Ask Girl Geek: Manual search engine submission vs. automated software?

Dear Girl Geek,

I have two websites and both of them need to be submitted to all of the search engines. Can you pls. give me a quote of what you would charge to do that? Also, what advantage would it be to have you do it rather than a service like submitnet.net? THANKS!
T. S.

Hi T,

I'd be glad to help. I have some questions first. (Hope I don't overwhelm you. Just because I know what I'm talking about, doesn't mean I can explain it so you do, but I'll try!)

1. Which of the hundreds of national and international search engines do you want to be listed on? Basically for the US you need to be on Google, MSN, Yahoo, and Netscape. That covers about 90-95% of the market.

2. How do you know you're not listed? Sometimes sites are listed but their site isn't ranked well, i.e., doesn't come up in the first 1-2 pages of search results.

For example, here's Google's guidelines for listing:"Google is a fully automated search engine that employs robots known as "spiders" to crawl the web and find sites for inclusion in the Google index. Since this process doesn't involve human editors, it's NOT necessary to submit your site to Google in order to be included in our index. In fact, the vast majority of sites listed aren't manually submitted for inclusion.We add thousands of new sites to our index each time we crawl the web, but you may submit your URL as well. Submission isn't necessary and does not guarantee inclusion in our index. Given the large number of sites submitting URLs, it's likely that your pages will be found in an automatic crawl before they make it into our index through the URL submission form. We DO NOT add all submitted URLs to our index and cannot predict when or if they will appear."

3. The rule of thumb I've consistently heard is do manual submissions where necessary. I say "where necessary" because if your site is on a webhosting server, Google will pick it up within a month (unless there's some obvious design flaw or spam offense that gets it banned*). After Google picks it up, most other search engines will pick it up too.

Now directories are another matter and usually are edited by humans. The biggest and the widest known is the Open Directory Project with feeds such directories as Netscape Search, AOL Search, Google, Lycos, HotBot, DirectHit, and hundreds of others. You have to submit manually to them and then wait...and wait...and wait....as they have such a backlog. It's free, but you have to wait...and wait.....and wait.

Yahoo is technically also a directory and has a paid inclusion listing. Submitting your site to directories also needs to be manual because you have to hand select the appropriate category for site placement. Automated submission software, I don't know if submitted is one, doesn't do that for you.

4. The other advantage of having a human do it is that sometimes you have to enter a code in order to complete the submission. Automated submission software can't read the code. And, also, search engines sometimes won't list sites that are submitted via automatic submit software. They consider this spam.

So, I could run an analysis of both sites and see if and where you're listed and ranked on any and as many search engines you want. You'd have to tell me what keywords you want to check your ranking on.

I suspect it's ranking you really want, not listing, cuz if you've had these sites for awhile, they're probably listed. If it is ranking you want, then I would make some recommendations of ways to go that meets your needs and budget.

I need clarification on these points first.

If you want to schedule a call to talk to me about this (in case this is all "geek" to you), I'd be glad to.

*View this link to see Google's design, technical and content guidelines that might result in your site not being listed. http://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/guidelines.html

Thanks for asking!

Annette Vaillancourt
Girl Geek Web Designs: Custom Web Design and SEO for Small Businesses on a Budget
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Ask Girl Geek: How Do I Get More Links to My Website?

Hi Girl Geek,

How do I get links to my law firm's website?
D

Hi D,

As far as increasing links to your site, here's my understanding of how this works and ways to get links. Remember, all links are NOT created equal. You must request links from sites that are relevant to yours.

There's really no guaranteed or systematic way to do this that I know of, so you can select one or several strategies and see what happens.

First, if you site has interesting, useful, or newsworthy information, other sites may spontaneously link to yours. This is ideal.
Otherwise you have to create or ask for others to link to your site.

Ways to do that include:
1. Provide a "Link to Us" page at your website. On this page, provide suggested links to your site, include the HTML tag so people can just grab it and drop it into their site. If you write your own link, you can include important keywords in the link.

2. Register with search directories, like Yahoo ($299 submission fee) and the Open Directory project (www.dmoz.com.), local directories and regional directories, such as chamber of commerce, local attorney referral services, etc.

3. Contact professional association sites and ask them to provide a link to your site.

4. Contact companies or colleagues you do business with and ask them to provide a link to your site and you will to theirs. This is called Reciprocal Linking.

5. Submit to announcement sites, such as www.URLwire.com or send out press releases online at http://www.internetnewsbureau.com/ or http://www.free-press-release.com/submit/free-press-release.php or http://www.floridatoday.com/forms/services/release.htm

6. Find sites that are linking to your competitors and ask them to link to yours also.

7. Search for "keyword add URL" online and find sites that fit your business/industry and link there.

8. Contact email newsletters that your niche market might read and either advertise there or write an article for them, include your website in your byline.

9. Create a blog - post newsworthy comments on hot topics. Many blogs are read by search engines. Plus, if you link from your blog to your own site, you'll add another link.

10. Mention your site in online discussion groups, listserves, and blogs. Although you can't officially advertise in these, it can be part of your email signature.

11. Syndicate content from RSS feeds and blogs.12. Write articles for legal news sites, like http://writ.news.findlaw.com/commentary/20040114_marquis.html and include a link to your site.

13. Wait...eventually people will start linking to your site.

Thanks for asking!
Annette