22 replies to this topic

[Hippo]

My name is Corey Creed and I started a small business this past six months handling PPC for small businesses.

Just this week, I am working with a woman who is starting a Bed and Breakfast. I offered to do Paid Inclusion for her and to submit her to DMOZ, Yahoo!, and a few other major sites. She is already listed on Google, but not positioned very high. I have done this for her after researching my notes from the conference in Boston back in March, and the current web resources.

Since then, she has heard from several people that they will resubmit her every month and she is now wondering why I do not do the same.

What's the story with this? Why do so many plans involve re-submitting a site every month for a year? Is it not necessary, or am I missing something? I know you don't need to (and maybe even shouldn't) on DMOZ, Google, and Yahoo. Should I be resubmitting every month with other sites? If so, which ones and why?

Thanks for your help!!

Corey@PPCHippo.com

[Scottie]

There is no need to submit a site every month to directories or search engines.

This started back when search engines would occaisionally drop sites and pages with no real reason... resubmitting got the site back in.

These days, it is just spamming and/or skimming the customer for extra $$.

Welcome to the forum, Corey!

[Jill]

Actually, it was always a bad/useless thing to do.

Jill

[Leann_Pass]

First of all resubmitting to search engines is NOT a good idea.

I offered to do Paid Inclusion for her and to submit her to DMOZ, Yahoo!, and a few other major sites. She is already listed on Google, but not positioned very high.

The main thing that she should be concerned about is improving search engine rankings for targeted keyword phrases. No amount of search engine submitting will ever get high rankings.

Keyword research and identification of the most effective keyword phrases and optimizing content is where the focus should be. Honestly, if you think about it, her site really shouldn't be submitted at all until it is optimized!

I hope you can convince her of the importance of optimization! Good Luck!

[Scottie]

Welcome to the forum, Leann!

[compar]

Welcome to the forum, Leann!

Scottie beat me to it, but I also was going to say welcome. I thought it was a great first post. I'll be keeping an eye out for more from you in the future.

[compar]

As to the question about resubmitiing. I agree completely with what everyone has said. You need to submit to the directories once, but you really never need to submit to the search engines. And certainly not resubmit.

But the question is how to convince your client. I'm sure that Jill has an article somewhere on the web site on this very topic. Why don't you print it off and give it to your client. It is really tough sometimes overcoming the false information that is handed around about SEO. Good luck with your client.

[Hippo]

Thank you very much for all your encouraging words and for answering my question.

Does anyone know why the majority of web designers and so-called search engine "advice givers" feel that one needs to submit to a dozen or more crawlers and search engines every month??

My client was being charged about $70 every month for this "service" before I started working with her.

[qwerty]

In my opinion, they do it so that they can charge about $70 a month

Really, a lot of designers don't understand SEO and they think it's all about submitting. SEOs who don't know better probably shouldn't call themselves SEOs, as far as I'm concerned.

[compar]

My client was being charged about $70 every month for this "service" before I started working with her.

Why can't I find suckers like this? I guess I'm just too damn honest.

But I know it is tough convincing anybody who is paying this kind of money. Because the second they decide to believe you or agree with you they are acknowledging that they have been duped and have been wasting their money all this time. What you need to do is find some face saving method for them to get out of the situation.

Hopefully you are not correct about the "majority" of people still recommending frequent submission. Certainly that is not true of the majority on this forum. I think the question I would ask these people is why? I would ask them to show me any site that had either been dropped and then restored or that had it's ranking in the index improved through resubmission.

[qwerty]

I would ask them to show me any site that had either been dropped and then restored or that had it's ranking in the index improved through resubmission.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding your question, but I can think of an example: there's a site I've been running for a little under a year now, and on three or four occasions it's been dropped from AltaVista. Apparently, when Scooter comes around to spider a site, if it doesn't get in, the site gets dropped -- no second chances. When that's happened, I've submitted the home page to AV, and a few days later it's back.

[toprank]

Using paid inclusion from lycos/fast, inktomi, alta vista, etc minimizes or even eliminates the need to re-submit.

We do check url verification on WPG reports to see that site urls are being found on other search engines that do not offer paid inclusion. It's rare, but it does happen that urls get dropped and in those cases we'll re-submit.

[compar]

It's rare, but it does happen that urls get dropped and in those cases we'll re-submit.

But what you and Qwerty are talking about are the exceptions. That's a lot different than resubmitting everything every month regardless of it's position in the directorys or SEs. Can you think of how much resubmission someone is apparently buying for $70 per month.

There are exceptions to every rule but I feel all you guys are doing with you stories about the rare exceptions is confusing CoreyCreed. Her question was "do I have to resubmit every month" and the answer to that is NO! Definitely NOT!

Why muddy the waters?

[darciusrex]

For what it's worth, I always use this rule of thumb concerning submitting: directories, once and only once. Correct me if I'm wrong, but, if you ever read their guidelines they say if you submit more than once they'll toss you (my words, of course!) If you consider the fact humans are checking and adding these sites by hand, if you submit more than once you've increased their voluntary work load. If they catch you they're gonna' be p!$$ed! I think if you really feel like you need to submit again you should contact the category editor. You might get more results that way.

With that said, when it comes to search engines, especially Google, unless their guidelines say otherwise, submit to your heart's content. It probably won't help you much but on the off-hand chance that it might it couldn't hurt.

As far as charging someone x-amount of dollars every month to re-submit if it's not necessary, that doesn't seem quite kosher unless they know it probably won't help them much . If they don't care and put cash in your hand, what can you say?

[toprank]

compar, perhaps you didn't read my full post?

Especially: "Using paid inclusion from lycos/fast, inktomi, alta vista, etc minimizes or even eliminates the need to re-submit."