Should I Submit My Website to Search Engines? - SE Submission Scrutinized

Years ago, companies were popping up left and right that offered to submit your website to hundreds, even thousands of search engines. At the time, it was a great time saver and streamlined the manual process of entering your URL on the submission page of every search engine. But with the changes to the search engine landscape over the past few years, is this practice really necessary?

In a word - No. The practice of submitting your site to search engines is absolutely no longer necessary in todays internet economy. Here's some reasons why:

It may come as a surprise, but search engines don't need help finding your site. In the olden days (2-3 years ago that is), it was helpful to submit your site to ensure that it gets noticed by the spider. However, with the power and complexity today of engines such as Google, it simply isn't 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 than being told about it. While many of the major engines still have submission pages, the benefits of using them are likely slim to none. In my experience with customers, 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 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 will. Play it safe, and stay away from these services.

If you are currently paying for Search Engine Submission, stop wasting your money! The accountant for a company I worked for once came to me with a strange invoice she didn't recognize. Apparently, the company had been charged a recurring fee by one of these archaic search engine submission companies to re-submit their site to Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Keep in mind that their website ranked very well organically for their keywords, and was certainly in no danger of being dropped by the SE's.

While these services once played a useful role, times have changed and they are no longer relevant. Keep in mind that although submission is no longer necessary, proper linking building and maintaining a spider-friendly site will always be necessary.

For more SE tips, please visit this site:

Search Engine Marketing 101

Justin Palmer is the owner of Palmer Web Marketing, an online marketing firm specializing in SEO, SMO, and Viral Marketing. His current project involves C28.com, a Christian t-shirt store targeting high-school and college age customers.