Once you have done everything you can for Search Engine Optimization, it’s time to actually start submitting your site for inclusion.  You have three options: manually submit your site to each of the search engines, mass submission, or pay one of the numerous companies who will do it for you.

Manual submission doesn’t cost you a dime.  Manual submission is a bit tedious, but it doesn’t actually take that long.  You can submit to the top 15-20 search engines in about 30 minutes. 

Since time is money, I prefer mass submission.  All it takes is a few simple clicks and you’re done.  There are a number of web sites where you can mass submit to 20-30 of the search engines for free.  
 

The other way to do mass submissions is to use a product such as Traffic Blazer.  That is what I use and I absolutely love it.   With a few simple clicks, Traffic Blazer will submit your site to approximately 50 search engines.  It will also submit them to the Internet Directories and regional Directories, as well as the blog directories when that is appropriate.  Traffic Blazer provides submission reports that tell you where the submission was accepted and where it wasn’t.  With a few simple clicks, you can resubmit your site every few months.

Traffic Blazer will also give you page ranking reports, link popularity (backlinks) and more.  It will provide you a pre-submission site analysis to let you know if there are any potential problems with your site.   Traffic Blazer costs $20/year and is well worth it in my opinion.

Your third option is to pay one of the many online companies that will do site submission for you.  The free submission sites typically offer a fee-based upgrade path as well.  Before you go this route, let’s consider what you are actually paying for.

The free submission sites, along with Traffic Blazer, will submit your site to all the major search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, AltaVista, Lycos, et cetera).  When you encounter a pay for submission service, they will offer to submit your site to 100,000 to 300,000 search engines.  Sounds impressive right?

Let me ask you a question.  How many search engines can you actually name?  10?  20?  Did you know there were 300,000 search engines, or more?  Should we care?

It’s your decision to make, but personally, if my site doesn’t get listed in JoesWannaBeSearchEngine.com in Botswana, I’m not going to lose any sleep.