What is Paid Inclusion?
Paid inclusion programs allow for the indexing and listing of certain URLs in exchange for a fee. However, they do not guarantee a prominent placement. Advertisers either pay a fee for each URL or via CPC to enable their content to be crawled alongside organic results. Actual ranking, however, still depends on relevance, content quality, and backlink profiles. Paid inclusion contrasts with paid placement in that paid inclusion focuses on guaranteed listing, whereas paid placement is bid-driven positioning.
Examples of paid inclusion include subscribing to Looksmart’s directory for site listing to secure site listing; enrolling in niche industry indexes for guaranteed URL inclusion; and signing up for fee-based vertical search services.
Related terms: index submission, directory listing, guaranteed indexing, fee based inclusion