Pay a little and speed things up
Free inclusion can take a long time. You may want to speed things up a little by paying for inclusion in some of the major engines. This was
not necessary a few years ago, but in some ways there are also improvements to the service.
Inktomi search results are used by AOL, MSN, iWon and HotBot
to name just a few and the paid inclusion service ($39) not only gets you indexed, but also ensures you are re-indexed every 48 hours. This can be very important when you are making changes to your site in order to move up the ratings, as you see the results of your changes relatively quickly.
Looksmart looks rather poor value at £149 for basically the same cover as Inktomi.
Yahoo Directory
is expensive at £199 for paid inclusion but at the moment this is still a one-of payment rather than annual. Recent reports have suggested that this will go up to £199 p.a. but existing sites will be “grandfathered” in and will not have to pay the annual fee. Yahoo is still the very most important directory on the web and, while I think this fee is high, it may well be worth it in the long run.
Listing in Yahoo will increase your prominence in most other search engines.
Wanadoo / Freeserve search is powered by Overture, a pay per click service which does not go below $20 per month. While
Freeserve is very popular in the UK it really does not warrant this type of charge for normal businesses. Probably better to get good listings on other search engines and get into Freeserve from there.
Most other major search engines also have paid inclusion or premier fast services, but Inktomi, Lycos and Yahoo at a total of about £230 is
the first step best value option for fast recognition.
Always remember - To Submit is Not Enough! Regular checking, tweeks and updates can help you move up the charts. Again, I recommend Web Position Gold as the best option I have found yet to get there and stay there.
|
