Paid Inclusion
Paid Inclusion or paying for getting your site indexed can be considered as a "paid" extension of organic search . For a fee, site pages are reviewed and/or included in search results. The pages are just indexed, which means your website will now be a part of the search engine database. But there is no guarantee that your site will rank higher. The ranking still depends on how well you have optimized your site. When you pay for indexing , you reduce the time taken for a search engine crawler to discover and index your website.

If you pay for indexing , you can also have the search engine visit your site at frequent intervals. This is required for sites that have frequently changing content. If your website content keeps changing more frequently than the search engine crawler visit, your content in the search engines would be outdated. Typically, sites such as price comparison portals, and news content sites would need crawlers to visit more often because the content is continuously changing.

With Paid inclusion , some search engines also offer an option where you can specify the pagesyou want indexed. While in natural search it totally depends on the search engine spider to select which pages to index, when you pay for indexing , you can control which pages you would like to get indexed.

Cost is the only hurdle in these programs, with pricing models ranging from a one-time inclusion fee, to a pay-per-click model where you pay when your site listing is shown and is clicked upon. Yahoo! SiteMatch, for example, operates on a pay per click model, where you pay a certain amount each time your site is found on the Yahoo search engine and clicked through by visitors.

When to pay for indexing ?
This really depends on individual needs of your website:

• If you have just built your site and would like it to be indexed instantly, then paid inclusion could be a good option.

• If you have identified specific search engines that your target customers use most, you may want to pay for getting indexed on that engine and be visible to your customers.

• If some of your key pages are not getting indexed, even though some others are, you may want consider paying for indexing those pages.

• Important web pages undergoing constant content changes would need to get indexed more frequently. Since you want your site to be found for the current content, pay for indexing these pages frequently could be a suitable option to use.

Directory Inclusion
Including your site in directories greatly enhances the chances of your site being listed higher up in the search changes. There are two good reasons for listing in a directory. First, you get a link back from an external site (the directory) that helps your page rank. And secondly, you increase your chances of being found by search engines. Search engines look at the major directories as a source for finding new websites. Search engines that find websites listed on credible directories such as the Open Directory Project (DMOZ) and Yahoo, are often given more weight just because that they are included in those directories that use human editors to validate and admit them.

Free Directory inclusion
Getting included in free directories such as DMOZ could be a 3-weeks to 3-months process. Also, there are no guarantees that a site will be listed. While submitting we ensure that the site is submitted to the right category, the description and title are appropriate.

Paid Directory inclusion
Paid inclusion in directories solves the waiting problem. Directories ask for an upfront fee for reviewing a website. Some paid directories ask for a one-time fee while others charge annually. Typically, paid directories guarantees that your website will be reviewed in 2-7 business days.

In summary, you can pay your way into search engines and directories. While it's a costly option, for people with the budget this is probably the best way to get their website noticed on the search engines and directories before natural or organic listings actually work their way up the search engine positions.