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How to Play the Game of Paid URL Inclusion
By Nelson Tan (c) 2009

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

The Internet contains numerous search engines, some of which
offer 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
commonly 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 major issue is, then, how quickly your page is
indexed.

A search engine that offers a paid URL inclusion uses an extra
spider that is programmed to index the particular 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 additional 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 eventually
get around to indexing your web page anyway, why is a renewal fee
necessary? The fee is necessary 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 certain
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
eventually index your page without the additional cost. There are
both advantages and disadvantages to paid URL inclusion, and it
is only by weighing your pros and cons that you will be able to
decide whether to spring for the extra cash or not.

The advantages are obvious: 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 usually
indexes your pages in a day or two. Be aware that if you have no
incoming links to your pages, the regular spider will never
locate them at all.

Additionally, paid inclusion spiders will go back to your pages
often, sometimes even daily. The advantage of this is that you
can update your pages constantly to improve the ranking 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 disadvantage is the cost. For a ten-page
website, the costs of paid URL inclusion range from $170 for
Fast/Lycos to $600 for AltaVista, and you have to pay each engine
their annual fee. How relevant the cost factor is will depend on
your company.

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

Google usually 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 update 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 good 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 beneficial. This is because your pages have already been
indexed and ranked by the regular spider. If this is the case,
your money would be better spent by updating your pages to
improve your ranking in search results. Once you accomplish this,
you can then consider using paid inclusion if you want to speed
up the time it will take for the regular spider to revisit your
pages.

The most important factor in deciding whether to use paid URL
inclusion is to decide if it's a good investment. To figure this
out, you have to look at the overall picture: what kind 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 requires a
large volume of traffic to your site, paid inclusion may not be
the best investment for you; the biggest search engines do not
offer 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
quality of traffic to your site, a paid URL inclusion is most
likely an excellent investment.

Another factor is whether or not your pages are updated
frequently. If the content changes on a daily or weekly basis,
paid inclusion will insure that your new pages are indexed often
and quickly. The new content is indexed by the paid spider and
then appears when new relevant 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 generated. These types of pages are often
difficult for regular spiders to locate and index. Paying to
include the most important pages of a dynamically generated
website will insure that the paid spider will index them.

Sometimes a regular spider will drop pages from its search
engine, although these pages usually 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 dropped, the search engine will be on the lookout
to locate them immediately.

As you can see, there are numerous factors to consider when it
comes to paid URL inclusion. It can be a valuable investment
depending on your situation. Evaluate your business needs and
your website to determine if paid URL inclusion is a wise
investment for your business goals.
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Nelson Tan is the webmaster behind Internet Mastery Center.
Download $347 worth of FREE Internet Marketing gifts at
http://www.internetmasterycenter.com
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