I have a couple of questions that I'm sure folks here know.

I'm just starting to look at optimizing my site which is not picked up on most search engines and have been reading alot lately about SEO and just added robots.txt, started working on meta tags, etc.

My question is this:
Some sites have a "service" that say they will submit your site listing to 100's of search engines at once.
I know that spiders and bots don't search your site unless there is an initial site submission to that search engine.

I have manually submitted to a few search engines but can't possibly know of all search engines or track them all down manually.
Is it worth it to pay someone to submit my site to 100's of search engines at once or is this a scam ?

Are there places to submit to 100's of search engines at once for free or what do people here do when starting to promote a site to search engines to get the listing out there ?

Second Question about SEO Software:
I've seen a few SEO tools out there that you can buy. This one IBP seems to have some high ratings / reviews:
http://www.axandra-web-site-promotion-software-tool.com/search-engine-submission.htm

I recently got a $1500 quote from a SEO company to optimize my site which is out of my price range. That is why I started looking for software tools or other options.

In your opinion is a SEO tool like IBP worth buying to help optimize the site for search engines or another waste of money ?

Thanks much for your answers and Feedback about these questions. :)

Is it worth it to pay someone to submit my site to 100's of search engines at once or is this a scam?It is rarely worthwhile. You can get the ball rolling easily enough on your own with submissions to Google and DMoz. A couple inbound links from one established site will get you on the map as well. You'll get indexed soon enough. I can't think of a single instance where it is worth paying money for someone else to do this for you.

In your opinion is a SEO tool like IBP worth buying to help optimize the site for search engines or another waste of money?How much are you planning on relying on SE traffic for revenue? $1500 is a drop in the bucket if the company can appreciably increase your SE traffic and your site is developed well-enough to convert that traffic into sales.

There are not 100's of search engines - at least not 100's that will drive traffic to your site. Google, Yahoo & MSN are the 3 important ones and will easily account for +95% of your search engine traffic. The best and fastest way to get indexed is to have links from other sites - the search engine bots will pick up your sites when they visit those established sites. Putting links in forum signatures is a fast method to get noticed by search engines.

Originally posted by leobounds

Some sites have a "service" that say they will submit your site listing to 100's of search engines at once. The problem there is, excluding niche directories and obscure search engines that get almost no traffic, there aren't hundreds of search engines (let alone the "half a million" or whatever that some services claim they'll submit to).

And the number of major search engines isn't really relevant, what matters is the number of search engine indexes. For example, get into Google, and you're at every site that uses Google's index.

The fact is that submission is almost never necessary these days for a presence in the major search engines. They all spider heavily and build their indexes that way -- so what is essential, as Paul said, is to get links from at least a handful of ranked sites so that the spiders can find you.


I've never used IBP, so can't comment on it directly. However I have tested plenty of those kinds of programs. In general, they can be effective as tools to learn some of the basics of SEO. Often some of the techniques use is a little outdated, as can be the priority they assign to each. I don't know any SEO professional who actually uses any of them for real optimization work, but they can be helpful for those with less experience, in highlighting glaring weaknesses in a site.

Thanks for the comments and info so far.

I think I'll probably start by using some software tools like the one mentioned to clean up my site for SEO then at some later point look at one of the SEO consultants to improve on it further.

You must optimize you're site with tools then test how many links youre opponents have. If youre keywords isnt very popular you can add enough links yourself, starting from youre signature.

I think going to an SEO should be well down the road after you've gotten your site off the ground if you are limited in your budget. One thing that building a credible website takes is time if you are on a limited budget and not willing to pay for instant exposure.

I would recommend:
1. Coming up with a good site concept
2. Developing keyword rich pages that tie into your overall site concept
3. Use the free seo tools at links provided and at seochat.com to get ideas on how to improve meta tags and other stuff. You can only go so far with optimization tips though.
4. Content, content, content. Keep adding quality content that establishes you as a place to go for information.
5. Participate in forums related to your content and link to your site in your sig file.
6. If you can monetize your traffic, consider PPC search networks once you have a credible site.
7. Be patient.

Just my $.02