Paid URL Inclusion

There are many ways to advertise your website and one of the most efficient ways is to utilize search engines. Search engines are the first stop for most people attempting to find information, services, and products online. Because of this, it is important that your website appears quickly in search results.

The Internet contains multiple search engines, some of which supply what is known as "paid inclusion." This means that you pay the specific search engine an annual fee for your web page to be included in their index.

Of course, every search engine already has an automated program generally called a "spider" that indexes all the web pages it locates online, and it does this for free. So whether you pay or not, your web page will eventually be indexed by all Internet search engines, as long as the spider can follow a link to your page. The main issue is, then, how quickly your page is indexed.

A search engine that offers a paid URL inclusion uses an additional spider that is programmed to index the certain pages that have been paid for. The difference between the spider that indexes pages for free and the spider that indexes only pages for a fee is speed. If you have paid for inclusion, the extra search engine spider will index your page immediately.

The debate over paid URL inclusion centers around the annual fee. Since the regular spider of these search engines would inevitably get around to indexing your web page anyway, why is a renewal fee required? The fee is needed to keep your pages in the search engine's index. If you go the route of paid inclusion, you should be aware that at the end of the pay period, on some search engines, your page will be removed from their index for a particular amount of time.

It's easy to get confused about whether you would benefit from paid inclusion since the spider of any search engine will inevitably index your page without the extra cost. There are both benefits and disadvantages to paid URL inclusion, and it is only by weighing your pros and cons that you will be able to determine whether to spring for the extra cash or not.

The profits are apparent: rapid inclusion and rapid re-indexing. Paid inclusion means that your pages will be indexed quickly and added to search results in a very short time after you have paid the fee. The time difference between when the regular spider will index your pages and when the paid spider will is a matter of months. The spider for paid inclusion normally indexes your pages in a day or two. Be aware that if you have no incoming links to your pages, the normal spider will never find them at all.

Moreove, paid inclusion spiders will go back to your pages often, sometimes even daily. The benefit of this is that you can update your pages constantly to improve the standing in which they appear in search engines, and the paid URL inclusion spider will show that result in a matter of days.

First and foremost, the central disadvantage is the cost. For a ten page website, the costs of paid URL inclusion ranges from $170 for Fast/Lycos to $600 for Altavista, and you have to pay each engine their annual fee. How applicable the cost aspect is will rely on your company.

Another, and perhaps more vital, disadvantage is the restricted reach of paid URL inclusions. The largest search engines, Google, Yahoo, and AOL, do not provide paid URL inclusion. That means that the search engines you select to pay an inclusion fee will amount to a small fraction of the traffic to your site on a daily basis.

Google generally updates its index every month, and there is no way you can speed up this process. You will have to wait for the Google spider to index your new pages no matter how many other search engines you have paid to renew their index daily. Be aware that it is only after Google updates their index that your pages will show up in Google, Yahoo, or AOL results.

One way to figure out whether paid URL inclusion is a worthwhile deal for your company is to consider some common factors. First, find out if search engines have already indexed your pages. To do this, you may have to enter a number of different keywords, but the quickest way to find out is to enter your URL address in quotes. If your pages appear when you enter the URL address but do not appear when you enter keywords, using paid inclusion will not be useful. This is because your pages have already been indexed and ranked by the normal spider. If this is the case, your money would be better spent by updating your pages to enhance your standing in search results. Once you achieve this, you can then contemplate employing paid inclusion if you want to speed up the time it will take for the regular spider to revisit your pages.

The most vital matter in picking whether to utilize paid URL inclusion is to decide if it's a worthwhile investment. To figure this out, you have to look at the overall picture: what sort of product or service are you selling and how much traffic are you dependent on to see a profit?

If your company sells an inexpensive product that needs a great volume of traffic to your site, paid inclusion may not be the best investment for you; the biggest search engines do not supply it, and they are the engines that will bring you the majority of hits. On the other hand, if you have a business that offers an expensive service or product and requires a certain value of traffic to your site, a paid URL inclusion is most probably an excellent investment.

Another matter is whether or not your pages are revised frequently. If the content changes on a daily or weekly basis, paid inclusion will ensure that your new pages are indexed often and quickly. The new content is indexed by the paid spider and then appears when new pertinent keywords are entered in the search engines. Using paid inclusion in this case will guarantee that your pages are being indexed in a timely manner.

You should also base your decision on whether or not your pages are dynamically developed. These types of pages are often difficult for regular spiders to locate and index. Paying to include the most important pages of a dynamically produced website will insure that the paid spider will index them.

Sometimes a regular spider will release pages from its search engine, although these pages generally reappear in a few months. There are a number of reasons why this can happen, but by using paid URL inclusion, you will avoid the possibility. Paid URL inclusion guarantees that your pages are indexed, and if they are inadvertently removed, the search engine will be on the lookout to find them right away.

As you can see, there are various parts to contemplate when it comes to paid URL inclusion. It can be a beneficial investment depending on your situation. Evaluate your business needs and your website to select if paid URL inclusion is a wise investment for your business goals.
 


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bob Schwartz, is the founder of Promotions Unlimited,an Internet legal directory (CA, TX & Las Vegas ) publisher and search engine placement technology analyst.  You can contact Bob via e-mail at  seo711@gmail.com or visit his San Diego legal directory at:  http://www.sandiegolawyerforyou.com/special.htm