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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!
Go to
http://www.search-engines-revealed.com
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