Quick Takeaways
- A reputable SEO provider submits your site to a limited set of major search engines and directories, not "thousands" of them.
- Claims of mass submissions to thousands of engines usually mean low-value link-exchange or "Free For All" (FFA) sites, not real search engines.
- Ask any prospective SEO company for evidence of past client results before signing on.
- A trustworthy provider gives you a written monthly report showing where your site was submitted, submission dates, and ranking progress.
- Indexing and ranking improvements typically take a few months to show up, not days.
- Good optimisation touches both your site's content and its underlying code so search engines can understand each page's topic.
Businesses investing in a new website often assume the site itself is the finish line, but a site nobody can find delivers no return. This article breaks down what to ask a prospective SEO company before hiring them, what realistic submission and reporting practices look like, and roughly how long it takes to see ranking movement.
Why a Website Alone Isn't Enough
Most business owners are told at some point that skipping a website means missing out on customers entirely. Hype aside, there's truth to it: any business suited to online marketing loses ground without a proper online marketing strategy. But building a feature-rich website is only half the job. Unless people can actually find that site among the millions of others online, the time and money spent building it goes to waste.
This is where search engine optimisation comes in. In its simplest form, SEO is the practice of refining a website so it achieves the best possible position in search results when someone looks for relevant information.
How Many Search Engines Should Your Site Be Submitted To?
A reputable SEO company will not submit your website to more than a modest number of major search engines and directories. These major engines and directories feed their results out to countless smaller, so-called "search engines" further down the chain, which means submitting to a huge additional list is unnecessary. If a provider proposes submitting your site to a very large number of engines, treat that as a sign of a lack of professionalism rather than thoroughness.
Be especially wary of any promise to submit your site to "thousands" of search engines. In practice, these submissions are more likely to go to FFA (Free For All) websites, which aren't search engines at all but a type of link-exchange page. The practical downside is that your email server can end up flooded with unwanted mail as a result. If an SEO company is making claims like this, it's best to steer clear.
Vetting a Prospective SEO Company
Before committing to a provider, ask them to detail the successes they've achieved for previous clients. Understanding their track record builds confidence that they can actually move the needle for your website, rather than just talking about it.
How to Verify Submissions Are Genuinely Happening
In reality, you can't directly verify every submission a provider makes on your behalf. What you can do is ask for a list of the search engines and directories where submissions will be, or have been, made. A reputable SEO company should supply a written monthly report that shows which search engines your site has been submitted to, the submission dates, and how your rankings are progressing. If, after a few months, your ranking hasn't improved at all, that's a signal optimisation work may not actually be happening, or that the promised submissions were never made.
How Long Before Rankings Improve
As a general rule of thumb, most major search engines can take a few months before they index a new website, though this isn't a fixed rule. Indexation speed varies and can occasionally happen much faster for some directories than others. The safest approach is to expect a wait of a few months rather than assume instant results.
A reliable SEO company should also notify you once a search engine has added your site to its index, ideally within days of it happening, and at minimum with an update at the end of each month.
What Real Optimisation Work Looks Like
A good SEO provider makes your website as search-engine-friendly as possible by refining both the visible text and the underlying HTML code. The goal is that when a search engine's crawler visits your site, it can easily determine what each page is actually about. Placing the right keywords and meta information within the page helps the crawler collect and interpret that information accurately, which in turn supports a stronger ranking than an unoptimised page would achieve.
Optimisation should also be applied page by page rather than only to the homepage, so that more than one page of your site has a chance to rank. For example, if your homepage is optimised around one product line, a searcher looking for that product might find you in the top results for it. But if another page on your site covers a related but distinct topic, that page needs its own optimisation so a searcher using a different, more specific phrase can be directed to the page that actually answers their query.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Why isn't a well-built website enough to attract customers?
A website can only generate business if people can actually find it among the vast number of other sites online. Without a proper search engine optimisation strategy, even a well-designed site risks going unseen, which means the investment in building it delivers little return.
Should I be suspicious of an SEO company that promises submission to thousands of search engines?
Yes. Legitimate SEO providers work with a limited set of major search engines and directories, since these feed results to smaller engines anyway. Promises of submission to thousands of engines usually point to low-value FFA (Free For All) link-exchange sites rather than real search engines, and can even flood your inbox with unwanted email.
How can I tell if my SEO company is actually doing the work?
Ask for a written monthly report listing which search engines and directories your site has been submitted to, along with submission dates and ranking progress. If your rankings show no movement after a few months, it's a strong signal that the promised work isn't being carried out.
How long does it take to see ranking improvements after optimisation?
Timelines vary, but a general expectation is a few months before major search engines fully index and rank a new or optimised website. A trustworthy provider should keep you updated as indexing happens rather than leaving you to guess.
What does genuine on-page SEO work actually involve?
It involves refining both the visible content and the underlying HTML so search engine crawlers can clearly understand what each page is about, including relevant keywords and meta information. Different pages should be optimised for different topics so multiple pages of your site, not just the homepage, have a chance to rank for relevant searches.