I've been known
to be opinionated at times. Here's another dose of my opinion based
on my experience with search engines and various submission services.
This article is specifically written about companies that promise to
submit your website to thousands of search engines monthly and why I
believe these services to be useless for the majority of website owners.
In the interest
of full disclosure, I have had experience with only a few clients who
have used these services before meeting me. In these cases I was able
to get a list of the actions that were taken and could clearly identify
the flaws in the program. The rest of my statements in this article
are based on the extensive work and reading I've done over the years
on search engine positioning as well as information provided on some
of the websites of companies involved in this industry.
How do we get started?
Most business people
get a flood of e-mail from companies promising to submit their website
to thousands of search engines. There are several things inherently
wrong with these services, in my opinion.
Warning Sign
#1: They're spamming you.
These companies
typically send out millions of e-mail messages indiscriminately across
the internet. Nobody likes SPAM and nobody likes a spammer. If these
companies were credible and had good search engine positioning themselves,
why would they be resorting to junk e-mail to get their message out?
Being spammers, they are demonstrating they don't care about you or
your time. If you had a choice on how to advertise your products or
services, would you willingly choose to use a method that most people
associate with online scams and fraud? Probably not. However, since
in my opinion these services are nothing more than scams, spamming is
an appropriate way for them to get their message across.
Warning Sign
#2: They play on your fears and mislead you.
One service that
is a very active spammer offers to submit your site to 300,000+ search
engines every month. They start by saying "I visited http://www.yourwebsite.com,
and noticed that you're not listed on some search engines!"
Of course your site
isn't listed on some search engines. In fact, your site should NOT be
listed on every search engine in the world. Think about the number of
people, countries, regions and cities in the world. Why should your
website appear in the city directory for Perth, Australia? It's not
going to do you any good unless your business happens to be located
there.
Telling you your
site should be submitted to every search engine in the world is wrong.
They play on your fears of not being properly represented in the search
engines by telling you "you're not listed on some search engines"
and proceed to promote their service without telling you the truth.
The reality is your site doesn't need to be submitted to every search
engine in the world.
Warning Sign
#3: They misrepresent what submitting can do.
There is a basic
truth about search engine submissions. If your website is deemed to
be relevant to that particular search engine or directory, it will likely
be included in its index. However, if it's not relevant due to topical
or geographical limitation, it won't be included. So, what's the good
of submitting to thousands of search engines that won't include your
website because it doesn't meet their criteria?
Here's an example
of one of the sites one company submits your website to.
http://www.adrportal.com
- a website that provides information on Brazilian music, art and entertainment
in English and Portugese. When you submit to their site, here's the
message you receive:
"Your link
will be checked and if it matches with ADRStudio.com subjects it will
be included within 7 days in our directory."
What do you think
your chances are of having your website included in this directory?
Submission is no guarantee of inclusion in ANY search engine. For example,
read the fine print on the Alta Vista website regarding adding new pages
at the following link: http://addurl.altavista.com/sites/addurl/newurl
Notice point #2,
bullet #3? "Submission of your URL does not guarantee inclusion
into the AltaVista search results." This is true for EVERY
search engine.
Submission does
not guarantee inclusion...
Warning Sign
#4: They misrepresent what submitting can do.
Here's the second
part of the truth about search engines:
...and inclusion
does not guarantee good rankings.
Getting your website
included in the index of a search engine is no guarantee that your site
will be ranked highly under a relevant search. That's because search
engines use a variety of criteria to determine the relevancy of a page
to a given search and most websites don't successfully address those
criteria. So, for example, if a search engine considers meta tags important
and a website doesn't have them, that site won't be ranked highly.
Achieving good rankings
in search engines is a time-consuming process. It's not going to happen
through a $19.95 / month service.
Warning Sign
#5: They don't talk about search engine positioning.
In FAQ pages on
the sites of many of these services, they never discuss how their service
will improve your search engine positioning. Instead, they focus on
how submitting your site to thousands of search engines will bring you
more exposure. It sounds good, until you remember that submission does
not guarantee inclusion and inclusion does not guarantee good rankings.
The assumption of good rankings is made on the part of the consumer
and these services don't tell you the truth.
Warning Sign
#6: They offer services that could get your site banned.
It is common knowledge
in the search engine positioning industry that many of the major search
engines may penalize or ban sites that are repeatedly submited to them
without making any changes. A service that submits your site monthly
to the major engines can actually do more harm than good. Also, submitting
directly to some search engines gives your site a lower ranking than
if your site had been found by that search engine itself by crawling
the web. Those are two ways your site could be hurt by using these services.
So, why are these
folks still in business?
There's one very
simple reason: people don't know the truth.
Let's face it. We're
all specialists in something. A plumber knows plumbing, an electrician
knows electricity and lawyers know the law. That's why I don't fix toilets,
install circuit boards or write wills. However, my specialty happens
to be website development and internet marketing.
In much the same
way the Engineering profession gets annoyed when janitors are renamed
"sanitation engineers", it bothers me that companies promoting
services that in my opinion are junk are able to make money from unsuspecting
consumers.
This article is
meant illustrate why in my opinion, services that offer to submit your
website to thousands of search engines and directories for a minimal
fee are not good services to use. If you have any questions, please
feel free to contact me directly at the contact information shown at
the bottom of this page.
