Search Engine Optimisation Tips (Back to Introduction)

Tip 8. Submit manually

There is an ongoing debate about whether a manual submission is better than an automated submission. We generally believe in manual submission. Our primary motivation for this is that there are only a few sites worth submitting to. Frankly it takes just as long to set up an auto submission. It is also clear that the main search engines do their best to discourage automated submissions.

The main directories in particular (Yahoo!, Looksmart and the Open Directory) definitely deserve your undivided attention when submitting. A poorly executed submission that is not optimised for your target keywords is like putting yourself in a bog that you just might eventually be able to get of (if you are lucky). Far better to take the time to get it right in the first place.

What's getting it right? There are a lot of subtlies but pay particular attention to these:

• Follow the search engines submission instructions to the letter (and some)
• Include your most important keywords in the description and wherever practical in the title.
• Look at the style of descriptions for the sites that are already listed and emulate it.

One of the best submission tips for indexing search engines such as Google is to get a prominent link from a site that is already included in the search engine (n.b. this does not work for the directories mentioned above).

Just to re-iterate a key point: submission alone is not enough. There is a lot more to doing well than just submitting to search engines.