In the mid-90's, we'd visit the major search engines (you could count them then!), click on "Add Your Site" and fill out a short form. By the late 90's, there were too many places worthy of submitting your site to and the first search engine submission software emerged. Since then, this up and coming genre of software has evolved immensely. There is some great marketing software out there. Its not expensive and if you want to succeed on the Internet, you'd better learn about it!
Search Engine Submission Software Reviews and Tips
I've always been wary of the so-called search engine experts. They make money by convincing you to buy their books and services. The promises of many of these sites ("Your site will be in the top ten of all the major search engines in less time than it takes Domino's to deliver a pizza!") seem shady. I make a living from ad banners, they don't. I always read up on the topic, but kept an independent mindset. In the 90's, I'd visit each of the large search engines and manually add my most important websites by filling out a form. By 2000, there were too many places worthy of submitting my websites to! Luckily, search engine optimization ("SEO") and search engine submission software began to evolve in those early years of the commercial Internet.
There are dozens of SEO programs out there. I bought a few of them in 2006 after reading up on over a dozen. I have no connection to any of these companies and I don't even get a commission if you buy any of the below software. There aren't many sites with unbiased SEO software reviews out there. A few quick tips before we begin:
Buy your own SEO software - don't trust this to an ISP or anyone who isn't a pro at marketing!
Consider buying a few powerful SEO programs if you think they're good enough.
Run your SEO software once a month. FFA sites can be submitted daily.
The optimization reports can be very helpful and the recommended changes to your site should be easy for your webmaster to take care of.
Make sure you know how often your SEO software is updated and how much it'll cost after the first year of free updates.
Use your personal/fun/hobby sites to experiment.
There is usually a table that explains the differences between the cheaper and more expensive versions of the software. If you'll never need to submit more than five sites, then get the license that is good for up to five sites. If a more expensive license also submits to more search engines, take this into account.
Onto the SEO software reviews!
SEO Software: Submission Soft
Version at time of review: 7.0.0.7 Platinum
Cost: $199.90
Look at that menu! The Platinum version has so many features that it was an easy decision to skip the others. Why have all this in front of you and have to deal with limitations? You get all of the above features and tools, full customization of your reports and the Platinum version claims to submit to over 800,000 sites. When I first ran the program, that number was even higher - 1.2 million! Of course this grows with each update.
Not only did it let me pick a category for my site, Submission Soft actually transparently loads Yahoo and DMOZ so you pick and verify your categories for those two with ease.
Their spider is the best I've seen. It can find hundreds of pages within your sites and you can choose which to submit.
Though many of the sites it submits to are FFA link sites, Submission Soft is on top when it comes to the quality and quantity of search engines that it submits to. As you can see, you can keep your own personal list of search engines as well.
Now that's useful! Check your site's rankings in the major search engines. Of course the report is fully customizable. Another great feature of Submission Soft is the scheduler. If you have a bunch of sites that you need submitted to FFA link sites, Submission Soft has a scheduler that'll do it all. I created "Projects" for each FFA submission, told Submission Soft only to submit to FFA sites, and loaded the scheduler. It takes 2-3 minutes for each domain to submit to Submission Soft's huge FFA list. I spread each domain five minutes apart and it works like a charm.
SEO Software: Dynamic Submission
Version at time of review: 7.0 Standard Edition
Cost: $69.95
Dynamic Submission caught my attention as it is published by a company well known for marketing software, Apex Pacific. They have other marketing tools as well. The Standard Edition that I bought is the cheapest - it is limited to 5 domains. Perfect to test it out! It submits to over 1,000 search engines and directories.
Another excellent way of checking your search engine ranking. Dynamic Submission is a great addition to your SEO toolkit. I think its important to have something like Submission Soft that submits to over one million sites and with which you schedule daily FFA submissions and to also have a few other SEO programs, like Dynamic Submissions, that focus on the top engines and directories.
SEO Software: Hello Engines!
Version at time of review: Standard 4
Cost: $99
Hello Engines is a popular submission program which submits to over 1,000 search engines. It has automatic and manual submissions. If you have the time, the manual submissions are good to do once a month as well.
As the professional version of Hello Engines submits to the same number of search engines as the standard version and I didn't need the customization features, the standard version made sense. If your need is to be able to submit all of your sites for $99 and you don't need the extra features found on Submission Soft for $200, Hello Engines makes sense.
Remember, if I don't have the top version of a program, there may be many other features that I didn't review above. In the case of Submission Soft, I have the Platinum version so the review included all features. For Dynamic Submission and Hello Engines, I bought the more basic versions.
