From Leading Australian Professional - Anthony Parsons
Free vs Paid submission has been a topic of debate for many years with regard to the actual credibility of services. Several business and websites offer Free submission services. Usually the program gives you a report, of sorts afterwards, detailing successful or unsuccessful acceptance of your site. Let me just say that I do not endorse free Online submission services. Their own credibility was shot with me the minute I did not receive a confirmation email from Scrub the Web when their report said "site submitted successfully". Scrub the web requires a confirmation first before considering to crawl your site? Debate That Concept!
If you must utilise online submission services then there are credible services such as World Wide Promoter. Submission through these type of services has only one benefit that I can see, submission to some minor engines and directories that you would not waste your time with generally. It is these services that see the failure of many websites, due to the nature of what tests have been established with search engine algorithms. Having your website linked in FFA link farms can do more damage to your website. Do Not get fooled by the big "Blast Your Website To 1,000,000 Link Pages". Be careful and steer clear!
Perpetual submission is the next step from this, another waste of time, though some make a good living selling the dream. You know the one's, $49.95 for 12 monthly submissions to 100,000 engines, directories and link pages (Hint: Link Pages = Link Farms). This service is what's more commonly referred to as "spamming a search engine". Believe me when I say, constant submission to a search engine WILL NOT increase your ranking. It is this type of service that can have your domain name penalised or removed and banned permanently. Is the risk really worth it? Read the fine print within these type of websites for the big disclaimer, "we hold no liability for these submissions" or something like that.
Lets get serious! Directory submission. Now your talking quality and value for money. A professional SEO will not even attempt to sell you search engine submission, but more importantly directory submission. Most major search engines and partners (Google, Inktomi, Looksmart, All The Web, etc) will automatically pick up and spider your website for free providing your site is spider friendly and listed within directories. That's the friendly and most cost effective method to achieve search engine listings.
Now, to other marketing. Rapid paid inclusion and Pay Per Click (PPC) advertisement. Directory inclusion assures you that on approval of your application, your site will be added to that search engines directory and all partners which they provide, eg; Inktomi feeds MSN > Hotbot > etc. If your a new website and cannot wait to be picked up for free, or your website data is changing daily, then paid inclusion is for you. Once your included in a directory it is rare for an engine to drop you, even if you do not renew your subscription. Renewing really only assures you of a constant refresh for changing data. If your site data doesn't change often, then I wouldn't worry about it, as the spider / crawler will visit your site frequently to check for updates.
PS. You don't need meta tags telling the robots when to visit either, they will visit often without another line of code.
PPC requires expert marketing advice and management to be run effectively. If you do not have the time to learn and manage your campaign, DO NOT ATTEMPT IT. PPC is very effective when utilised correctly by itself or in conjunction with free listings. PPC has, and will make or break your company, depending on how it is managed. PPC has to be monitored to ensure that you are gaining the Return On Investment (ROI) from the advertisement cost and exposure. At the end of the day though, marketing will only get them to your site, you have to keep them there!
In summary, stop wasting your time and/or money with rubbish perpetual and free online submission tools. Use them once, get listed in those waste of time places and then learn or pay to do the job right the first time. Move on.
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