priority in
terms of web site promotion, let alone doing it at a cost.
Ironically, it is usually the newbies, who do not understand the
principles underlying traffic creation who fall for the romantic vision
of dramatic increase in web traffic. This is perhaps another reason why
search engine submission service is in flourish.
To conclude, search engine submission is not top priority in terms of
methods of web site promotion. It can be of use for those
well-established sites, not necessarily new web sites. As a reality
check for the newbies here, stay away from paying for search engine
submission service for now; build your web site with free and/or paid
alternatives like article marketing and blogging and perhaps paying for
search engine submission services later when you already have
established traffic volume.
Copyright by Ying Hong 2008
Author Resource:
Ying Hong helps people find quality, simple work
from home opportunities to start a second income
on the
Internet.
Visit Ying's blog at My
Home Biz Journal |
