The Internet contains numerous search engines, some of which offer what is known as "paid inclusion." This means that you pay the specific search engine an annual fee for your web page to be included in their index.
Of course, every search engine already has an automated program commonly called a "spider" that indexes all the web pages it locates online, and it does this for free. So whether you pay or not, your web page will eventually be indexed by all Internet search engines, as long as the spider can follow a link to your page. The major issue is, then, how quickly your page is indexed.
A search engine that offers a paid URL inclusion uses an extra spider that is programmed to index the particular pages that have been paid for. The difference between the spider that indexes pages for free and the spider that indexes only pages for a fee is speed. If you have paid for inclusion, the additional search engine spider will index your page immediately.
The debate over paid URL inclusion centers around the annual fee. Since the regular spider of these search engines would eventually get around to indexing your web page anyway, why is a renewal fee necessary? The fee is necessary to keep your pages in the search engine's index. If you go the route of paid inclusion, you should be aware that at the end of the pay period, on some search engines, your page will be removed from their index for a certain amount of time.
It's easy to get confused about whether you would benefit from paid inclusion since the spider of any search engine will eventually index your page without the additional cost. There are both advantages and disadvantages to paid URL inclusion, and it is only by weighing your pros and cons that you will be able to decide whether to spring for the extra cash or not.
The advantages are obvious: rapid inclusion and rapid re-indexing. Paid inclusion means that your pages will be indexed quickly and added to search results in a very short time after you have paid the fee. The time difference between when the regular spider will index your pages and when the paid spider will is a matter of months. The spider for paid inclusion usually indexes your pages in a day or two. Be aware that if you have no incoming links to your pages, the regular spider will never locate them at all.
Additionally, paid inclusion spiders will go back to your pages often, sometimes even daily. The advantage of this is that you can update your pages constantly to improve the ranking in which they appear in search engines, and the paid URL inclusion spider will show that result in a matter of days.
First and foremost, the disadvantage is the cost. For a ten-page website, the costs of paid URL inclusion range from $170 for Fast/Lycos to $600 for AltaVista, and you have to pay each engine their annual fee. How relevant the cost factor is will depend on your company.
Another, and perhaps more important, disadvantage is the limited reach of paid URL inclusions. The largest search engines, Google, Yahoo, and AOL, do not offer paid URL inclusion. That means that the search engines you choose to pay an inclusion fee will amount to a small fraction of the traffic to your site on a daily basis.
Google usually updates its index every month, and there is no way you can speed up this process. You will have to wait for the Google spider to index your new pages no matter how many other search engines you have paid to update their index daily. Be aware that it is only after Google updates their index that your pages will show up in Google, Yahoo, or AOL results.
One way to figure out whether paid URL inclusion is a good deal for your company is to consider some common factors. First, find out if search engines have already indexed your pages. To do this, you may have to enter a number of different keywords, but the quickest way to find out is to enter your URL address in quotes. If your pages appear when you enter the URL address but do not appear when you enter keywords, using paid inclusion will not be beneficial. This is because your pages have already been indexed and ranked by the regular spider. If this is the case, your money would be better spent by updating your pages to improve your ranking in search results. Once you accomplish this, you can then consider using paid inclusion if you want to speed up the time it will take for the regular spider to revisit your pages.
The most important factor in deciding whether to use paid URL inclusion is to decide if it's a good investment. To figure this out, you have to look at the overall picture: what kind of product or service are you selling and how much traffic are you dependent on to see a profit?
If your company sells an inexpensive product that requires a large volume of traffic to your site, paid inclusion may not be the best investment for you; the biggest search engines do not offer it, and they are the engines that will bring you the majority of hits. On the other hand, if you have a business that offers an expensive service or product and requires a certain quality of traffic to your site, a paid URL inclusion is most likely an excellent investment.
Another factor is whether or not your pages are updated frequently. If the content changes on a daily or weekly basis, paid inclusion will insure that your new pages are indexed often and quickly. The new content is indexed by the paid spider and then appears when new relevant keywords are entered in the search engines. Using paid inclusion in this case will guarantee that your pages are being indexed in a timely manner.
You should also base your decision on whether or not your pages are dynamically generated. These types of pages are often difficult for regular spiders to locate and index. Paying to include the most important pages of a dynamically generated website will insure that the paid spider will index them.
Sometimes a regular spider will drop pages from its search engine, although these pages usually reappear in a few months. There are a number of reasons why this can happen, but by using paid URL inclusion, you will avoid the possibility. Paid URL inclusion guarantees that your pages are indexed, and if they are inadvertently dropped, the search engine will be on the lookout to locate them immediately.
As you can see, there are numerous factors to consider when it comes to paid URL inclusion. It can be a valuable investment depending on your situation. Evaluate your business needs and your website to determine if paid URL inclusion is a wise investment for your business goals.
When you listen to commentators on soccer matches, the key words they use again and again when teams are winning are words about character and attitude like belief, excitement, confidence, effort and so on. Soccer skills and strategies are important but mean little without the right attitude.
Team managers urge their players to show focus, determination and maximum effort. They tell them they should expect to win and not to show too much respect for their opponents no matter how famous they are.
I love listening to the comments of the great soccer managers. They have all been to hell and back. They are praised and popular when their teams win. They are criticised and even sacked when their teams fail to win. They know the heights of elation and the depths of despair. They have to find ways to deal with both and to keep motivating their teams to win.
Gordon Strachan took over as manager of Celtic, one of the top two clubs in Scotland, in 2005. It was not long before he experienced "the worst night of my life"
Bratislava beat Celtic 5-0 in the Champions league, the top European competition. His watch stopped after the match and he still wears it to remind himself that it was the worst night of his life. Celtic, the pride of Scotland, had been humiliated by a less famous team.
Other failures seemed small to him by comparison. We can all learn to deal with difficult situations by reminding ourselves of worst situations in our past or by imagining how much worse our lives could be than they actually are.
None of us knows for sure what will happen to us tomorrow. We could be seriously ill or even dead. Gordon has faced this possibility already. He told the media that on his gravestone he would like these words carved:
"This is better than that night in Bratislava."
He uses the humour of exaggeration to deal with the criticisms of the media when things go wrong. A reporter commented when his team lost a match in Scotland:
"Bang, there goes your unbeaten run. Can you take it? "
"No," said Strachan. "I'm just going to crumble like a wreck. I'll go home, become an alcoholic and maybe jump off a bridge. Hmmm....I think I can take it, yeah."
He knows the importance of positive thinking if you wish to achieve success. One reporter foolishly asked: "There's no negative vibes or negative feelings here?"
Strachan replied: "Apart from yourself, we're all quite positive round here. I'm going to whack you over the head with a big stick; down negative man, down."
Strachan often speaks with disarming honesty and schoolboy cheek. He is ready to admit that he and his players are not always at their best. He is ready to face reality. Facing up to reality is a key characteristic of the successful.
When he managed a team in England, a reporter asked him: "So, Gordon, in what areas do you think Middlesbrough were better than you today?"
Strachan replied: "What areas? Mainly that big green one out there...."
Strachan has had his defeats but recently he has led his latest team, Celtic, to undisputed victory in the Scottish Premier League. He is widely accepted as a great manager.
Another great manager now works in the English Premier League. He is Jose Mourihno, the manager of Chelsea. He came to England in June 2004 and soon showed his confidence in himself and his players. He wants only to be judged by the results. A good manager wins. A bad one loses:
"I'm not a defender of old or new football managers. I believe in good ones and bad ones; those that achieve success and those that don't. Please don't call me arrogant, but I'm European champion and I think I'm a special one"
He soon proved himself to be a 'special one' in England as well as in Portugal, his native country. As the name 'the special one' suggests he believes in himself in a big way. A key factor in his success in England is his self-belief and a rich Russian backer who allows him to buy the best players in Europe. You can safely bet money that Chelsea will win almost all their matches.
The odds are not great but you could put £100 on Chelsea to win and make an easy £26 from your bet. Of course, this does not always work out. No team is perfect!
Mourinho is passionate about soccer but retains his sense of perspective and humour. Recently he was asked in London if he was concerned about losing the championship to his main rivals, Manchester United. His reply was typical of him:
"No, I'm more concerned about bird 'flu." The assembled press started laughing.
"Seriously; it's that swan in Scotland that concerns me. It's not that far from here!" (The swan was the first creature with bird 'flu in the UK in 2006)
Over the last few weeks, his team, Chelsea, have been criticised for having players sent off for breaking the rules. When Jose was asked about his success away from home against West Brom, he commented ironically:
"Maybe we won because we played with ten men. That is our best tactic at the moment."
However, he realises that the main reason Chelsea win so often is as follows:"We have top players and, sorry if I'm arrogant, we have a top manager."
Public confidence is so rare in the UK that it is often mistaken for arrogance.
Jose does not believe in having favourites; he believes in the power of the team rather than the individual:
"I don't want special relations with one of them (his players). I hate to speak about individuals. Players don't win you trophies, teams win trophies, squads win trophies."
Another great manager is Harry Redknapp of Portsmouth. He commented about his players in a match with Burnley which ended in a 2-2 draw:
"When the crowd was on their backs no one wanted to try anything in case they got booed. They were defensive and wanted to avoid mistakes."
Harry understands human psychology. If we are too worried about appearing foolish or making mistakes we will fail to make things happen and we will not make full use of our abilities. We go into our shells and play safe.
I remember feeling like this when I played cricket at school. I tried to avoid being anywhere near the ball in case I dropped a catch. It was many years before I realised that I was quite good at catching!
A commentator remarked: "Harry knows how to get his teams going and how to restore their confidence. Now they expect to win at Fratton Park (the Portsmouth ground). They firmly believe they will win." Recently they have won three games in a row and are on their way to escaping relegation to a lower division.
Another manager, Stuart Pierce, of Manchester City also knows the importance of confidence: "We need to go out and really believe we can play a bit."
What key success lessons can we learn from the above?
Skill is important but attitude is even more important. We should expect to win and not show too much respect for the obstacles in our path whether they are human or otherwise and whether they are real or imaginary. We need to believe in our own ability and expect to win even if this makes us seem arrogant.
We should handle failures by reminding ourselves that things could be much worse. Retaining our sense of humour also helps. Teamwork is a key factor in many types of achievement. We should not be worried about making mistakes whether we are playing soccer or cricket or the game of life.
We need to face up to reality and be willing to be judged by the results we achieve as well as the effort we put in. On the whole, I think, that the effort we expend is more important. We cannot always control the results but we can control the effort we put in. The same manager can lose with one team and win with another. He is still the same person and he still made the same efforts.
I'll leave you with a final quote from Gordon Strachan who has been both a winning and a losing manager:
A reporter asked: "Gordon, can we have a quick word?"
"Velocity", replied Gordon as he walked off.
About the author
John Watson is an award winning teacher and fifth degree black belt martial arts instructor. He has recently written several books about achieving your goals and dreams.
Both Nelson Tan & John Watson are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Nelson Tan has sinced written about articles on various topics from Build Online Business, Psychology and SEO Search Engine Optimization. Nelson Tan is the webmaster behind . Download $347 worth of FREE Internet Marketing gifts!. Nelson Tan's top article generates over 9900 views. to your Favourites.
John Watson has sinced written about articles on various topics from Wellness, Site Promotion and Computers and The Internet. John Watson is an award winning teacher and 5th degree martial arts instructor. One of his motivational ebooks can be found at