One area of search engine marketing that has changed dramatically
over the years is submissions. Submitting to the search engines
used to be so complicated, with having to choose between manual
versus software submissions, only being able to submit so many
pages a day, having to be careful about oversubmitting, and the
list goes on.

Submissions used to be the worst part of the search engine
optimization process, at least for me.

Now, I can literally write this whole article in two words:

Pay Inclusion

Yep, there you have it. If you want to take the headache out of
submissions, and, if you want to make things much easier for YOU,
use pay inclusion!

It's hard for someone like me to admit how powerful pay inclusion
programs are, because I've been in this "game" long enough to
remember when everything was free. So, moving into the pay realm
has been a difficult thing to do.

However, the benefits of pay inclusion far outweigh the cost.

Benefits of Pay Inclusion

* Your pages are indexed much faster than submitting through
free add URL or waiting for the spiders to find the pages on
their own.

* By using pay inclusion, your pages are getting outside of
the 95%+ spam that the engines say come through free add URL
submissions.

* With pay inclusion, your pages are respidered on a very
regular basis, depending on the engine. For example, Inktomi
and Fast respider their pay inclusion pages every 48 hours.

* With pay inclusion, you never have to submit your pages again!
As long as you continue to use pay inclusion, your pages will
continue to get respidered based on each engine's schedule.

* Because your pages are respidered on a regular basis without
your doing one single thing to initiate this action, you can make
changes to your pages today and begin to see the results of those
changes within a week. If you didn't use pay inclusion, you may
not see the results of the changes for a month or two.

* If you use pay inclusion, you're forming a "partnership" with
the search engines, which I personally feel is important and very
beneficial. You're now outside of the realm of the millions of
spammers and that's exactly where you want to be.

* Most of the pay inclusion programs offer some sort of
submission reports.

* Pay inclusion programs are ideal for dynamically generated
sites.

Now that we've looked at the benefits of pay inclusion, let's
create an example to see how inexpensive it really is. Let's say
we have a brand new Web site, and we have three main pages that
we want to submit through pay inclusion.

Pay Inclusion Programs

Inktomi
(Provides secondary search results to engines such as MSN and
HotBot) < http://www.positiontech.com/directSubmit.htm >

Benefits:

* Upon submission, your pages will make it into the Inktomi
index within 72 hours, as a general rule.

* Your pages are respidered every 48 hours.

* The term of the pay inclusion program is 12 months.

* Reporting services are included, such as verification of page
acceptance; refresh reports; URL validation; and account
management.

* Here's the audience reach of some of the engines that use
Inktomi's secondary results, according to Nielsen NetRatings in
October 2002: MSN: 28.1%; Overture: 5.4%; LookSmart: 3.0%; (also
provides results to the "new" HotBot)
< http://www.searchenginewatch.com/reports/netratings.html >

* Cost? $39 for the first URL, and $25 each for additional URL's
up to 1000. So, the total cost for our three pages would be $89.
(See Special Note at the bottom of this article on how you can
save 20% off the price of Inktomi and Fast pay inclusion – for a
limited time only.)

Fast
(Provides search results to AlltheWeb, Lycos, and HotBot)
< http://www.positiontech.com/directSubmit.htm >

You can use Position Tech to submit your Fast pages too, so be
sure to enroll in both pay inclusion programs at the same time.

Benefits:

* Upon submission, your pages will make it into the Fast index
within 48 hours, as a general rule.

* Your pages are respidered every 48 hours.

* The term of the pay inclusion program is 12 months.

* Reporting services are included, such as verification of page
acceptance; refresh reports; URL validation; and account
management.

* With Fast, you can choose between several different programs,
including some that include a free onsite search engine, bulk
inclusion, etc.

* The audience reach of Fast, according to Nielsen NetRatings in
October 2002, was: Lycos: 4.4%; (also provides results to the
"new" HotBot)
< http://www.searchenginewatch.com/reports/netratings.html >

* Cost? $34 for the first URL, and $16 each for additional URL's
up to 1000. So, the total cost for our three pages would be $66.
(See Special Note at the bottom of this article on how you can
save 20% off the price of Inktomi and Fast pay inclusion – for a
limited time only.)

Teoma and Ask Jeeves
(Provides results to Teoma, Ask Jeeves, and HotBot)
< http://ask.ineedhits.com/ >

The only way to get in the Teoma index is through pay inclusion.
This is one engine that doesn't have a free add URL page.

Benefits:

* Upon submission, your pages will make it into the Teoma and Ask
Jeeves indices within 7 days.

* Your pages are respidered every 7 days.

* The term of the pay inclusion program is 12 months.

* Reporting services are included, such as click-through
reporting.

* The audience reach of Teoma/Ask Jeeves, according to Nielsen
NetRatings in October 2002, was: Ask Jeeves: 10.3% (also provides
results to the "new" HotBot)
< http://www.searchenginewatch.com/reports/netratings.html >

* Cost? $30 for the first URL, and $18 each for additional URL's
up to 1000. So, the total cost for our three pages would be $66.

Special Note:

After writing this article, I found that Lycos is offering a
discount on both Fast and Inktomi pay inclusion programs for a
limited time. If you submit to both engines, you can receive a
20% discount! I don't know how long this will last, but here's
the URL:

< http://insite.lycos.com/searchservices/select/
select_overview.asp?co=undefined >

About the Author
Robin Nobles, Director of Training, Academy of Web Specialists,
(http://www.academywebspecialists.com) has trained several
thousand people in her online search engine marketing courses
(http://www.onlinewebtraining.com) and is the content provider
for (GRSeo) Search Engine Optimizer software (http://www.se-
optimizer.com).