The simple answer is no, a search engine submission isn’t necessary. The majority of search engines, notably Google, crawl and index pages by following links. By that logic, a single inbound link from any previously indexed page will identify your page to the engine.

Inbound linking is very important. In fact, acquiring back-links may be the most important thing in SEO. Nonetheless, a website owner shouldn’t have to “scout” or “hunt” for links. If the presented content is interesting, useful, and/or important, there is a natural tendency among web users to share information.

Many SEO companies offer paid search submissions but beware: It doesn’t cost a penny to get indexed by the major search engines. And it shouldn’t cost you anything, either. In fact, you don’t even need to submit your site to search engines.

The answer is clear and simple: No, inbound linking cannot hurt your search ranking. If inbound were to hurt your rank, your competitors would continually link to your site from link farms. Such a scenario is beyond your control. For this reason, Google cannot penalize your site for any inbound linking.