Are You Confused?

I receive questions every day from clients and prospects who are confused by the inconsistent information on the Internet. Although I do not claim to have ALL the answers, I'd like to share with you the answers to some common questions and misconceptions about this popular topic:

General directories maintain a permanent database. So, once your listed, your site will stay in the directory until they are either purged from the system for one reason or another. This can be several months or years depending on the size of the database and the number of submissions a particular directory receives.

Most general directories allow you to list your site in each category that is related to the content of your site. So, it's a good idea to write down a separate title and description for each aspect of your business. Then, you can list your site in multiple categories to maximize your visibility.

As a general rule, you should check your listing in general directories every three months at least.

Search engines, like Infoseek, will keep you in their database forever unless your site is down when they re-index your site. Every one to three months, the major search engines crawl through the Web looking for new pages to add to their index and outdated pages to remove from their index.

If your site is down at that time or the spider can't connect to your site, your pages will be removed from the index. Search engines have also been known to purge hundreds of pages for no apparent reason.

As a general rule, you should check your search engine listings every month or even twice each month to be sure.

The problem is that most FFA link sites receive thousands of submission per day. Your ad will scroll off the page within a few hours if it even gets posted. Many times your ad is submitted to thin air because the HTML page is corrupted from over use. What's left is a CGI script spitting out thousands of e-mail messages without any purpose.

That sounds hopeless. But not entirely because many sites do work and are visited by real people that will see your ad. However, you will need to submit every day to get consistent exposure.

Now if you use a service or software that combines the real search engines like Infoseek with hundreds of FFA sites and classified ad sites, you will eventually get banned from the search engines that generate the most traffic. Submitting daily is considered Spam and is not tolerated by most search engines.

On the other hand FFA link site owners welcome daily submissions because they can add your e-mail address to their list and send Spam to you. So, what you need is software that you can use to submit to FFA link sites on a daily bases and submit your site separately to the major search engines.

Then there are free classified ad sites. Some Webmasters use them as a marketing tool much like FFA link site owners and others provide them as a service for their visitors. Regardless, there are usually limits to the number of times you can post your ad and the number of categories in which you can post.

If you post the same ad every day referencing the same URL, you will eventually get a nasty gram. That's when the Webmaster of the site threatens to sue you if you keep Spamming the classifieds. You don't want that either. So, it's a good idea to limit your classified ad submissions to once weekly for each ad.

Note that their are some FFA link sites owners that call their site a classified ad site, but it simply has more categories. You can usually tell because all the categories will be listed on the same page. Go ahead and submit to those daily along with the FFA link site.

Most directories require extensive information including the category in which your site should appear. Automated software just can't make that decision for you.

To make matters worse, many search engines can detect submission software and reject the entry. For example, Hotbot requires and records your IP address when you submit to track the frequency of your submission to prevent Spam. Infoseek sets a cookie in your browser for the same reason.

You should submit to these manually or use browser-based software that the search engines can not detect and provides an IP address for tracking purposes. Even then, you should always verify that your submission was processed.

So you see, all sites are not created equally and you will need to monitor your submission carefully to maximize visibilty and avoid problems. It would be a good idea to create a submission schedule that outlines when and where you have posted your ads.