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B.S. Search Engine ServicesI'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. Here's what Google says on their website submission page: "We do not add all submitted URLs to our index, and we cannot make any predictions or guarantees about when or if they will appear." 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 may result in your site receiving 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 internet marketing with a focus on designing search engine friendly websites that get good rankings. One important point to remember - a person who can build a website doesn't automatically know how to market that website online. 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. Thank you for the trust you have shown in me and my business.
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