One area of search engine marketing that has changed
dramatically over the years is submissions. Submitting to the search engines
used to be so complicated, with having to choose between manual versus software
submissions; only being able to submit so many pages a day; having to be
careful about oversubmitting; and the list goes on.
Submissions used to be the worst part of the search engine
optimization process, at least for me.
Now, I can literally write this whole article in two words:
Pay Inclusion
Yep, there you have it. If you want to take the headache out of
submissions and if you want to make things much easier for YOU, use pay
inclusion!
It’s hard for someone like me to admit how powerful pay
inclusion programs are, because I’ve been in this “game” long
enough to remember when everything was free. So, moving into the pay realm has
been a difficult thing to do.
However, the benefits of pay inclusion far outweigh the cost.
Benefits of Pay Inclusion
- Your pages are indexed much faster than submitting through
free add URL or waiting for the spiders to find the pages on their own.
- By using pay inclusion, your pages are getting outside of the
95%+ spam that the engines say come through free add URL submissions.
- With pay inclusion, your pages are respidered on a very
regular basis, depending on the engine. For example, Inktomi and Fast respider
their pay inclusion pages every 48 hours.
- With pay inclusion, you never have to submit your pages
again! As long as you continue to use pay inclusion, your pages will continue
to get respidered based on each engine’s schedule.
- Because your pages are respidered on a regular basis without
your doing one single thing to initiate this action, you can make changes to
your pages today and begin to see the results of those changes within a week.
If you didn’t use pay inclusion, you may not see the results of the
changes for a month or two.
- If you use pay inclusion, you’re forming a
“partnership” with the search engines, which I personally feel is
important and very beneficial. You’re now outside of the realm of the
millions of spammers, and that’s exactly where you want to be.
- Most of the pay inclusion programs offer some sort of
submission reports.
- Pay inclusion programs are ideal for dynamically generated
sites.
Now that we’ve looked at the benefits of pay inclusion,
let's create an example to see how inexpensive it really is. Let’s say we
have a brand new Web site, and we have three main pages that we want to submit
through pay inclusion.
Pay Inclusion Programs
Inktomi
(Provides secondary search results to engines
such as MSN and HotBot)
http://www.positiontech.com/directSubmit.htm
Benefits:
- Upon submission, your pages will make it into the Inktomi
index within 72 hours, as a general rule.
- Your pages are respidered every 48 hours.
- The term of the pay inclusion program is 12 months.
- Reporting services are included, such as verification of page
acceptance; refresh reports; URL validation; and account management.
- Here’s the audience reach of some of the engines that
use Inktomi’s secondary results, according to Nielsen NetRatings in
October 2002: MSN: 28.1%; Overture: 5.4%; LookSmart: 3.0%; (also provides
results to the “new” HotBot)
(http://www.searchenginewatch.com/reports/netratings.html)
- Cost? $39 for the first URL, and $25 each for additional
URL’s up to 1000. So, the total cost for our three pages would be $89.
(See Special Note at the bottom of this article on how you can save
20% off the price of Inktomi and Fast pay inclusion – for a limited time
only.)
Fast
(Provides search results to AlltheWeb, Lycos,
and HotBot)
http://www.positiontech.com/directSubmit.htm
You can use Position Tech to submit your Fast pages too, so be
sure to enroll in both pay inclusion programs at the same time.
Benefits:
- Upon submission, your pages will make it into the Fast index
within 48 hours, as a general rule.
- Your pages are respidered every 48 hours.
- The term of the pay inclusion program is 12 months.
- Reporting services are included, such as verification of page
acceptance; refresh reports; URL validation; and account management.
- With Fast, you can choose between several different programs,
including some that include a free onsite search engine, bulk inclusion, etc.
- The audience reach of Fast, according to Nielsen NetRatings
in October 2002, was: Lycos: 4.4%; (also provides results to the
“new” HotBot)
(http://www.searchenginewatch.com/reports/netratings.html)
- Cost? $34 for the first URL, and $16 each for additional
URL’s up to 1000. So, the total cost for our three pages would be $66.
(See Special Note at the bottom of this article on how you can save
20% off the price of Inktomi and Fast pay inclusion – for a limited time
only.)
Teoma and Ask Jeeves
(Provides results to Teoma, Ask
Jeeves, and HotBot)
http://ask.ineedhits.com/
The only way to get in the Teoma index is through pay inclusion.
This is one engine that doesn’t have a free add URL page.
Benefits:
- Upon submission, your pages will make it into the Teoma and
Ask Jeeves indices within 7 days.
- Your pages are respidered every 7 days.
- The term of the pay inclusion program is 12 months.
- Reporting services are included, such as click-through
reporting.
- The audience reach of Teoma/Ask Jeeves, according to Nielsen
NetRatings in October 2002, was: Ask Jeeves: 10.3% (also provides results to
the “new” HotBot)
(http://www.searchenginewatch.com/reports/netratings.html)
- Cost? $30 for the first URL, and $18 each for additional
URL’s up to 1000. So, the total cost for our three pages would be $66.
AltaVista
(Provides results to AltaVista)
http://addurl.altavista.com/
Benefits:
- Upon submission, your pages will make it into the AltaVista
index within 2 business days.
- Your pages are respidered every 24 hours.
- The term of the pay inclusion program is 6 months.
- Reporting services are included, such as tracking submissions
and transactions through their online Account Management Center.
- The audience reach of AltaVista, according to Nielsen
NetRatings in October 2002, was: AltaVista: 4.4% (http://www.searchenginewatch.com/reports/netratings.html)
- Cost? $39 for the first URL, and $29 each for 2-10
URL’s, then $19 each for 11 to 500 URLs. So, the total cost for our
three pages for **six months** would be $97. The cost per year would be $194.
Downside:
AltaVista’s pay inclusion is more expensive than the
others, and AV doesn’t have the coverage that some of the other engines
have. Plus, their pay inclusion program is only for six months, as compared to
a full year with the other programs.
So, you’ll have to decide whether you feel it’s worth
the cost.
AltaVista is the one engine where you can still use their free
add URL without being placed into the same category as the huge group of
“free add URL spammers,” because AltaVista’s free add URL
process doesn’t allow mass submissions. Instead, their unique “puzzle
submission” process requires you to enter a submission code into the
submission box, and you can only submit five URLs at no cost. So, if you want
to use free add URL for one of the engines, AltaVista’s is the one to use.
http://addurl.altavista.com/addurl/new
Total Costs so Far
With our example, considering that this is a brand new Web site
with zero visibility, we’ll figure out the cost for our three pages based
on using AltaVista’s pay inclusion program and on not using their program.
Subtotal of Yearly Pay Inclusion Costs Without AltaVista:
$221 (for 3 pages)
(Includes the Inktomi
engines, the Fast engines, Teoma, and Ask Jeeves. This does NOT include
AltaVista.)
Subtotal of Yearly Pay Inclusion Costs With AltaVista:
$415 (for 3 pages)
(Includes the Inktomi
engines, the Fast engines, Teoma, Ask Jeeves, and AltaVista.)
Yahoo!
http://www.yahoo.com
You might be wondering why I haven’t listed the Yahoo!
directory in this listing of pay inclusion programs. With the way that Yahoo!
now displays results, which are almost a duplication of Google results, the
importance of submitting to the Yahoo! directory at a yearly cost of $299 has
diminished. Depending on where things go from here, with Yahoo! having
purchased the Inktomi engine, this is subject to immediate change. But, at this
point in time, paying to be included in the Yahoo! directory isn’t
anywhere near as important as it once was. If you have good visibility in
Google, you should have good visibility in Yahoo!.
But, our site is brand new, and the advantage to Yahoo!’s
pay inclusion program is that your site will be reviewed for possible inclusion
within 7 working days. So, depending on our finances, we may want to add
Yahoo!’s pay inclusion costs, just so we can get fast visibility for our
new site.
(According to Nielson NetRankings in October 2002, the audience
reach of Yahoo! was 28.5%.
http://www.searchenginewatch.com/reports/netratings.html)
Total of Yearly Pay Inclusion Costs Including Yahoo!, but not
AltaVista: $520
(Includes the Inktomi
engines, the Fast engines, Teoma, Ask Jeeves, and Yahoo!. This does NOT include
AltaVista.)
Total of Yearly Pay Inclusion Costs Including both Yahoo! and
AltaVista: $714
(Includes the Inktomi engines, the Fast engines, Teoma,
Ask Jeeves, Yahoo!, and AltaVista.)
What about Google?
Google
http://www.google.com/addurl.html
Google is the only major engine that doesn’t have a pay
inclusion program. So, the only way to get your pages into the index is to let
the spider find the pages on its own through links on other pages or to submit
through Google’s free add URL.
Personally, I always let the spider find the pages on its own
and never submit to Google manually. By going this route, while your site is
busy being spidered by the other engines and you’re busy building link
popularity, by the time that Google “finds” your pages, you should
have had time to build some link popularity, which we all know is so important
with Google.
According to Nielson NetRankings in October 2002, the audience
reach of Google alone was 29.2%. Add to that AOL at 19.7%, Yahoo! at 28.5%, and
Netscape at 5.5%, and it’s quite easy to see the power behind Google. (http://www.searchenginewatch.com/reports/netratings.html)
In Conclusion
Rather than worrying with submitting your pages manually to each
of the major engines, take advantage of the tremendous benefits of using pay
inclusion.
Then, let Google find your pages on its own, and hold off
submitting to the Yahoo! directory for a while.
Based on our example here, if we were submitting three pages,
our total yearly cost would be either $221 or
$415, depending on whether or not we chose to use AltaVista’s
pay inclusion program.
So, as you can see, the benefits far outweigh the costs.
Repeating what I said earlier in this article, the “key” to
successful submissions these days can be summed up in two words: pay
inclusion.
Special Note:
After writing this article, I found that Lycos is offering a
discount on both Fast and Inktomi pay inclusion programs for a limited time. If
you submit to both engines, you can receive a 20% discount! I don’t know
how long this will last, but here’s the URL:
http://insite.lycos.com/searchservices/select/
select_overview.asp?co=undefined
Robin Nobles, along with partner John Alexander, teaches 2-, 3-,
and 5-day search engine marketing workshops through
Search Engine Workshops.com.
These workshops are divided according to experience level, and they come
packaged with a 6-month mentoring program and a Start-Up Resource Package
that's valued at over $3,000. Robin is also the Director of Training for the
Academy of Web Specialists,
where she has taught several thousand students in her
online search engine marketing
courses during the past several years. She is also the content provider for
GRSeo (Search Engine Optimizer)
software. Her latest books, Web Site Analysis and Reporting and
Streetwise Maximize Web Site Traffic, can be ordered through
Amazon.
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