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Paid URL Inclusion
(C) Michael Rasmussen
All Rights Reserved
http://www.search-engines-revealed.com
There are many ways to
promote your website and one of the most efficient ways is to use search
engines. Search engines are the first stop for most people trying to find
information, services, and products online. Because of this, it is essential
that your website appears quickly in search results.
The Internet
contains numerous search engines, some of which offer what is known as "paid
inclusion." This means that you pay the specific search engine an annual fee
for your web page to be included in their index.
Of course, every
search engine already has an automated program commonly called a "spider" that
indexes all the web pages it locates online, and it does this for free. So
whether you pay or not, your web page will eventually be indexed by all
Internet search engines, as long as the spider can follow a link to your page.
The major issue is, then, how quickly your page is indexed.
A search
engine that offers a paid URL inclusion uses an extra spider that is programmed
to index the particular pages that have been paid for. The difference between
the spider that indexes pages for free and the spider that indexes only pages
for a fee is speed. If you have paid for inclusion, the additional search
engine spider will index your page immediately.
The debate over paid
URL inclusion centers around the annual fee. Since the regular spider of these
search engines would eventually get around to indexing your web page anyway,
why is a renewal fee necessary? The fee is necessary to keep your pages in the
search engine's index. If you go the route of paid inclusion, you should be
aware that at the end of the pay period, on some search engines, your page will
be removed from their index for a certain amount of time.
It's easy
to get confused about whether you would benefit from paid inclusion since the
spider of any search engine will eventually index your page without the
additional cost. There are both advantages and disadvantages to paid URL
inclusion, and it is only by weighing your pros and cons that you will be able
to decide whether to spring for the extra cash or not.
The advantages
are obvious: rapid inclusion and rapid re-indexing. Paid inclusion means that
your pages will be indexed quickly and added to search results in a very short
time after you have paid the fee. The time difference between when the regular
spider will index your pages and when the paid spider will is a matter of
months. The spider for paid inclusion usually indexes your pages in a day or
two. Be aware that if you have no incoming links to your pages, the regular
spider will never locate them at all.
Additionally, paid inclusion
spiders will go back to your pages often, sometimes even daily. The advantage
of this is that you can update your pages constantly to improve the ranking in
which they appear in search engines, and the paid URL inclusion spider will
show that result in a matter of days.
First and foremost, the
disadvantage is the cost. For a ten page website, the costs of paid URL
inclusion range from $170 for Fast/Lycos to $600 for Altavista, and you have to
pay each engine their annual fee. How relevant the cost factor is will depend
on your company.
Another, and perhaps more important, disadvantage is
the limited reach of paid URL inclusions. The largest search engines, Google,
Yahoo, and AOL, do not offer paid URL inclusion. That means that the search
engines you choose to pay an inclusion fee will amount to a small fraction of
the traffic to your site on a daily basis.
Google usually updates its
index every month, and there is no way you can speed up this process. You will
have to wait for the Google spider to index your new pages no matter how many
other search engines you have paid to update their index daily. Be aware that
it is only after Google updates their index that your pages will show up in
Google, Yahoo, or AOL results.
One way to figure out whether paid URL
inclusion is a good deal for your company is to consider some common factors.
First, find out if search engines have already indexed your pages. To do this,
you may have to enter a number of different keywords, but the quickest way to
find out is to enter your URL address in quotes. If your pages appear when you
enter the URL address but do not appear when you enter keywords, using paid
inclusion will not be beneficial. This is because your pages have already been
indexed and ranked by the regular spider. If this is the case, your money would
be better spent by updating your pages to improve your ranking in search
results. Once you accomplish this, you can then consider using paid inclusion
if you want to speed up the time it will take for the regular spider to revisit
your pages.
The most important factor in deciding whether to use paid
URL inclusion is to decide if it's a good investment. To figure this out, you
have to look at the overall picture: what kind of product or service are you
selling and how much traffic are you dependent on to see a profit?
If
your company sells an inexpensive product that requires a large volume of
traffic to your site, paid inclusion may not be the best investment for you;
the biggest search engines do not offer it, and they are the engines that will
bring you the majority of hits. On the other hand, if you have a business that
offers an expensive service or product and requires a certain quality of
traffic to your site, a paid URL inclusion is most likely an excellent
investment.
Another factor is whether or not your pages are updated
frequently. If the content changes on a daily or weekly basis, paid inclusion
will insure that your new pages are indexed often and quickly. The new content
is indexed by the paid spider and then appears when new relevant keywords are
entered in the search engines. Using paid inclusion in this case will guarantee
that your pages are being indexed in a timely manner.
You should also
base your decision on whether or not your pages are dynamically generated.
These types of pages are often difficult for regular spiders to locate and
index. Paying to include the most important pages of a dynamically generated
website will insure that the paid spider will index them.
Sometimes a
regular spider will drop pages from its search engine, although these pages
usually reappear in a few months. There are a number of reasons why this can
happen, but by using paid URL inclusion, you will avoid the possibility. Paid
URL inclusion guarantees that your pages are indexed, and if they are
inadvertently dropped, the search engine will be on the lookout to locate them
immediately.
As you can see, there are numerous factors to consider
when it comes to paid URL inclusion. It can be a valuable investment depending
on your situation. Evaluate your business needs and your website to determine
if paid URL inclusion is a wise investment for your business goals.
Michael Rasmussen is a successful Internet Marketing Consultant and
author of many top-selling eBooks. Michael has been marketing online since the
early days and he knows what it takes to make money and succeed online. Stop by
his Web site and subscribe to his Free monthly newsletter full strategies and
techniques for successful web site promotions that can help YOU!
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