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How Often Should you Resubmit your Pages, and When?
Do you remember a time when submission strategies were fairly
easy and worked almost across the board? Sure, we recommended
manual submissions, and yes, we recommended daily submission
limits, but the strategies were uncomplicated.
No more.
These days, knowing when, and if, to resubmit your pages
is one of the most confusing areas of search engine positioning.
For example, some engines seem to place more relevancy on
pages they find themselves. So, it's to your benefit to let
the engines find your pages, rather than to submit them individually.
Do we need to resubmit our pages on a regular basis? And
what if we submit a page and it doesn't get in the index?
Do we need to submit the page over and over and over again
until it finally gets in?
What about AltaVista, where we're told not to resubmit pages
that haven't been changed or have been changed very little?
How much is "very little"?
To write this article, I interviewed Jim Stob with PositionPro
(http://www.positionpro.com).
Obviously, anyone who operates a sophisticated submission service
with as much success as Jim Stob knows the ropes on submission
policies.
First, let's look at PositionPro to see why the service is
such a good role model in how to submit pages.
PositionPro has over 3,000 domains carrying over 1.3 million
URLs in their system, and every one of their submissions comes
from the same IP address.
What does that say to you? Because PositionPro submits every
page from the same IP address, if they get in trouble one
time, their entire operation is in jeopardy. "They can
track us without any problem and shut us down," says
Stob.
Jim has working relationships with many of the engines, which
is why he is able to learn what they want to see in submissions
and can walk the fine line to stay out of trouble. With his
impressive list of clients, including Canada.com, it's obvious
he's doing something right.
Using AltaVista as an example
We can learn a lot by tailoring our submissions along
the same lines as PositionPro. Let's look at AltaVista as
an example.
In the past, we were told to submit just one a page a day
to AltaVista. But with AV's new submission procedure, we can
submit more. How many can we safely submit? Let's look at
how does PositionPro handles AltaVista.
"We submit five pages per domain per day, and we don't
have any problems. Could we submit ten? Probably. Could we
do it over a time period? No," explains Jim.
By the way, it might be interesting to note that PositionPro
doesn't accept cookies. As you probably know, we've advocated
cookie control when working with AV. Is this why they're able
to submit five pages a day? Probably not. "I think if
you talk to AV, they would be fine with five," Stob says.
What about pages that have had no changes made to them? Does
PositionPro resubmit those pages?
"We only do a submission one time to start out. So,
with a site that contains 50 pages, it will be fully submitted
within 10 days," says Jim. Then, once the pages make
it into the index, the service doesn't resubmit them again,
at least as far as AltaVista is concerned.
After that, the spider will pick up any changes you make
to the pages on its next spider run. But, let's say that you've
made significant changes to your pages, and you want those
changed pages picked up before the next spider run. At PositionPro,
you can tell the service to manually submit your page. However,
it won't allow you to resubmit the same page any sooner than
21 days since the last submission.
What if you submit a page and it never makes it into the
index? Should you submit over and over again until the page
gets in?
"No, that's inappropriate," explains Stob. "If
I submit to AltaVista, and if it's not accepted, there's a
reason that the page wasn't accepted. It wasn't because of
the submission. The engine went in there, and their algorithm
judged it not to qualify for their index."
So, what are your options? For one thing, keep in mind that
the engines operate on a timetable - their timetable. Be patient
and wait to see if the page makes it into the index. If it
doesn't, before rushing out to resubmit, look at your page
carefully and consider what additional optimization strategies
you can employ to boost your chances at getting in the index.
Remember: content is what the engines are after.
Safe submission guidelines
Based on the guidelines that have kept PositionPro out
of trouble, let's create a list of "safe submission"
guidelines that we can follow for our own sites.
We'll get into engine-specific guidelines later in this article,
but for now, let's look at some general guidelines.
1. Submit new pages to the engines, and then wait
to see if the pages make it into the engines' indexes. Remember
that it can literally take weeks (months?) for pages to get
into an index.
If the pages don't make it into the index, don't resubmit
them, but look over them carefully to see if you need to employ
additional optimization strategies before resubmitting.
2. Submit all of your important pages to the search
engines that allow you to submit more than just the main page
of your site.
Stob explains, "None of the spiders crawl as well as
they say they do. Sometimes they do an excellent job, but
in most cases, they don't."
3. After a page has made it into the index, unless
you make significant changes to the page or the page has dropped
from the index, don't resubmit it.
4. If a page is dropped from the index, wait for two
weeks to see if the page is picked back up, and then resubmit
it.
5. If you've made significant changes to a page, resubmit
it, but no sooner than 21 days since your last submission.
It might benefit you to play it safe!
6. Consider adding visible links to all of your important
pages on the main page of your site. Give the engines something
to spider!
What about using hidden links, which has been a popular strategy
in the past? Stob says to begin to approach this practice
with caution. "I believe AV is beginning to look for
hidden links, so try to stay away from them. I'm not saying
that you will have trouble based upon their spider. However,
they do have people reviewing, and I believe they are looking
at this closer."
7. Submit your pages manually, or use a submission
service or software that mimics a manual submission. By that,
we mean that the software or service waits for verification
before submitting another URL. If you use a submission software
program, make sure that you're able to choose the schedule
for your submissions. If you can't, you may find yourself
in trouble with the engines for over-submitting.
8. Keep in mind that if it takes too long for an engine
to access your site, it probably won't get indexed.
In Part II of this article, we'll look at some engine-specific
submission and resubmission strategies that will keep you
out of trouble with the individual engines.
This article was written by Robin Nobles, Director
of Training
at the Academy of Web Specialists
(http://www.academywebspecialists.com).
Over the past few years,
she has trained over 1000 people in her online and onsite
courses in search engine positioning strategies and has written
three books on the subject, which can be ordered through Amazon.
For more information about her online courses, visit the
Academy's training site: http://www.onlinewebtraining.com.
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