Ten Steps To A Well Optimized Website - Step Seven ? Website Submissions

Welcome to part seven in this ten-part search engine positioning series. Last week we discussed the importance of human testing. In part seven we will cover the best practices of website submissions, where to submit your website to, and how to do so.

With services offering to help you get more traffic and higher search engine positioning by submitting your website to "18 Bazillion Search Engines For Just $19.95 Per Month!" and other such claims, there has grown much confusion around website submissions. In this article we will clear up many of the misconceptions around submitting your website and may even save you "Just $19.95 Per Month!" in the process.

Over this series we will cover the ten key aspects to a solid search engine positioning campaign.

The Ten Steps We Will Go Through Are:

1. Keyword Selection
(http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/articles/search-engine-positioning/keywords.htm)

2. Content Creation
(http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/articles/search-engine-positioning/content.htm)

3. Site Structure
(http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/articles/search-engine-positioning/structure.htm)

4. Optimization
(http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/articles/search-engine-positioning/optimization.htm)

5. Internal Linking
(http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/articles/search-engine-positioning/internal-linking.htm)

6. Human Testing
(http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/articles/search-engine-positioning/human-testing.htm)

7. Submissions

8. Link Building

9. Monitoring

10. The Extras

Step Seven ? Website Submissions

While there are definitely more critical areas of the website optimization process there is perhaps no area subject to as much misinformation and to such a vast audience. Here are some common misconceptions that are often believed about search engine submissions:

1. You need to submit your website often to keep it indexed by the search engines

2. You need to submit your website to thousands and thousands of search engines to get decent traffic

3. Submitting your website often will keep you at the top of the search engine rankings

These beliefs are all incorrect and those who can make a quick buck selling this disservice perpetrate them. If you have not recently received an email offering to "Submit Your Website To More Search Engines Than There Are Websites On The Internet For Just $19.95 Per Month!" then I can pretty much guarantee that you will in the not-too-distant future if your email can be found somewhere on your website.

An irony of this can be found in Google's webmaster area where they note:

Amazingly, we get these spam emails too:

"Dear google.com,
I visited your website and noticed that you are not listed in most of the major search engines and directories..."

Reserve the same skepticism for unsolicited email about search engines as you do for "burn fat at night" diet pills or requests to help transfer funds from deposed dictators.

Good advice as I'm sure Google has their website submissions taken care of. Just because you receive such an email, doesn't mean that you're missing out on anything. Let's first look at a breakdown of which engines are responsible for which traffic.

According to research the major search engines are responsible for the following percentages of traffic as of June 2004:

Google ? 41.6%
Yahoo ? 31.5%
MSN ? 27.4% (MSN draws their results from Yahoo!/Overture)
AOL ? 13.6% (AOL draws their results from Google)
Ask Jeeves ? 7.0%
Lycos ? 3.7%
Netscape ? 3.0% (Netscape draws their results from Google)
AltaVista ? 2.7% (AltaVista draws the Yahoo!/Overture)

Source: Neilson/Netratings (http://www.nielsen-netratings.com/)
Note: These numbers total over 100% as people may use multiple search engines if they don't find the information they are looking for at the first one they try.

So what does this tell us? This tells us that the very vast majority of search engine traffic does not come from many thousands of search engines but rather, relatively few. This would lead to the obvious questions, "Is it worth paying to be submitted to thousands of search engines?" The real answer, "No."

Then How Do I Submit My Own Website?

Automated search engine submission systems simply access the existing and readily accessible "Add URL" pages of the search engines and automatically submit your site. You can do this yourself simply by visiting the search engines and submitting through these same pages.

To simplify this process you can visit the "search engines" page on the Beanstalk Search Engine Positioning website (http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/info/search-engines-major.htm) where we link directly to the submissions pages of the major engines.

But What About The Other Engines? Surely They Provide Some Traffic?

Quite honestly, they may. You may get a visitor or two. Is it worth $19.95/mth or some such amount? No. You can get a better dollar/visitor ratio on any of the many PPC engines out there.

An additional point to note is that you may want to actually visit some of the lists of engines on the sites offering these services to you. You will discover a couple of important facts:

- Many of these so-called "search engines" are not engines at all but rather FFA (Free-For-All) pages and classified ads sites. They will not help your rankings, you will not see traffic from them and your listing will probably last about as long as spam in your Inbox.

- Many of the actual search engines and directories are topical. What this means is that they are focused on a single area and unless your site coincidentally is about space exploration, topographical mapping, etc. you won't get listed. Submitting should not be confused with "guaranteed listing". Submitting your site to thousands of engines is not the same as getting your website indexed on thousands of engines.

The Submission Myth

The truth of that matter is, submitting your website at all can realistically be considered a waste of time. Aside from a few key general directories (DMOZ, Yahoo, etc.) and a number of SEO directories, we did not submit the website www.beanstalk-inc.com to any of the major search engines. It's true, not a single submission.

Are we indexed? Yes we are.

How did we get indexed without submitting our site? If you take the time that you would be spending submitting your site and spend it instead finding quality inbound links (which we will write about next week) your site will be indexed and much quicker than you think.

You've probably heard the term "search engine spider". Search engines crawl websites. This means that they visit a page, follow all the links on that page and so on. If you have a link on a website that is already known to the search engines it is only a matter of time before your website will be found by default. If fact, when the Beanstalk site went live and the first link was established to it, it did not take the weeks that are estimated through the use of the submissions pages for our site to be found. The homepage of beanstalk-inc.com was index by Google three days after the site went live and the other major engines followed within a week or so.

Final Notes

If there are any points that I hope you take away from this article they are the following:

1. Automated search engine submissions services are not worth the money they charge.

2. You do not need to be submitted to thousands of "search engines". The vast majority of traffic comes from the top few.

3. You will want to consider whether it is even worth the time to submit to search engines or whether that time could be better spent building quality, relevant links to your site and submitting your site to the major and topical directories.

An additional failing to the automated submissions systems not covered above is their inability to take into consideration the exact characteristics of your website for their directory submissions. When you're submitting your website to directories you will have to choose the exact category your site falls into. Most directories have slightly different category hierarchies and the more exact you are in your submission, the higher the chance you will be listed. Automated systems can never be as exact across multiple directories as a human can.

Submitting your website, even correctly, will not guarantee you top rankings however it will leave you with money in your pocket to spend on other promotional endeavors that may actually produce a solid ROI. And THAT'S what it's all about.

The rankings? You'll have to read the other nine steps of the series to find out how to attain those.

Next Week

In part eight of this search engine positioning series we will cover the importance of link building, how to attain high quality, relevant links to your website, and the tools to reduce the time it take to do so significantly. With the importance of inbound links to your overall rankings you won't want to miss this very important step in the website optimization process.

Dave Davies is the CEO of Beanstalk Search Engine Positioning. He has been optimizing and ranking websites for over three years and has a solid history of success. Dave is available to answer any questions that you may have about your website and how to get it into the top positions on the major search engines. To keep informed about what going on in the SEO world you may also want to visit the newly created SEO blog on the Beanstalk website.

---

Get A Top Position In Google In Three Days!

So how do you get a top listing in Google... Read More

Dont Submit Your Website To Any Search Engines

We all want to get our websites high up in... Read More

Google?s Siren Call ? Is It Crashing Your Search Engine Marketing?

It's difficult to dispute the rational behind the rant since... Read More

How to Make More Money with Your Mambo 4.5.1 Site

For those of you who are not familiar... Read More

Top Search Engine Ranks- The Only Secret You Need- Explained: Part 1

The top three search pages- the only place you'll be... Read More

Search Engine Tips & Techniques

As you are building your site or getting your site... Read More

Are Your SEO Efforts Going To Waste?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a long and complicated process... Read More

Attack Of The Killer Google Zombies!

Don't share this with people of a nervous disposition because... Read More

Keywords, Ranking, & Search Engine Optimization Fun

I am a Search Engine Optimization newbie. I have read... Read More

Wordtracker Wisdom: Common Keyword Questions and Answers

One of my favorite subjects to teach on at our... Read More

Writing SEO Copy ? 8 Steps to Success

We all know that the lion's share of web traffic... Read More

4 Tricks For Lightning Fast Indexing

The biggest problem that most are running into seems to... Read More

New Free Online Tool for Keyword Research

I came across a new website the other day and... Read More

Tips On Optomizing Your Website For Search Engines

I wish to give a few little tips, about optimizing.... Read More

Ten Steps To A Well Optimized Website - Step 3: Site Structure

Welcome to part three in this search engine positioning series.... Read More

Googles PR System Explained

The complexities of Google's PR (Page Ranking) System have grown... Read More

Search Engine Optimization - Free Tips and Help - Part One - The Title Tag

Search Engine Optimization is a widely misunderstood industry. Many webmasters,... Read More

Five and a Half Ways to Amp Up Your Search Engine Optimization

Statistics show that 85% of pages visited on the Internet... Read More

Link Popularity: Why Its The Best Investment You Can Do For Your Business

More and more search engines rank your web pages based... Read More

Easy Web Tips

How can you be found on the web?The web is... Read More

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - Fix Your OnPage!

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is something you should be aware... Read More

Has Google Lost the Plot?

With the help of MSN, recently I've been reminiscing about... Read More

When SEO Takes the Value out of a Website

Every webmaster would like to see his/her website to be... Read More

Companies Cash In on Your Search Engine Ignorance

This article will cause many companies to stir, but it's... Read More

Is a High Search Engine Ranking Important for YOU?

In the process of designing a website for clients the... Read More

Search Engine Robots - How They Work, What They Do (Part II)

If your site isn't found in the search engines, it... Read More

Search Engine Optimization: Site Structure and Popularity

In the Global Internet era the industry presence is undoubtedly... Read More

Link Popularity Explained and How To Build Links

Link popularity is the single most influential factor for determining... Read More

Youve Got The Power, Why Arent You Promoting It?

Like all things, theft is theft, misery loves company, negative... Read More

Search Engine Robots - How They Work, What They Do (Part I)

Automated search engine robots, sometimes called "spiders" or "crawlers", are... Read More

Search Engine Optimisation ? Why And How To Do It

In the following article I will give you some basic... Read More

Find Best Keywords For Your Site

Keyword optimisation is probably the most important thing that you... Read More

Creating Search Engine Friendly Web Sites

With tons of competition and copycats online, you need a... Read More