Search Engine Marketing:
Myths and Truths about submitting websites to Internet search engines

by O. Ront

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There is some speculation that submitting your website repeatedly can actually hurt your site's ranking. I've heard one marketing company compare the submission process to a classroom. In the beginning, a teacher takes attendance, and after a student's name is called, he answers that he's present. The teacher takes attendance only once, and each student only needs to say that he/she is present only once. This is very similar to submitting your website to a search engine – you only need to say that you are present on the Internet once. Submitting your website again and again is like the same student saying that he is present several times during his lesson. It's not necessary, and over time, this can become annoying for the teacher, and the teacher may take measures to punish the student for saying that he is present all the time and interrupting the lesson. Similarly, it is speculated that oversubmitting to search engines could result in penalties. Whether this actually happens or not is known only to search engines – and they want to keep their practices secretive because they want to stay ahead of their competitors – but regardless, oversubmitting is waste of time and money, and could potentially even lead to penalties.

To summarize, if you want to submit your web site to a search engine directly, then the best way to do this would be to find the submission form for that search engine on the Internet, and submit your home page only once.

But there is even a better way to get listed in search engines. And this way doesn't involve submitting your web site at all. How does this work? Through links. If there is a link to your web site from another web site that's listed in search engines, then eventually the search engines will follow that link, find your website and index it. The more links you have, the sooner the search engines will find your site and crawl it.

This is by far the best way to get included in search engines' databases. At Ront Communications, we have worked on a number of web sties that have never been submitted to a search engine. For example, www.dynatrac.ca has never been submitted to any search engine, yet, this web site is listed in all major search engines.

Bottom line? You don't need to submit your website to search engines at all. All you need to do is get some links to point to your web site, and you’ll be all set.

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For more information on getting your web site to rank well in search engines, internet marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), as well as other marketing services such as graphic design and corporate identity packages, please contact us at our office in Greater Vancouver:

Tel: 604-629-7499
E-mail: info [at] rontcommunications [dot] com

Thank you and we look forward to working with you!