Before to answer to this question we have to know what is the difference between a search engine and directory. Here is a brief explanation.
Main difference between search engine and directory lay in the way how websites get entered into their index. People submit their sites to the directories, which are reviewed by human editors. Think of the directories as collections of Internet sites organized by subject. Search engines works by sending out a spider to fetch as many documents as possible. Another program, called an indexer, then reads these documents and creates an index based on the words contained in each document.
Having this said, let’s see why you should not submit your site to the Search Engines.
More than 90% of the search engines traffic comes from three major search engines Google, Yahoo! and MSN.
You can see many ads on Internet which looks like this: “submit your site on X00.000 search engines…”
Submitting your site on hundreds of thousands search engines wouldn’t help and is simply not worth. Save your money as you would do when you see ad’s like: “loose weight while you sleep”.
These three search engines provide results for many other search engines, and if you are listed on these three search engines, your site will be listed on many other search engines too.
Altavista for example show results from the Yahoo! index. Rankings are not the same, because the algorithm is different but index is the same. If your site is new and is listed on Yahoo but not on Altavista, be patient and do nothing. Altavista will show your site when they update their index from yahoo. AOL (America On Line) and Netscape use Google index. They additionally receives and listings from DMOZ. Examples are many.
So called “Meta” search engines like DogPile or Metacrawler are showing results from Google and Yahoo among of others. These search engines actually search the top search engines and show combined results.
If your site is not new, there is a chance that search engines spiders already find your site and index him. So before to do anything check is your site already listed, even if you did not submit your site on any search engine.
But what you should do if your site is just uploaded?
As we already explain search engines are equipped with spiders which will find your site. All you need is to submit your site in Directories, and search engines spiders will find your link and your site will be indexed. But be sure to provide enough “food” for the spiders. That is, submit your site in enough directories, and you will make that process shorter.
While submission to the search engines is wasting of your time, submission to the directories is not. You will benefit from submitting your site in Directories, not only because search engines will find your link there and index your site, but you will also increase your link popularity. Search engines consider each link who is pointing to your site as a one kind of vote and give him a “credit” for each “vote”.
That’s why you should submit your site to as many directories you can. However, don’t expect bulk traffic from the directories. Even the biggest directories like Yahoo! or DMOZ are not able to deliver load of traffics. From the other side, traffic delivered though the directories is usually quality traffic, because these people are browsing to find products or services that you offer.
Submitting your site more than once on search engines might slow down indexing time. If you still want to submit your site on search engines best is do that just once, and do that manually. Companies who advertise that they will submit your site on X00.000 will not do that manually, that is for sure. They use automated submission software, even all major search engines say’s in their submission guidelines that you should submit your site manually. And major search engines are what you should care for only. You remember the fact where the over 90% of traffic comes from?
Remember that only submitting your site to the search engines does nothing to increase your ranking in most cases. If web site optimization on your web site is not properly implemented or is not implemented at all chances are small that your site will be on first few pages with results. And having in mind that only about 7% of the people look further then third page, top is the only place you want to be.
How to calculate if the search engine optimization is worth to invest in? Consider this: What is the annual worth of one customer to you?" Is it 25 €, 250 €, or perhaps 2500 €? How many customers you need to get the invested money back?
Optimization of your website might be one of your best investment ever, if is planed and implemented right.
Zoran Makrevski
Search Engine Optimization Services
SEO.Goto.gr