I stumbled across another website design company today and did a little snooping around. Sure enough, three pages deep in their list of services they listed “Search Engine Submission”. Excellent.
Truth is, there is no need to ever pay someone to submit your website to any search engine. Think about it – search engines make money by discovering websites and indexing them. Their main function is to find websites and rank them according to which they think is the best for what you are looking for. So it is in their best interest to find websites and add them to their index. You don’t have to pay someone to tell them what they already know.
Now, it doesn’t hurt to expedite the process by joining something like Webmaster Tools and verifying your website, which takes you less then a few minutes from start to finish. Letting Google know that there’s a real human behind a website goes a far way towards your site getting indexed.
Another way to get indexed is simply to get a link from another page to your website. Ask your web designer to link to you in his/her portfolio. Get a link from your Chamber of Commerce. Submit your website to DMOZ (although that one may take a while to reveal itself). Add a signature link to your website on your favorite forum. Reply to a few blogs using your link.
The search engines will find you. I promise.
Hi Will,
You make an interesting point but I don’t necessarily agree. Sure a client can submit their site to search engines themselves but it is likely to take them a lot longer to figure out where and indeed what to submit. It is an easy task for a web professional but can be very daunting job for those “not in the know†What is the value of their time? Hiring a professional to submit will free them up to concentrate on their business.
Sorry Zoe, but there is never a need to submit a site to any search engine especially hundreds of search engines. There are only 3-4 maybe 5 engines that matter, and submitting an inclusion request will take your site weeks/months to get indexed.
The real way to get indexed is to get back links.Any service that submits any website to search engines for XXX is a rip off.