Intro To Search Engine Submission
By Danny Sullivan

Search Engine Submission: Getting Listed
"Search engine submission" refers to the act of getting your web site listed with search engines. Another term for this is search engine registration.
Getting listed does not mean that you will necessarily rank well for particular terms, however. It simply means that the search engine knows your pages exist.
Think of it like a lottery. Search engine submission is akin to you purchasing a lottery ticket. Having a ticket doesn't mean that you will win, but you must have a ticket to have any chance at all.

Search Engine Optimization: Improving The Odds
"Search engine optimization" refers to the act of altering your site so that it may rank well for particular terms, especially with crawler-based search engines (what these are will be explained later in this guide).
Returning to the lottery model, let's assume there was a way to increase the odds of winning by picking your lottery numbers carefully. Search engine optimization is akin to this. It's making sure that the numbers you select are more likely to win than purchasing a set of numbers at random.

Search Engine Placement & Positioning: Ranking Well
Terms such as "search engine placement," "search engine positioning" and "search engine ranking" refer to a site actually doing well for particular terms or for a range of terms at search engines. This is the ultimate goal for many people -- to get that "top ten" ranking for a particular keyword or search terms.

Search Engine Marketing & Promotion: The Overall Process
Terms such as "search engine marketing" or "search engine promotion" refer to the overall process of marketing a site on search engines. This includes submission, optimization, managing paid listings and more.
These terms also highlight the fact that doing well with search engines is not just about submitting right, optimizing well or getting a good rank for a particular term. It's about the overall job of improving how your site interacts with search engines, so that the audience you seek can find you.

On To Submission
The next few "essentials" pages cover the basics of search engine submission. If all you do is the instructions on these essentials pages, you'll receive traffic from search engines. However, if you have time, you should also read beyond the essentials to understand how optimization can increase your traffic and other ways you can market your site with search engines.

Your Search Engine Submission Budget

The Minimum Budget: Yahoo
How much to budget? At minimum, you MAY want to cover submission to Yahoo for one year. This is because the flat $300 annual fee that Yahoo charges to be in its human-compiled directory may help ensure that Google picks up your home page quickly in Google's crawler-based results.
Huh? Pay Yahoo to do well on Google? Google crawls the web and adds pages for free. To decide which pages it should pick up (and potentially rank well), it analyzes links from across the web). Being listed in Yahoo's human-compiled directory is potentially one of the best links you can gain, to influence Google.
It may also be that Google will find your page (and perhaps rank it well) even without the benefit of a Yahoo link. So, if money is tight, wait two or three months after you launch your site and see how you do. If you are doing poorly at Google, then spending the money with Yahoo may help you.

I Need To Be Listed Fast!
Often, those who launch new web sites want to appear in search engines right away. In these cases, you'll need to budget more money. By paying an "inclusion" fee to some of the crawler-based search engines, you can shorten the usual month delay of appearing to only a few days. The one-time fees are shown below, by the major crawlers that offer such programs:

Crawler Budget

Inktomi $40
AltaVista $40
FAST (via Lycos) $30
Ask Jeeves/Teoma $30
Total $140

I said these are one-time fees, but as later discussed, you'll see that they are charged on a six-month or yearly basis. Don't worry about that. For the bare minimum submission effort that this section discusses, calling them one-time fees is correct, as you shall see.

Paid Listings Are Also Fast
Another key option to getting listed faster is to consider using paid listing programs. The budget below will get you going for at least a month, in most cases. For LookSmart, it will cover you for a year.

Paid Listings Budget

LookSmart $230
Overture (GoTo) $50
Google $25
FindWhat $25
Total $330

Now let's put it all together. Here's the ideal amount you would budget, if you want to show up in the widest range of important search engines within a matter of days:

Search Engine Submission Budget

Yahoo $300
Crawlers $140
Paid Listings $330
Total $770 

Again, you can get listed without spending a penny, as will be explained on the following pages. However, if your goal is to be seen right away in as many places as possible, you'll set aside the amount shown above, in the combined budget.
         

http://searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/budget.html

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