Last week I received a letter in my post office box and quickly realized it was junk. I almost tossed it away. Then I realized I that I could do one better and turn this into a teaching opportunity. It was for a company wanting to submit my website to the search engines. And I know from talking to some people they ask: Should I be paying for search engine submission?
The letter and envelope looked official enough with a logo. It referenced a domain that I had recently registered. It says under description of services:
ANNUAL WEBSITE SEARCH ENGINE LISTINGS FROM JAN 12, 2012 THRU JAN 12, 2013 TOTAL $85.00
Hmm, okay. So what do you get for that $85?
SUBSCRIPTION INCLUDES DOMAIN NAME SUBMISSION TO 20 ESTABLISHED SEARCH ENGINES UP TO EIGHT KEYWORD/PHRASE LISTINGS MONTHLY SEARCH ENGINE POSITION AND RANKING REPORTS.
This “service” only takes checks and there is no where on the order form to list the eight keywords or phrases, so I guess the choice is up to them. You are supposed to enter an email so that you can receive a report from them.
I did visit their website in the name of research and found out that some of the search engines that they work with are Google, AOL, ExactSeek, Cipinet, Netscape Search, Scrub the Web and more.
I sure hope alarm bells are not going off in your mind.
Never ever pay to have your website submitted to the search engines. It is not necessary and a waste of money. Please if you get a letter like this (or email or tweet, etc) then just throw it away.
Instead do some simple things instead. Create an xml sitemap for your website with the help of the Google XML Sitemap plugin if you are running WordPress. Make sure your site is included in Google Webmaster Tools and that you submit your sitemap. Write some really great guest posts on other blogs. All of these ideas are free. The search engines will find your website and it will just cost you time.
