Conclusion

What if you do break the rules? What's the worst that can happen? For minor infractions, the search engines will penalize your pages in their rankings, or possibly even drop a particular page from their listings. Only if it's pretty obvious that you're trying to spam them will they bar an entire site. You may never know for sure if this has happened. Just because they fail to list your site after a reasonable amount of time, or drop you from their listings, it doesn't necessarily mean they have anything against your site. These things happen often, and are usually the result of overwork or inefficiency. If you really suspect that you've ticked them off, send a polite note to the site administrator, admitting what you did wrong, and pointing out that it was done through ignorance, not evil intent. Promise to sin no more, and politely ask, beseech or beg them to restore your listing.

The search engines are there to serve Web users, and they certainly aren't interested in barring sites from their listings for honest mistakes. Don't let the fear of offending them stop you from aggressively marketing your site. But don't be tempted to indulge in any of the fraudulent techniques we've just discussed. Take it from a Web marketing professional who's been in the game since 1994 breaking the rules will hurt your traffic in the long run, not help. Furthermore, deceptive marketing practices harm everyone who uses the Web. The Internet is quickly becoming a major resource for society, like a public utility, and it's likely that at some point in the future, attempting to spam the search engines will be considered a serious crime, like insurance fraud, complete with hefty fines and jail time for offenders.

Here's a handy overview of what's acceptable and what's not, that you can print out and carry in your wallet.

Perfectly Acceptable:

Submitting a page to a directory in several appropriate categories (Except those that specifically say not to do so, such as Yahoo). Submitting different pages from the same site IF they contain really different content. Using lots of appropriate keywords in body text, headings, TITLE and META tags. Using auto-submitters to submit to search engines. Resubmitting at reasonable intervals.

Maybe Acceptable in Moderation:

Different domain names pointing to the same page.

Doorway pages.

META REFRESH tags (for splash pages).

Not Recommended:

Excessive keywords.

Using auto-submitters to submit to directories.

Likely to get you barred:

Inappropriate keywords in tags.

Frequent resubmissions (see each search site's guidelines as to how often is too often).

Guaranteed to get you barred:

Hidden keywords.

Server-side redirects (for any reason).

Any type of redirect designed to procure a listing based on something other than actual page content.

Site Promotion Resources

• You've submitted to all the search engines. Now what?
  A recent article that describes various ways to promote your Web site.
• Web Developer's Journal Web Site Promotion and Marketing Section
  A veritable plethora of articles and tutorials on site submission, how to maximize rankings, and other traffic-building topics.
• Search Engine Watch
  The definitive guide to search engines. These guys manage to keep up with the ever-changing, complex world of search engines. Better them than me.

Keywords
Keeping the Search Engines Happy