Search Engine Submission Services? DON’T – Here’s Why…
This post is a short one – and a very basic post – but a needed one. Think of this like a PSA that is attempting to pay it forward to new marketers everywhere.
In doing some keyword research today, I was a little startled to see tens of thousands of searches being performed centering around submitting your website to search engines. Thousands of those revolved around looking for website submission SERVICES.
It's 2013. A lot of us have been doing “this” – SEO, affiliate marketing, Internet marketing, etc. for a long, long time. And we often forget the outdated crap – and scams – that newbies to our world encounter as they're trying to find their way and learn the ropes to promoting a website online.
Search engine submission is outdated crap that turned into a scam.
Outdated because somewhere in the late 90's and very early 2000's submitting your site to search engines WAS a legit way to get indexed.
A scam because the companies still attempting to sell you those services know that they are now complete rip offs.
Because in this day and age, there are only two engines that matter: Google and Bing (and some may argue Yahoo, but Bing powers it). Both will find and index (put into their results) almost anything on their own.
Whether or not you rank for whatever keywords you want to has nothing to do with being indexed. Ranking is dependent on building quality inbound links and (non-Google) traffic to your site.
They not only won't help – they can hurt you
It used to be that these services weren't “harmful.” Instead, they were simply useless. However, in the post-Penguin era, they have the potential to be dangerous. (Penguin is the name of a filter Google created to punish sites with bad links.)
Let's just pretend for a moment there were thousands or tens of thousands of search engines you could potentially get traffic from if you submit your website to them (there are not):
A lot of these services also offer to submit you to hundreds or thousands of directories. Not only will almost all of these directories never send a single qualified visitor, but getting links from them can hurt your ability to rank in the real search engines.
Are you also planning to purchase the add-on free for all (FFA) links? You might as well light any chance you have of ever ranking in Google on fire and walk away now.
Still nervous Google or Bing might not find your website?
You don't need to, but you can directly submit a website to Google here (which essentially amounts to making a Webmaster Tools account). And you can directly submit a website to Bing here. Yahoo is powered by Bing, so submitting to Bing is the same as submitting a website to Yahoo. AOL is powered by Google. Ask.com is irrelevant (sorry Ask).
No other search engines these crappy search engine submission services claim to submit you to matters – at all. Seriously.
So do yourself a favor and avoid these services like the plague.
16 Comments
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This put me in kind of a bad mood — not because the post is crappy (it’s excellent) but because I wish it wasn’t still necessary to say this. I see lots (and lots…) of newcomers to SEO (and even in 2013, many small businesses are just getting started online) who are so easily taken by scams like these! Too bad your typical SugarRae reader probably already knows better.
Can we do some sort of public outreach day? Teach Your Neighbour SEO Basics Day?
I wrote the post mainly because I have a strong site… I knew I’d pop top 20 in Google for search engine submission services within a few days and a link or two will put my post front page of the SERPs – my title tag should hopefully help draw searchers to read my post before whipping out a credit card. :)
Well, the thing is this: you can help speed up the process of getting Google to spider/list your site by manually asking them to do it (http://google.com/addurl leads to Google’s webmaster tools), and it costs nothing.
Antonio – I mentioned that in the last paragraph of the post – however… without any links, you’re not going to rank for any good terms anyway. If you get links, the engines will index your site. So, as I said, people can do it if it makes them feel better, but speeding up indexing has no correlation to speeding up rankings, IMHO.
Hello Rae,
I would like to commend you for your article.I have wasted a lot of money with several programs that did not work. Thank you for sharing.
Eddy
You’re very welcome Eddy – my hope is that less people waste their hard earned money as a result of this post.
interesting that we in South Africa are now being bombarded with a lot of theses, client ask us quite often why should we not do this? India and the Uk are the main purportraiters these days we found. Some of them are even taking to phoning people now! Mad!
Yeah… I own a certain company with a “non-tech” partner and he used to always forward me all the spam emails offering SEO and submission services… was amazing to see him take them seriously – and made me feel a little sad at how many innocent business owners get taken for a ride.
Great Heads Up Post,
Nice of you to alert the ‘unknowing’ to some of the ‘shenanigans’ that still exist online! Wish Google in all their infinite wisdom could devise a way to rid the net of these bottom-feeders! On the other hand however there will be a time in the not too distant future where we’ll be looking back on these times as the good ol days! The internet will only continue to attract maggots due to its growth and popularity!
Thanks for the share Rae!
TJ
Thanks TJ – I figure I have the ability to rank for a lot of stuff – some of it should be focused on preventing newbies from falling victim to things they don’t even realize can be harmful.
I felt sorry for my self after reading this wonderful article and I wish I had never put a penny in some this program.
As a newbie who own a small website, I have paid couple of this companies for better ranking of my site, till today no significant changes in Google ranking. I really appreciate your article and I wish people out there get to know more about this to avoid wasting their time and money on something that doesn’t work.
Personally I wouldn’t write about things like this. I’m not running a charity, I’m running a business. If other people get themselves ripped off with silly services that are completely obsolete, then I’m not going to lose any sleep over it. If I could write about stuff like this with absolutely no risk to myself, then I’d do it.
I think the downside is too large – outrank someone for their own scam service name and its just asking for them to start blasting you with all of these same crappy link services at you. They’ve already proven they have no morals by ripping their customers off in the first place, do you think they’re going to give a second thought to blasting you with 10’s of thousands of garage links in retaliation for ruining their little scam racket?
I know a bit about seo to be skeptical when one of the search engine services popped up as an ad. I manually submit my site to web directories with a strong enough rank in alexa, it helps a bit but takes time. What’s your opinion on submitting to web directories?
Thanks for the article, proved me right in not paying for the service.
Well I did not realize any of this, before today.
now that I have submitted to these site submission websites, what can I do to undo the damage, that I have probably caused.
Please give your advice, however brief.
Bob – did you only submit to search engines or did the service you used also say it was going to submit you to a bunch of directories / get you backlinks?
Thank you for posting this because every time someone reads it, it passes on the knowledge that scams are everywhere.
So them the question becomes, are there any good honest submission services available that will work in 2017?