Your Search Engine Submission Budget

Part 2 of Essentials Of Search Engine Submission

Despite the rise in “paid participation” programs offered by search engines (as further explained in the Buying Your Way In: Search Engine Advertising Chart), free search engine submission is still possible. However, using the paid programs that are offered will speed up the listing process and almost certainly generate more search engine related traffic for your web site.

Given this, it is highly recommended that any site owner establish a search engine submission budget. This is true whether you are running a commercial web site, a “hobbyist” site on your own time or a site for a non-profit organization.

The Minimum Budget: Yahoo Directory

How much to budget? At minimum, you MAY want to cover submission to Yahoo’s human-compiled directory for one year. This is because the flat $299 annual fee that Yahoo charges may help ensure that major crawler-based search engines pick up your home page quickly.

Huh? Pay to be in human-compiled results in hopes of influencing crawlers? Crawlers analyze links from across the web to decide which pages they should pick up and potentially rank well. Being listed in Yahoo’s human-compiled directory is potentially one of the best links you can gain, to influence crawlers.

It may be that crawlers will find your page and perhaps rank it well even without the benefit of a Yahoo link. So if money is tight, wait two or three months after you launch your site and see how you do. If you still aren’t doing well with crawlers, then spending the money with Yahoo may help you.

I Need To Be Listed Fast!

Often, those who launch new Web sites want to appear in search engines right away. A key way to do this is by using paid placement programs, as explained further in this guide.

The search advertising budget below will get your site going initially. After that, it may be that you’ll have some “natural” or “free” listings appear. When this happens, you could potentially stop paid search advertising — though a wiser course is to continue advertising on search engines as insurance against potential problems with your free listings. In each search advertising service, you pay per click or per visit to your site. There is a minimum per click charge (typically 5 to 10 cents) and you should set a daily or monthly maximum budget for CPC (cost-per-click) charges to maintain reasonable expenses.

Bottom Line

Now let’s put it all together. Here’s the ideal amount you would budget if you want to show up in the widest range of important search engines within a matter of days:

Again, you can get listed without spending a penny, as will be explained on the following pages. However, if your goal is to be seen right away in as many places as possible, you’ll set aside the amount shown above in the combined budget.

Next: Submitting To Directories
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