Submissions and Re-submissions . . .How Often Should you Resubmit your Pages, and When?

Part I - By Robin Nobles

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.