I cannot believe what I just saw. I was looking at a competitor who posted to use their Online Marketing services through a facebook link in my feed and when I clicked on it, one of thier top selling and bullet points was that they do Search Engine Submissions for you.
Not only have I not seen that in a sales pitch since about 2003, but do you actually need those services anymore?
Years ago I used to use the Search Engine Submission service for free at Submit Express, and if I didn’t like to let the engines crawl my sites naturally, I might still use it for second and third tier engines. However, the way I use it is different than actually submitting my own sites….and that is a secret I will not share ;-). The reason I don’t use their submit tool anymore is that I am still a firm believer in letting the engines find you and doing things that will help them find you faster like building to get a few quality backlinks, adding them to a blogroll on a relevant blog, etc.. so that they can find you and your sites faster and make it seem more natural to them so they know you are not spamming them.
Now, back to why I think it is a joke to use some Search Engine Submission services.
Not all Search Engine Submission Services are bad, some are good because they do everything by hand. Back in the early 2000’s, not everyone had a captcha button or a way to stop you from submitting things like crazy. However, since we have all become advanced and so has security, has the way we can submit comments and links, you cannot as easily just click one button and be submitted to every search engine as some of them now require a lot more and a much more manual process including answering your emails and typing in codes that are sent to your email addresses, answeing question with captachas, etc…
Automatic Submissions will always have their place in Search Engine Land, mainly in the things people used to do areas, but at the same time, if you decide to use a Search Engine Submission company, make sure they do it all by hand and give you a detailed document with every engine they listed you in, which dates they submitted you to, any confirmations they have collected and when the expected crawl and add to their index dates are so you can see the effectiveness of the Search Engine Submission companies.
I just thought it was funny to see a competitor’s site that listed automatic Search Engine Submissions to the top 150 Search Engines as a value added service when they have soo much more they could have talked about. Not to mention you could do it yourself for free and in a matter of seconds. Then again, most people aren’t educated in SEO or Search Engine Marketing which is why many companies are still able to exist today.
On a side note, I am not talking about Submit Express in this article, I just used them as a reference to a service they provide that I have used in the past and from talking to them in the past I have learned a lot from them and enjoyed the conversations we have had where we both shared information and data with each other. You may also want to give them a try or a call if you would need their services and do not want to use mine. =0).
