How often should I submit to Google?

A few years ago, my bookmark for "Submit to Google" was one of the most clicked in my entire SEO arsenal. Every day I was submitting sites, new pages, re-submitting pages etc to try and get the spider to visit the site again. It was just what you did. Everyone in SEO did it, and it didn't harm you to do it so it felt like you were doing a bit of good for the site.

The thing was all of these multiple Google submissions probably did no good at all. Google seems to have based everything from the start on following links through the internet to find and rank sites. No links, no ranking. Yes, a submission might get you indexed, but you probably never got ranked with just a submission at the Google Add URL page.

So how often do I submit to Google nowadays? Never... (Well, almost never, there is one exception that I'll note later). When a new client comes to me, they are usually listed somewhere in Google. Maybe not ranked at all, but at least the site has almost always been listed. I'm not going to waste my time resubmitting something that Google already knows is there. It does no good. You can't prod the giant G-beast into action by shouting look at me I'm here. You need to get other people to shout about you.

Instead of submitting to Google, I go to my client directory, or to one of the many directory sites I run in different categories and add a link or two to that client site. I know the Google spider visits these pages every day or two and that link will be followed almost immediately. Almost without question, this helps more than submitting directly to Google.

The only time I will submit to Google is if I have a brand new site that has never been indexed, will almost certainly be sandboxed for 6 months and just needs to start that clock ticking. In this case I get a basic site live and submit it immediately. It usually gets indexed quickly but Google will take months to put it high in the rankings, which gives me time to build content, optimise it and work on inbound links from other sites. Note though that I never come back and resubmit - it will change nothing.

The introduction at Google of the Google Sitemaps program is an instance where I do submit to Google. Every site I build or advise on now gets an XML Google Sitemap and will be submitted. The nice thing is, you only have to do this once as well. Once it is submitted, all you have to do is keep the sitemap up to date and Google will download it every day to check for changes.