FFA Pages Or Search Engines - Which Is Better?

So which search engines should you register with? There about 10 major search engines that cover most of the market out there, so you should definitely register with them.

There are however, hundreds of other search engines out there. Some services can register your site with hundreds of search engines, but the results from these less popular engines may not be worth the price you pay. One way of checking how many visitors you're getting from each engine is to put a tracking system on your pages.

FFA Pages. Free For All pages are basically link pages where you can submit your site for free and your website address will be added to the page. Viewing one of these FFA pages will usually just show a page with website addresses listed - and thats it. There are literally thousands of such pages, but there are a few setbacks which in most cases outweigh any benefits you might get from registering.

First, FFA pages don't bring in any real traffic. That's because nobody visits FFA pages to find another site - they'll use a search engine or other directory instead. Therefore, your submission is just a dead link.

Second, people often submit their site to thousands of FFA sites in the hope that this will increase their "link popularity" and therefore boost their search engine ranking. The truth is though, that not many of the FFA sites are recognised by the major search engines, so they won't credit your site with all these "links". Research has shown that submitting to FFA pages does NOT significantly increase your "link popularity" or search engine ranking.

Third, as other people around the world submit their sites to the same FFA pages, your site gets pushed down the list until you reach the end and are then taken off the list. Because FFA pages are so easy to submit to, your site can be pushed off the list in a matter of days or even hours! This means you have to constantly resubmit your site to maintain your listing. To test this, we submitted the South West eCommerce Strategies site through a popular FFA submitting service. When we viewed one of the link pages 5 minutes later, there were already 21 other sites above ours (out of a list of about 40). Within another 15 minutes we were to be pushed off the list!

Fourth, FFA pages bring "spam" email. That's the reason why most FFA pages have been set up. When you register your site you have to provide your email address and then the owner of the page will usually send emails to you trying to sell you something. Our experience is that most of these sales emails make ridiculous claims about earning $20,000 a week working from home and other outrageous claims. Although some FFA pages claim to be "spam free", most aren't, so if you submit your site to thousands of FFA pages in one hit, you can expect hundreds and hundreds of emails within days - and they'll often keep coming unless you unsubscribe to each one. Occasionally you'll get emails that don't even let you unsubscribe.

Our advice? Don't bother with them.

Disclaimer: This page is designed to provide information only and is not a substitute for advice that is specific to your business. Before acting on any of the information above it is important you seek further advice from a professional who has taken into consideration the nature and circumstances of your business.

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