Future Outlook: Will all Submissions Soon Become Paid?

Future Outlook: Will all Submissions Soon Become Paid?

A common fear from Web businesses operating on tight budgets is "Will free submissions disappear entirely?" These businesses have found the free listings an incredible value over the years and hate to see them disappear.

I've heard a number of people contend that it's now inevitable. Everyone will soon require paid inclusion or placement. However, there is always going to be valuable information on the Web from sites that are not going to be willing to pay for the inclusion of each page on their site. To stop crawling pages for free would mean reducing the size of their index from hundreds of millions of pages to just thousands. In this scenario, the consumer would no longer receive the comprehensive view of the Web that they have come to expect. They would then logically move onto another engine that does provide that service. I believe that's why we've seen AltaVista, Inktomi, AllTheWeb/Lycos, and others continue to offer both free and paid inclusion options rather than mandating the paid service.

Even with the PPC's, you see them drawing results from a free database such as Inktomi to supplement their paid listings. In the case of Yahoo and Looksmart we have seen them acquire a model of primarily reviewing just paid submissions, at least in regard to commercial sites.

Yahoo and Looksmart continue to allow ways for non-profit sites to be reviewed for free which is good. They require you to submit non-profits site via a special link or in Looksmart's case to a partner non-profit listing engine called Zeal.

Just as Google has continued to buck the trend regarding paid inclusion, Open Directory has chosen to do the same by not charging for its reviews. Open Directory (dmoz.org) was founded on the premise that a directory should be unbiased, comprehensive, and not ruled by the almighty dollar. However, building such a large directory normally takes large sums of money. Their creative solution was to create a network of volunteer editors to do the reviews for free. Each editor is in charge of one or more topics they have a special interest and expertize in. The idea is that they would do it out of a love and passion for their favorite interest. Amazingly, over 46,000 editors from around the world have volunteered their time to the Open Directory project thus far.

This system has allowed thousands of sites to submit and be reviewed for free. It has also led to the creation of a very comprehensive catalog of sites not based on whether they could afford to pay or not. Unfortunately, it has also encouraged many volunteers to join with their own agenda in mind. Open Directory continually battles complaints regarding how volunteer editors have demonstrated a bias toward their own Web sites or against those of their competitors. In Open Directory's defense, they do have an elaborate system in place to discourage, albeit not completely eliminate, such practices.

I also periodically hear someone ask, "Isn't the trend toward paid submissions making WebPosition obsolete?" My response is quite the opposite. In the case of paid inclusion, you still must optimize your pages to achieve top rankings. Submitting alone is still not enough whether you are doing it for free or paying for inclusion. The stakes are simply higher when you're opting to pay for faster or better service. In the case of PPC's, WebPosition helps you monitor your rankings so that you can manage your many bids. Conveniently, you can view these rankings alongside your crawler and directory based rankings on the same report.

With pay-per-review sites like Yahoo, WebPosition Gold offers a detailed submission guide providing you with little known techniques to securing a top ranking. After all, why not invest $149 in WebPosition knowing that it helps you minimize the risk of that submission investment while maximizing its upside potential. That's not even mentioning the many other features included in WebPosition Gold such as page optimization, submission, rank checking, and so forth needed to gain top rankings on non-directory sites.

Therefore, although there has been a remarkable rise in the paid submission model, it has certainly not made WebPosition obsolete. Instead, it has simply increased the need for a search engine management tool.

This article is copyrighted and has been reprinted with permission from FirstPlace Software, the makers of WebPosition Gold. FirstPlace Software helped define the SEO industry with the introduction of the first product to track your rankings on the major search engines and to help you improve those rankings. A free trial of WebPosition Gold is available from their Web site.

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