| |
| |
|
|
|
Utilizing Popular Directories as Free Link Sources
If you're a webmaster, you've probably spent almost as much time going after link exchanges as actually building your website. Gaining in-bound links, especially from websites with a higher PageRank than your own, can increase your own PageRank on Google, and help your site attain a better overall ranking in Google search results. Proposing link exchanges with other sites that have similar content to your own is a good idea, but the process can be terribly time consuming. So what else can you do? Most webmasters tend to underestimate the usefulness of online directories in propagating links to their website. No, I am not talking about FFA pages or the thousands of small directories only the website owners and perhaps two other people know about. I am talking about the big directories, such as The Open Directory Project (ODP or DMOZ), Yahoo, Zeal, and even Buzzle. Getting a listing, or multiple listings, in these directories can bring direct traffic to your website. But perhaps most importantly, these directories act as a propagation source for other sites that are looking to place relevant links on their site. For example, someone who has website about tropical plants may want to place a variety of links to other sites with the same topic. Chances are good they will go to one (or more) of these directories, pick out some links, and place them on their links page. Now, if your website has something to do with tropical plants, and your site was listed in the directory and category they took links from, you might have received a free link from this other website without ever having asked for it. You would probably be surprised just how many new sites fill their fledgling link pages with websites listed on Yahoo, ODP, and other directories. Furthermore, various popular search engines directly use one or more of these directories to populate their search results. For instance, Google is known to use, and look favorably upon, sites listed in ODP. In fact, Google's so-called directory is populated almost entirely with ODP categories and websites. And because ODP data can be freely placed on any website or within any search engine, literally thousands of websites and search engines use their data. Free links galore! There really aren't many search engines that directly use the Yahoo directory, but that doesn't devalue a Yahoo listing. A website listed in the Yahoo directory will benefit due to direct traffic from that listing, as well as the possibility of better placement in the Yahoo search results. Yahoo is the most used search engine behind Google, so good placement within their results is important. And as mentioned previously, many websites will "borrow" links from the Yahoo directory to place on their own site. There is no doubt that getting listed in the ODP and on Yahoo will lead to more links beyond the one or two you get in the directories. Smaller directories, like Zeal and Buzzle are also worth submitting to for the same reasons. Zeal is a particularly good deal because site submission is free (once you are a Zeal member) and the links in the directory are used throughout the Looksmart Network, which includes the sites Looksmart.com, Wisenut.com, Findarticles.com, and more. Buzzle is an informative directory that contains useful articles as well as links. Getting listed within the Buzzle directory costs $59 (nonprofit sites are free), but it may be worth it considering you are getting a link from a good site with decent exposure. There are many other high-quality directories you may want to consider. Good places to look for directories are, ironically, in the ODP and on Yahoo under the category Directories or Search Engines. Yahoo is especially helpful in that it lists the most popular directories first. Bradley James is the Chief Editor at GoogleAdvisor.org. He has a computer science degree (BS) from Truman state University, and is currently working on his MS degree at the University of North Carolina - Greensboro. He is especially interested in search algorithms used by such search engines as Google and Yahoo.
MORE RESOURCES: Buy Website Internet Traffic. Website online advertising. Buy full page popunder advertising and increase website traffic to your sites. Bad Credit Loans - Loans for people with bad credit. Access online government grants and financial credit services instantly online. Digital Streaming Radio On Your Mobile Phone - La Vella Mobile Radio. La Vella Mobile Radio Gives You Access To Over One Hundred Of The Hottest Streaming Radio Stations From Around The World And Brings Them To The Palm Of Your Hand, Right On Your Mobile Phone. Get Streaming Radio On Your Cell Phone! Audio And Video Streaming For Multimedia Purposes. This Is A Complete Step By Step Guide To The Beginners Who Want To Install And Setup Audio And Video Streaming For Multimedia Purposes On The Internet.
|
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
Search Term Suggestion Tool Overture.com offers a cool function to assist you on your quest to find unique keywords. SEO Expert Guide - Free Site Promotion (PR) (part 6/10) In parts 1 - 5 you learnt how to develop your proposition, identify your key words and optimize your site and pages. You were also introduced to our mythical Doug (who sells antique doors, door handles, knockers, door bells or pulls and fitting services) in Windsor in the UK. Search Engine Saturation Tool - A Must Have SEO Tool Search Engines have become the soul of the Internet. They provide a means of aggregating, correlating, indexing and categorizing the vast amounts of content in the wild world of Internet. Offpage Optimization: Does Article Marketing Cut the Mustard? For those who haven't heard: article marketing is the new offpage optimization strategy that works like magic and won't cost you a dime. What's the strategy? You create an arsenal of short, well-written keyword articles aimed at your target customer and include your URL at the bottom. Build Link Popularity The Smart Way A Brief Introduction To Link PopularityAs webmasters research various ways to get more traffic to their site one method that is gaining more and more publicity is Link Popularity. Link Popularity is the number of links that point to your website as measured by the search engines. High Search Engine Rankings - A Long Term Strategy The last 1.5 years have shown major changes in search engine behavior across the board. Has Google Lost the Plot? With the help of MSN, recently I've been reminiscing about the Google of old. Remember those days? When you could take a good quality site, add a few keywords, get a few incoming links and bada-bing, bada-boom, it'd be #1 on Google? Remember the old days, pre-Florida, pre-sandbox? The days when we, as search engine optimization specialists, didn't feel like a private schoolgirl smoking in the bathroom? When we didn't feel like the iron fist would come crashing down at any moment? Yes, those were the good old days. Breaking the Myth About Page Rank (PR) The most difficult challenge most web designers face is getting traffic to your site. There are plenty of companies who promise to send traffic your way. Using Google Thanks to a unique algorithm that produces most relevant results to any given query, Google has become, indisputably, the best search engine on the Internet. On the last count, Google has indexed over 4 billion pages and tackles around 200 million searches a day! A cluster of 100 thousand servers are used to store, crunch and spew out the query results with lightning speed that you are so accustomed to see. Table Structures For Top Search Engine Positioning So you have a beautiful website that you paid a pretty penny for and you are completely happy with it ? except no one can find it. Many web designers do not understand search engine positioning, so when they design your website little or no thought is given to the elements of design that may affect your rankings on search engines. SEO Deadly Sins - Mistakes That Hurt Web Page Ranking The following are a list of mistakes can ensure that your site maintains a low ranking with the search engines. Avoid at all costs. KEI Concerns and CID Alternative Like many folks, I have been using KEI for some time now to determine what keywords I should target with my web site. And this has led me to becoming concerned with the results KEI provides and the keywords it suggests. Keywords, Ranking, & Search Engine Optimization Fun I am a Search Engine Optimization newbie. I have read a little on various forums, browsed a few articles, and read through The Affiliate Masters Course (Ken Evoy) a couple of times. Search Wars! - MSNs Opening Salvo With all the recent publicity given to Google as the Internet's number one search service, it's hardly surprising that Microsoft has already started work on re-vamping their MSN search service. Okay, it's still powered by the Yahoo engine, but according to Microsoft it has been "cleaned up" and the new service mirrors much more the kind of "non-commercial" results which are currently displayed by Google. Google's Siren Call - Is It Crashing Your Search Engine Marketing? It's difficult to dispute the rational behind the rant since Google continues to outpace its rivals in popularity with an 89% "strongly positive experience" rating from an opinion poll of U.S. Google Rankings - Achieving a Top 10 Position in Google - Part 2 Achieving a top ranking position in Google is every webmasters dream. Unfortunately very few ever make it high enough for it to make a big difference on their traffic volume. Abandoned by Google! Googlebot, Wherefore Art Thou Googlebot? As a search engine optimization specialist I often optimize existing web pages for small business clients, upload them to the site and see pages re-indexed by Google within a week. This only happens with existing business sites that have been online for a few years. Link Popularity Explained and How To Build Links Link popularity is the single most influential factor for determining how well a web site will perform in search engine rankings. A web site's link popularity is computed from the number and more importantly, the quality of links pointing to a web site. Branding Versus SEO Branding versus search engine optimization is a marketing dilemma that larger companies will need to come to grips with on the Internet. Often companies will need to decide whether to promote their own brand name as their main keyword phrase or optimize for a more generic keyword phrase. Is Reciprocal Linking Dead? I just read an article at SitePro News that really rings my bell.It was written by Mike Banks Valentine.
|
