"If you want something done right, do it yourself" -- an expression that aptly applies to search engine submissions. Many believe that some fancy piece of submission software can do it all.

This is a polite myth. The truth of the matter is that it takes a tremendous amount of effort to identify keyphrases, optimize content for these keyphrases and properly submit the pages to the right search engines - not to mention continually analyzing rankings and tweaking pages for higher search engine positioning.

Software can certainly help to automate some facets of the process -- but you can't expect any application to make the job easy. In fact, some search engines like AltaVista, have technology in place to prevent automated submissions. Others have terms of service that explicitly ban the use of any automated querying of their index.

Keep in mind that the location, method, and variables used in each engines "Add URL" page change all the time. Automated submission software may give a result of "Submission OK" but that only means it was able to submit the site variables - it does not mean the engine accepted them as a valid submission.

While submitting sites manually may mean more work in the short run, in the long run it definitely pays off.

See the latest issue of the promotion press newsletter to find out which search engines are currently the most used. Studies show that if you can make it in just one of the major search engines, the traffic you will receive in most cases can surpass that of twenty smaller search engines put together.

If you are wondering whether you should submit just your home page or all of the pages, the answer is simple. When you are submitting to directories, you should only submit your home page. When you are submitting to search engines submit all of your pages. In the past, simply submitting your home page was enough for the spiders to follow all the links on that page and automatically list all the pages on your site. Now, you have to submit all of the pages you want to have included in the search engine. Having more pages in the search engine greatly increases the chances of your site coming up. The best way to do this is to feed the pages to the search engines one by one. This is a long and tedious process, but the end results could be most rewarding. There are two exceptions to this and those are Google and All The Web. They still follow links. If you are submitting to these two you need only to submit your home page as they will automatically follow the links on it and index the other pages. Note also that Google will not list your site if it is not linked from at least one other (outside) site.

When you are submitting individual pages, submit a maximum of five pages per day per search engine. If you are submitting a large number of pages all at once, you may be labeled as "spam" and possibly be dropped or even banned altogether. Also, wait at least three weeks before re-submitting to the same search engines.

To see if you are listed in a search engine, do a search for your keywords or key phrases or type in the URL of your site in the search box.

After you submit, you should monitor your rankings and continuously try to optimize your pages so that they rank as high as possible. When you submit you can possibly start to gain some traffic, but you have to keep optimizing your pages and continuously change them to match any changes in the search engine's algorithm.