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Don't submit your website to any search engines

April 22, 2004 - 23:00 — trenton

That's right - this search engine optimisation article is telling you not to submit your website to any search engines. Not Google, not Inktomi, not AltaVista. Sounds a bit strange? Read on...

Submitting to all the search engines

Submitting your website to every search engine is an incredibly time-consuming process. There are hundreds and hundreds of them out there - no doubt, you've come across the companies who'll submit your website to 1000 search engines for you.

Search engine professionals know that the vast majority of these search engines have a very low usage rate and will drive hardly any traffic your way. In fact, it's only a handful of search engines that drive the majority of traffic from search engines to websites.

The major search engines

Some of the most important search engines, probably accounting for over 90% of the search engine market, are:

Not heard of some of these search engines? Have a look at who powers who with this excellent search engine relationship chart.

Please note that the new MSN search engine will roll out at the end of 2004 and will be very important.

Don't submit to these search engines

“But there's only six of them - why on earth not!?” Well, aside from saving time and a bit of money (some require a submission fee), quite simply there's no need. Allow me to explain...

Search engines crawl the web every few weeks (or months) looking for websites to index. Here's how it works:

  • Search engines start at one website with a large number of outbound links (usually a directory)
  • They follow every link they come across, indexing each page they arrive at
  • Once a page has been indexed they follow all the links from that page
  • And so on until there are no more links to follow

Unless today is your very first day on the Internet, you might have heard that inbound links into a website are extremely important in establishing its search engine ranking. If a search engine can't find you by itself through crawling the web, then your website doesn't have any inbound links. If so, you'll never achieve a decent search engine ranking so what's the point in registering?

Getting incoming links quickly

So, how do you get incoming links? Well, this is a vast topic which I won't be discussing now, but if you want to get a few good links quickly then there is a solution: web directories. If your website is listed in the Yahoo! directory (not the same as Yahoo! search) and the Open Directory (which Google uses) all the search engines should find you within two to three months.

There are plenty of other directories you should get listed in too. Global, local and industry-specific directories abound on the Internet. To find them run a search for ‘web directory’ on your favorite search engine. The directories that come up highest in the search rankings will probably generate the most traffic. You can also check these directories of directories:

Another even quicker solution is webmaster forums. Search engines love forums because they include so much fresh content. Most have an area where you're allowed to enter your URL to get feedback from other webmasters. Find some forums, sign up, and get posting!

To find out more about building up links to your website please read the article, Build up links to your website.

A quick fix

It can take a couple of months to get listed in some web directories. If you can't wait that long then it might be worth submitting your site into a paid program and "artificially" boosting your rankings. Again, this is a whole new topic so please feel free to read more about the paid submission options.

Long term strategy

Search engine optimisation is a long term strategy. You'll be successful if you:

Register with as many web directories as possible and then concentrate your efforts on these two things. Within a few months you'll start to see success.

Comments

May 15, 2004 - 02:59 — chozsun

The only reason why I gave it a 5

The only reason why I gave it a 5 is because I have known about this for a while. I use programs like AddWeb to get my website linked up as many possible sites so that the big ones (Google, Yahoo and MSN) will pick up on it. Once you are in the system, watch the magic unfold. BTW, MSN may suck but you have to consider them a major player. If people are too stupid/noobish/lazy to change their default browser and MSN.com is the first thing they see everytime, MSN has to be a major search site.
May 24, 2004 - 07:17 — AdamC

Adam from Weboptimiser says...

Trenton
Nice article. I agree on most of the points. I never submit to Google for example. Its better to spend your time sourcing new links to your site. The Yahoo directory is sometimes worth the submission.
But the big exception IMO is Teoma/Ask Jeeves. Teoma can be very slow to add sites for free, so some for sites and some industries I would definietly recommend coughing up for a few URL submissions.
May 29, 2004 - 15:11 — Boogenstein

Clean markup is all you need

I fully agree with your article. A new website for a customer went live in the last week of March and has been a massive sucess. How was this achieved? Clean and concise markup, CSS and well thought out content. Within 2 weeks we had top slot for the search terms wanted by the client. Not a single submission was made and therefore we were able to have a celebration in a local bar with the funds that had been put aside for it!
June 7, 2004 - 07:19 — drax

this is reality

I would have agreed with this article 3 months ago but now i'm not sure. I have had links to my website showing up in yahoo search for about 2 months now and no sign of the yahoo search bot, I do not believe this is a problem with my site, google and msn visit me daily. This leads me to belive that the new yahoo bot is a) not following all links b) very slow about following links c) not really excited about indexing sites which have not added to their pocket book (paid inclusion). I will monitor the situation and let you know as the situation develops.
August 9, 2004 - 21:30 — wordsilk

what are you talking about?

Have launched five sites recently. Some are sites that others might link to, some are corporate sites, and one is an ecommerce site. Listed three in Google, Yahoo (you can list free once again -- it's just slower) and DMOZ.org. They were crawled and are making their way up in rankings. The other two I didn't list. They've yet to be crawled. (The reason has to do with the owners being nervous about getting visitors before they're really ready). Saying that brand new sites should be crawled only as a result of other sites linking to them is just dimwitted, especially when submitting to two of the biggies is free. One site, an ecommerce site, was listed in Google & Yahoo (free) just as soon as we had a well-structed placeholder page, keywords in place and yada yada yada. By the time we opened for business (two months later), it was already ranked in the top ten for the main keywords on Google AND Yahoo. There's no way it would've gotten there without submitting the URL. And cost nothing more than the five minutes to find the submit page (and cost the client no money). To us, it's just irresponsible NOT to submit to Google and Yahoo at the very least. Of course, if part of your business plan is offering SEO as an add-on, then of course don't submit.
August 16, 2004 - 04:48 — nyhetsbrev

Mass submissions = a product of marketers?

I fully agree. Using free submissions to search engines have a very limited benefit for a sites ranking - I've got the feeling its still around because it gives some people a service to sell by telemarketing or SPAM. Spronsored links or priority submissions on the other hand can be ok - if you are in a hurry and feel that Yahoo, Altavista & Co are of interest you can use site match - but just make sure that you are not already indexed - then you might end up paying for traffic that you would already have received for free.
February 14, 2005 - 12:16 — andypopescu

Hmmm...

[spam removed by administrator]
December 4, 2006 - 06:13 — cianuro

Trust rank and seeds

In the time since this article was written, many search engines, especially Yahoo! have incorporated and even patented TrustRank based algorithms for weeding out spam. Coupled with factors like PageRank, search engines are now starting to show some super relevant SERPS. Online Marketing companies are either having to create amazingly high quality content, purchase links or play around in link baiting and social media optimisation (SMO). We have seen many very abrupt changes and shifts in the big 3's algorithms in the past year. One I think of greatest importance is an aging delay on the power given by an inbound link.
December 13, 2006 - 20:08 — freshpromo

What about press releases?

You made some good points in your article. I would add that press releases are a good way to increase link popularity. Especially with a new site, your press release can be an announcement of a new business or your existing business' new site. There are affordable options out there such as www.prweb.com, and then there are some more expensive, but far-reaching, distribution services. Depending on your budget, both options are worth it if you're looking for quick link popularity.

The other benefit of press releases, maybe even more so than the incoming links, is that it is read by actual people. If your site sells products online, press releases can be a good way to boost sales.

Cheers,

John Metzler, FreshPromo SEO Firm President