The Truth About Bulk Submitters
There used to be a day when you could simply submit your site to 500, 900, or 1200 “search engines” and that was all you needed to gain top placement. That day has come and gone but for some inexplicable reason many of those type of services still exist. The general problem with those bulk submission services is that there are not 1200, 900, or even 500 search engines out there worth submitting to, even if that many do exist. In reality, 90% of all search engine traffic is derived from less than 20 search engines.
All of these bulk submission services submit your site to the 20 most used search engines, but the danger is in the 1180 other places they submit to. Some of these submissions are to legitimate sites such as search services that service specific industries, however your travel site will get submitted to a search service that targets construction and building sites, or your furniture site will get submitted to a health search service. Not only is this not a good use of your monetary resources but bad submissions like that can only serve to harm, not help, your site. More on that later.
Another place many of these bulk submission services submit your site to are link farms and FFA (Free For All) pages. These submissions are designed to help improve your link popularity across the web, but again, there was a time when these submissions may have helped but that is no longer true. At best they are an annoyance, filling your in-box with hundreds, if not thousands, of junk e-mails daily. At worst, they are downright harmful.
So what’s the harm? Today’s search engines (the ones that really matter) are savvy and look for ways to eliminate SPAM. Google (one of the top 3 search engines) will penalize sites that are a part of these FFA or link farm programs. So now you have hundreds of junk mail in your inbox AND a penalized site. About those industry specific search services? If you can find those that pertain specifically to your product or service, by all means go ahead and submit. What you don’t want is to have your site submitted to a place it does not belong as doing so may flag your site for spam. Not such a big concern with the little guys but it can lead to the big search engines that matter.
True Search Engine Submissions
I’ve read in various places that there is an “order” in which you should submit your site. First, submit here, then there, then at search engine x, y, then z. There may be a underlying behind this theory but I don’t necessarily subscribe to it. I believe that the best thing to do is to submit your site to ALL the major search engines, and do it today. Some engines take longer to view a site than others but don’t let that hold you back. Don’t worry about getting into Yahoo before you submit to Google. Do both, it can’t ever hurt. Waiting only causes time to elapse while nothing is getting done. Submit, then resubmit if/when necessary.
Be aware that there is truly more to getting top search engine listings than just submitting your site. That is another reason to avoid bulk submitters, they don’t care what your site looks like or if the submissions will do you any good, they are just happy to take your money each month. A site should only be submitted to the search engines after it has been properly optimized.
If you are looking for a submitter service, find one that does more than just submit, find a service that will actually promote your site to the search engines. A good promotion service should help you with all aspects of search engine promotion, not just throw your site to the search engines and hope something sticks. Pole Position Web and !st Rank Promotion offer premier site promotion packages that provide everything you need to get top listings. Keyword analysis, optimization and a true link popularity builder program are all included in each promotion package. And we don’t just stop at submission, we guarantee you will receive top listings or you don’t pay.