Website promotion is a very modern, rapidly changing science. Lots of ideas and theories, but very little proven "nuts and bolts" information available. The fact is that there are some strategies that work and many that DO NOT work. You have to do a combination of things CONSISTENTLY and at the same time be prepared to make changes at the snap of a finger.

What I would like to do with this article is address website submission in a fairly non-technical, generalized manner and key in on how and why to use auto-submit software. We will not address website design, meta-tags or a specific search engine. This is what to do when your site is ready to start submitting.

Here are what most consider the top search engines:

1. Alta Vista
2. AOL Netfind
3. Excite
4. HotBot
5. Infoseek
6. Lycos
7. MSN
8. Netscape
9. Open Directory Project
10. Snap
11. Webcrawler
12. Yahoo

These are a MUST!

Point #1
ALWAYS submit to the top 12 search engines MANUALLY. No matter what the software developer advertises or tells you personally. This is not what the software does best. All 12 major search engines can be submitted to easily in about 30 minutes or less per page.

Point #2
After submitting to the top 12 search engines manually, submit to the other thousand plus search engines, directories, and FFAs using auto submission software.

The reason you DON'T want to submit to the top 12 with the auto-submit software is that quite often the submissions simply don't go through; even if the software tells you it was a successful submission.
By far MOST of your traffic obtained through website submissions will come from the top 12 search engines so you want to know for sure that these get your website indexed and listed. Trust me on this one. This is one of your VERY BEST forms of free advertising so use it to maximum potential.

Reasons you DO want to submit with auto-submit software everywhere else possible:

1. Time. Auto-submit programs can effectively submit as many web pages as you need submitted to over 1000+ search engines, directories, and FFAs in about 20 minutes or less per page. It could take you well over 48 hours to do just one page manually.

2. With some of the major search engines a higher relevance is placed on your website the more websites that link to your website. This is something the auto-submit programs do VERY well.

You just can't tell where your traffic and sales may come from. True, the main search engines can give you more website traffic than 1000 smaller directories and FFAs. But that is not to say that you won't get ANY traffic from the smaller directories and FFAs. In my opinion these sites are NOT worth submitting to manually if for no other reason than the time required, but ARE worth submitting to with a good auto-submit program.

You never know who may happen to see your link on the FFA sites. If you are targetting "newbies" to internet marketing you are definitely in one of the best places to find them. Do keep this in mind when thinking about FFAs. Your link will only be highly visible on the FFA page for a matter of a few hours at most if the site accepts auto-submissions from the popular software programs. In addition to that the only people who will see your listing are the folks who visit the FFA site manually.

How often do I resubmit Leon?

This question usually prompts a two part answer.

1. the frequency folks tell you they resubmit.
2. the frequency folks REALLY resubmit their pages.

Here is my schedule:

• Top 12 search engines - monthly
• Smaller engines and directories - twice monthly
• FFAs - Every one to three days. (Your link more than likely fell off the board less than 24 hours after submitting.)

All the auto-submit programs I'm familiar with allow you to choose which sites you submit to if you wish.

When surfing the net you will see sites that offer free FFA submissions to draw visitors to their sites. Usually you just click a link and you are taken to a page to submit you information. Often these websites submit to different databases and you will get linked on different sites; making the number of sites you are linked to in the THOUSANDS. Always bookmark these and go back regularly to resubmit. Even if the offer is only temporary use it as long as you can. And remember, DO NOT submit to the top 12 search engines with the software.

Bottom line - The FFA pages will not be a big traffic referral source for you in themselves but you will get SOME traffic from them. In addition to the small stream of traffic you can get from FFAs; your links to them will show up in the searches involving your website on the MAJOR SEARCH ENGINES.

As I said earlier these small search engines, directories, and FFAs will ad relevancy to your website listing in some of the major search engines thereby leading to a much LARGER stream of traffic to your website.

So keep submitting those links! CONSISTENTLY! Just don't count on links alone!

As for the major search engines - They can turn your struggling business into an EMPIRE if you can develop some expertise and consistently maintain good rankings!
Best of luck!

About the Author

The author Leon Brickey is webmaster/owner of Appalachian Online Marketing.
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