I’m amazed everytime I get one of the those phony invoices from search engines submission companies. Just today I got one for a domain I manage (nice to know my registrar keeps our information private). For only $65, they offer to submit my domain  to 25 search engines yearly. Wow, what a deal.

I hope it doesn’t come as a surprise to some, but search engines don’t need help finding your site. Back in the day (2-3 years ago that is), it was helpful to submit your site to ensure that it gets noticed by the spiders. However, with the power and complexity today of engines such as Google, it’s no longer necessary. The most effective way to get your site noticed is through backlinks. Rather than wasting time submitting,website owners should be creating links pointing to their pages. The SE’s much prefer finding a site on its own. While many of the major engines still have submission pages, the benefits of using them are likely slim to none. In my experience with clients, I’ve been able to get their site listed within 2-3 days by simply creating a few external links from other sites.

Excessively submitting to search engines looks like spam. Many of these shady paid services offer to re-submit your site at regular times intervals. While it’s not likely that a few submissions will get your site banned, overly submitting it will. Play it safe, and stay away from these services.

The moral of this post: If you are currently paying for Search Engine Submission, stop wasting your money! If you get one of those submittal offers in the mail, throw it in the trash.

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